[lit-ideas] The Dunce
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2004 21:46:03 -0700
The Dunce
By Mary Jacoby
Salon.com
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as
a terrible
student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sept. 16, 2004 | For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's
professors at
Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent
legal
resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001
prompted the
Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to
speak out with
the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the
character and
intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.
"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something,"
Tsurumi said
in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of
students. One is the
very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working
with. Someone
with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you
never
forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally
the
opposite."
The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's
macroeconomic
policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of
1974. Tsurumi
was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972
to August
1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in
New York.
Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for
a two-year
program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest
son's "nomadic
years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in
Florida and
Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama
National
Guard.
Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor
interacts
aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other
sharply,
offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students'
in-class
performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses
and strengths
in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other
things that
students reveal," he said.
One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the
seventh-ranking
member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative
Republican with a
conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics,
and he didn't
try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a
principled
conservative." (Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a
congressional
investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story
questioning
Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.)
Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He
showed
pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices
and biases. He
would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for
that.
Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular
comment, said
Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman
did not
return a phone call seeking comment.
In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on
whether government
should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs.
Bush, he
recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he
said, 'The
government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said,
'Well, could
you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started
backtracking on
it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"
If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to
challenge that
and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but
intellectually."
Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based
on John
Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal,
and he called
Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the
Securities and
Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the
civil rights
movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And
when
challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either
ideologically,
polemically or academically."
Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the
subject of a
whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge
them. But after
class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those
students who
had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It
was innuendo
and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a
very insecure,
cunning and vengeful guy."
Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but
good manners
prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed
unabashed about
the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the
rich and famous
were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and
standards of
behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in
the back row
of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air
National Guard and
spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.
"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I
didn't know
his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got
in. He said,
'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.
The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception. Bush
expressed
strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted
spot in the
Texas Air National Guard through his father's connections.
"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class,"
Tsurumi said.
"Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No.
1 topic in
those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said,
'Well, I got into
the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a
long waiting
list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or
embarrassed. He
thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was
not the only
one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was
fanatically for
the war."
Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in
which others
were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk
and huffed
off."
Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was
just badly
brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.
In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television
outlets and
appears in Kitty Kelley's exposé "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush
Dynasty." He said
other professors and students at the business school from that time share his
recollections
but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is
Tsurumi
speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden
still on the
loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the
stakes are too
high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to be
running the
country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."
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