In 2012, The Washington Post waited until Romney had defeated all his GOP rivals before releasing its enormous “scoop” that Romney may have given a prep-school classmate in involuntary haircut in 1965. In this cycle, The Boston Globe is rushing it. The Hill newspaper summarized in the February 1 story with the headline: “Jeb Bush was a pot-smoking bully, say former classmates.”
It won’t be shocking to discover that Globe “investigative journalist” Michael Kranish can go long on Jeb’s "tumultous" but undistinguished Andover years, but couldn’t find anything negative years ago from Barack Obama’s high-school years, or John Kerry’s. They cut right to the drugs, in paragraph 3:
He bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot — as many did — and sometimes bullied smaller students.
Resolutely apolitical despite his lineage, [couldn't it be apolitical because of his lineage?] he refused to join the Progressive Andover Republicans club and often declined even to participate in informal bull sessions with classmates. In a tumultuous season in American life, he seemed to his peers strangely detached and indifferent.
“He was just in a bit of a different world,” said Phil Sylvester, who said he was a Bush roommate. While other students “were constantly arguing about politics and particularly Vietnam, he just wasn’t interested, he didn’t participate, he didn’t care.”
Meanwhile, his grades were so poor that he was in danger of being expelled, which would have been a huge embarrassment to his father, a member of Congress and of the school’s board of trustees.
Jeb Bush, in an interview for this story, recalled it as one of the most difficult times of his life, while acknowledging that he made it harder by initially breaking a series of rules.
“I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover,” Bush said, both of which could have led to expulsion. “It was pretty common.” He said he had no recollection of bullying and said he was surprised to be perceived that way by some.
Oh, it wasn't just pot, reporter Kranish. Add hashish to the list of drugs used (and sold):
One of those who did get to know Bush in these early days was Peter Tibbetts. The connection, he said, was pot. The first time Tibbetts smoked marijuana, he said, was with Bush and a few other classmates in the woods near Pemberton Cottage. Then, a few weeks later, Tibbetts said he smoked hashish — a cannabis product typically stronger than pot — in Jeb’s dormitory room.
“The first time I really got stoned was in Jeb’s room,” Tibbetts said. “He had a portable stereo with removable speakers. He put on Steppenwolf for me.” As the rock group’s signature song, “Magic Carpet Ride,’’ blared from the speakers, Tibbetts said he smoked hash with Bush.
He said he once bought hashish from Bush but stressed, in a follow-up e-mail, “Please bear in mind that I was seeking the hash. It wasn’t as if he was a dealer, though he did suggest I take up cigarettes so that I could hold my hits better, after that first joint.”
Bush previously has acknowledged what he called his “stupid” and “wrong” use of marijuana. In the years since, he has opposed efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal or recreational use.
Kranish didn't elaborate on how Bush responded to the hashish allegation. Bush denied the allegation that he was a bully in any way, but Kranish let people describe Bush as some sort of literary caricature from Lord of the Flies:
Bullying recalled
Tibbetts, who was eventually forced to leave Andover in the spring of 1970 after school officials accused him of using drugs, said his one regret about his relationship with Bush is that he agreed to participate with him in the bullying of a student in the dormitory.
Their target was a short classmate whom they taunted, and then sewed his pajama bottoms so that they were impossible to put on. The act was particularly embarrassing, said Tibbetts, who said he felt remorse for joining in with “kids being cruel.”
Bush said in the interview that he has no recollection of this or other bullying incidents raised by classmates. He said he never viewed himself as a bully. “I don’t believe that is true,” he said, referring to classmates’ recollections of specific incidents. “It was 44 years ago and it is not possible for me to remember.”
Bush, who would eventually grow to nearly 6-foot-4, stood out as one of the tallest boys on campus, which made him admired by some and feared by others, according to Gregg Hamilton, who was at Pemberton Cottage with Bush. To Hamilton, who would weigh 98 pounds on graduation day, Bush was initially not a friendly presence.
“Jeb Bush was large, physically imposing, and traveled in a crowd that was I guess somewhat threatening to an outsider like myself. I saw him as a cigarette smoker and ‘toker’ and someone that was comfortable being in charge of a group,” Hamilton said. “I was small physically, and small at an all-male boarding school [that], at that time, was a bit of a hostile environment for the kids — sort of a Lord of the Flies situation, at least as I saw it.”
In that classic novel, assigned to generations of high school students, a group of students is marooned on an island and soon fight among themselves over how they will be governed, descending into tribalism and savagery.
As Hamilton explained the analogy, “it was a hostile environment in this sense of everybody being typecast. Bush would have been a squad leader, someone setting the agenda, dictating who would eat at the share table and who would eat the scraps, master of the domain. He was physically imposing and just bad enough to be accepted or feared by everybody.”
A 2001 Vanity Fair profile mentioned in passing that a classmate considered Bush a bully, but these recollections appear to be the first detailed accounting of Bush’s actions.
Other students remember Bush as intimidating, if not exactly a bully. David Cuthell, who thinks well of Bush today, remembers that Bush approached him one day in the school cafeteria, angry and ready to do some damage.
