"Everyone Should Have a Home"

By: Lisa Kadonaga

At a time of year when many people's thoughts turn towards home, it's ironic that the man who made the title statement doesn't seem to have one - at least, not in the birthplace sense. George W. Bush likes to give the impression that's he's a natural-born Texan, Midland born and bred, though the truth is that his parents moved there when "Georgie" was three years old, and that barely a decade passed before the younger Bush transferred to a private school in Houston, and then to Andover and Yale. He did return to Midland when he was trying to strike it rich in the oil business (and failing), after getting his Harvard MBA. But it appears that he hasn't been back there much since the 1980's, though he's stated that he hopes to be buried in Midland someday. (In late 2001, a local historical society got a grant to restore one of the houses in which the family lived, to the way it looked in the 1950's - consistent with what he's been doing to the rest of the country.)

While in the library a few months ago, I was checking out the 2000 edition of "Who's Who in America". In contrast to the majority of other entries, George Walker Bush's birthplace wasn't listed, although as Governor of Texas and eldest son of a former president, his inclusion was pretty well certain. Despite his cryptic remarks over the Christmas holidays about needing to recharge his batteries, I know that the man isn't an android or anything like that. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, while his father was studying at Yale. However, I suspect that the omission of his birthplace is not an oversight by the Who's Who editors - the Bush consortium has spent several years, and a lot of money, retooling his image to exclude the Eastern preppy connotations that don't play well in the "heartland" (and most other places in the country, come to think of it).

The Bush family:

• George Herbert Walker Bush: Milton, MA
• Barbara Bush (nee Pierce): Rye, NY
• John Ellis "Jeb" Bush: Midland, TX

The 2000 Democratic ticket:

• Al Gore: Washington, DC
• Joe Lieberman: Stamford, CT

Other top White House officials:

• Dick Cheney: Lincoln, NE
• Donald Rumsfeld: Chicago, IL
• Colin Powell: New York, NY
• John Ashcroft: Chicago, IL
• Spencer Abraham: Lansing, MI
• Tommy Thompson: Elroy, WI
• Gale Norton: Wichita, KS
• Paul O'Neill: St. Louis, MO
• Christie Todd Whitman: not listed

The Supreme Court:

• William Rehnquist: Milwaukee, WI
• John Paul Stevens: Chicago, IL
• Sandra Day O'Connor: El Paso, TX
• Antonin Scalia: Trenton, NJ
• Anthony M. Kennedy: Sacramento, CA
• David H. Souter: Melrose, MA
• Clarence Thomas: Savannah, GA
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Brooklyn, NY
• Stephen G. Breyer: San Francisco, CA

So it appears that Bush's EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey, is the only other person in this sampling who declined to reveal a birthplace. (Some wags have suggested that there are few secrets more detrimental than being born in New Jersey. As someone from Hamilton, the Canadian equivalent, I'll just quote Groucho Marx: "I resemble that remark!")

Anyway, watching footage of Mr. Bush wandering around his Crawford property reminded me oddly of a children's story by British author Joan Aiken. She described a popular newspaper columnist, an early prototype for "lifestyle" experts like Martha Stewart, who is thrown into a tizzy by the pending arrival of a television crew from the States. For years, she's been writing about her quaint little cottage and beautiful garden, her household pets and her cozy kitchen - all of it fictional. The woman scrambles to assemble a passable facade, before her fraud is revealed - she even resorts to stealing fully-grown trees and planting them around her estate.

The Bush ranch (actually a former hog farm) was only acquired by the then-governor a couple of years ago. Mr. Bush has made much of his desire to improve "Prairie Chapel" - showing it off to visiting world leaders, taking reporters on tours of the canyons, giving folksy descriptions of local trees and wildlife, and even arm-twisting his staff into helping build trails. Both he and his wife have talked repeatedly about wanting to grow old there together, in their new custom-built house complete with bass pond only steps from the porch. For now anyway, he seems to be determined to make the place his home. Not such a bad thing, and millions of others who have moved across the country are doing exactly this - but the more the press talk about his Lone Star roots, the more people will believe it.

Decades from now, at least in the popular consciousness, that gap in "Who's Who" might be filled in with "Midland, Texas" - and his administration will have succeeded in doing, in a small but significant way, what it's trying to accomplish in a wider sense - change history. They want us to believe in the Compassionate Conservative, the humble man who became a visionary and saved his country in its hour of need. It's a compelling story, and one that many would like to believe, for reassurance and because we nourish the hope that this kind of flowering could happen for any of us.

They say that everything has changed since that terrible day in September - but there are some things that mustn't change, no matter what. Right now there is a lot of pressure to forget - about the election, about things the previous administrations did or didn't do, about our doubts and concerns regarding the way things were heading during the preceding months. No disaster, no matter how great, should mean that we should be content with the stories we are being told - no matter how convenient and attractive they might seem. Even a notion that seems as simple as home.