This is interesting. The NYT is running a article detailing a tape recording a “friend” of President Bush made. Apparently this great guy tape recorded the Pres without him knowing it. What a swell guy huh?
As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality.
In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former aide to Mr. Bush’s father, disclosed the tapes’ existence to a reporter and played about a dozen of them.
Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals. John McCain “will wear thin,” he predicted. John Ashcroft, he confided, would be a “very good Supreme Court pick” or a “fabulous” vice president. And in exchanges about his handling of questions from the news media about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana.
Mr. Wead said he recorded the conversations because he viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal. As the author of a new book about presidential childhoods, Mr. Wead could benefit from any publicity, but he said that was not a motive in disclosing the tapes.
Sure it wasn’t. Why would you want publicity, and money? What a flaming jackass.
From what I’ve heard about the tapes they acutally seem like it will make W sound more human.
But Mr. Bush also repeatedly worried that prominent evangelical Christians would not like his refusal “to kick gays.” At the same time, he was wary of unnerving secular voters by meeting publicly with evangelical leaders. When he thought his aides had agreed to such a meeting, Mr. Bush complained to Karl Rove, his political strategist, “What the hell is this about?”
Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than “just, you know, wild behavior.” He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. “If nobody shows up, there’s no story,” he told Mr. Wead, “and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up.” But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, “I haven’t denied anything.”
He refused to answer reporters’ questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: “I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”
Actually sounds like a stand up guy. This is a man who can admit that he has sinned and cannot judge those who sin because of it. A stand up guy behind closed doors as well as in front of them.
Does it upset me that he did drugs? No. If he had done drugs and then lied about doing them, i.e. “I didn’t inhale”, then I would be pissed. I have to agree with The Captain on this point tho:
Perhaps some of this has historical significance. However, it pales in relation to the act of a preacher and personal friend surreptitiously taping conversations for their “historic” value and publishing them without the friend’s knowledge or authorization. It’s appalling, even if it does no damage to Bush, and Wead ought to have known better. These conversations had no content which could have had a higher purpose for recording, such as evidence of wrongdoing or protection of one’s own safety or reputation, which would justify such betrayal. Wead says he simply would tape anyone he thinks will be famous later so he can cash in on it when his prediction turns out to be correct.
He’s a disgusting piece of human slime. I suspect that Wead will get considerably fewer phone calls in the future, except from reporters who want to hear more of Wead’s spying tapes. Hopefully he enjoys their friendship, as they will be the only friends he will have left.
That’s the story in this thing, what a freakin slimeball of a friend this guy is.
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