George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama
2 February 2004, Glynn Wilson, The Southerner Daily News
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Feb. 2 (SDN) — The result of an investigation into George W. Bush's lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug test, all while learning the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in the land of George Wallace.
It was the year Wallace, the spunky Alabama governor and presidential candidate, was gunned down in a Maryland parking lot, the year of the Watergate break in and the beginning of the end for "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It was also the last year for segregationists to openly fight integration of the public schools, a time when racism went underground in American politics in the form of a "Dixie Strategy." And it was the beginning of a major political realignment that transformed the American South from a one-party Democratic stronghold into a solid block for the GOP.
Bush made the move to Alabama in May to work on Winton "Red" Blount's campaign for the U.S. Senate against Southern Democrat John Sparkman. The lessons of that year were not lost on Bush or his political adviser Karl Rove, who also cut his political teeth in 1972. Their path to electoral success is a lesson in itself about the state of American Democracy, an issue suitable for an H.L. Mencken-style analysis.
Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before.
They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven, Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name, when they stopped him "all the time" for driving drunk as a student at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in the campaign "what seemed like a hundred times," says Red Blount's nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had "vivid memories" of that time.
"He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a number of years out of college, talking about this to people he doesn't know," Archibald said. "He just struck me as a guy who really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege, that he wasn't operating by the same rules."
During this period Bush often socialized with the young ladies of Huntington College, located in the Old Cloverdale historic neighborhood where he stayed. Bush even dated Nixon's daughter Tricia in the early 1970s, according to newspaper accounts. Bush was described as "young and personable" by the Montgomery Independent society columnist, and seen dancing at the Whitley Hotel on election night November 7 with "the blonde, pretty Emily Marks."
During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe named Marks as one of Bush's former girlfriends. But she and several other women who dated him during that time refused to say anything bad on the record about Bush, now a sitting president.
Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine. The newspapers that year are full of stories about the scourges of cocaine and heroin making their way into the U.S. from abroad in the early days of the so-called "war on drugs."
According to Cathy Donelson, a daughter of old Montgomery but one of the toughest investigative reporters to work for newspapers in Alabama over the years, the 1960s came to Old Cloverdale in the early 1970s about the time of Bush's arrival.
"We did a lot of drugs in those days," she said. "The 1970s are a blur."
The top radio hits in 1972 included "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck Berry, "Honky Cat" by Elton John, "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies and "Feeling Alright" by Joe Cocker, along with "I Am Woman" by Helen Reddy, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Ben" by Michael Jackson and "Black and White" by Three Dog Night.
It was that kind of year.
FULL ARTICLE: George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama
this article re-posted from February 2004