“He sort of lifted me up in the air and I think was going to squash a grapefruit in my face,” said Cuthell, who said he was around 115 pounds at the time. Then a friend who was even stronger than Bush came to the rescue, lifting Bush away from Cuthell.
Any allegation this weak against a Democrat would surely be dismissed. Why Kranish wants to inflate it into a murderous frenzy when it's classmates who are intimidated by his presence (but not actully bullied) is only explained by partisan bias.
Compared to Democrats?
In the 2008 cycle, Kranish never got around to exploring Obama's rather strenous "Choom Gang" use of pot -- or the "blow." The Globe ran a little AP squib that had the official Obama line in it in November of 2007:
Obama has written about his drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, Obama wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.
Drugs, Obama wrote, were a way he "could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory."
Obama’s Hawaii experience was chronicled in a February 21, 2008 front-page story headlined “'ALOHA SPIRIT' LIFTS OBAMA: Native son's vision of inclusiveness echoes Hawaii's multicultural heritage.” This is how Globe reporter Scott Helman demonstrated their “hostility” to the emerging nominee:
In May, when his presidential campaign began organizing in Hawaii, Barack Obama declared the place of his birth "a fabulous model for the kind of America I hope this campaign will bring about."
Early yesterday, the "aloha spirit" that nurtured Obama during his childhood and remains the pride of this idyllic tropical island chain helped hand him one of his biggest victories yet as he swept Hillary Clinton 76 percent to 24 percent in the Democratic caucuses - and took him one step closer to achieving his goal of a new America.
A record 37,000 caucus-goers packed gymnasiums and stood in line for hours, nearly 10 times the number who turned out in 2004.
Obama, 46, who lived 14 of his first 18 years here, is seen by many of his fellow Hawaiians as the embodiment of their ancient creed of friendly acceptance and unity that has also become a central theme of his historic bid for the Democratic nomination.
Michael Kranish was an enthusiastic biographer of John Kerry in 2004. The New York Times on November 25, 2003 reported “Dr. Dean, Mr. Edwards and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said they had used marijuana.” But Kranish wasn't interested in when that might have occurred. When it came to Kerry's high-school career, it was all glowingly positive. Compare the Jeb slasher with a June 15, 2003 Kerry profile by Kranish:
Kerry entered St. Paul's as a short, pudgy boy focused on intellectual pursuits. Within a couple years, however, he rocketed up in height. He was one of the tallest boys on campus and soon became a sports standout, using his newfound height to advantage in hockey and soccer. One of his greatest pleasures was strapping on his ice skates and speeding down the glassy black ice of Turkey Pond, with the wind rippling across the exposed expanse.
Kerry's Latin teacher, George Tracy, has no memory of Kerry's performance in class. But he does recall, vividly, Kerry's star-turn on the school hockey team, which didn't lose a game during a memorable season. Another Kerry talent, the teacher said, was debate, in which he impressed Tracy as "one of the most brilliant people I've ever known."
At St. Paul's, Kerry founded the John Winant Society, an organization that still exists to debate major issues of the day. Kerry recalled delivering an award-winning speech titled "The Plight of the Negro." St. Paul's officials could not find a copy of the speech but did unearth a speech Kerry gave for the Concordian Literary Society that won the top prize. It was titled: "Resolved: that the growth of spectator sports in the western world in the last half century is an indication of the decline of western civilization."
Kerry was one of a handful of boys with Democratic leanings and a Catholic on a campus dominated by Republican Episcopalians. That became most painfully clear when Kerry delivered a speech in favor of the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which Kerry says was the first political speech of his life. St. Paul's was firmly in Nixon's corner.
After five years at St. Paul's, Kerry was eager to move on to his father's alma mater, Yale University, where his liberal views and political ambitions were more welcomed. It was during the summer of 1962, between high school and college, that Kerry solidified his Kennedy ties. He worked briefly for the US Senate bid of Edward M. Kennedy, handing out leaflets but apparently never meeting the candidate. He read a book about President Kennedy's World War II experiences on a patrol boat, PT-109, which one day would help inspire Kerry to volunteer for duty on a Navy patrol boat in Vietnam. And Kerry had begun to spend time with Janet Auchincloss, the half-sister of the first lady.
Kerry's friends became fascinated with the striking parallels between John Forbes Kerry and the American president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Aside from the identical initials, both lived at least part of their childhood in Massachusetts and shared a similar political philosophy. Kerry even sounded eerily like Kennedy, with the same deep Boston accent, even though Kerry had spent much of his life outside the Bay State.
"[John] Kennedy was certainly a model for him," said Daniel Barbiero, Kerry's roommate at St. Paul's and Yale. "He admired the man greatly, admired the man's ability to speak and write." Meeting a hero
In August 1962, Janet Auchincloss invited Kerry to her family's palatial estate, Hammersmith Farm in Rhode Island, which was serving as the summer White House. "We were friendly, sort of beginning to date, half-date, and she invited me in the summer of 1962," Kerry said. President Kennedy was visiting, and in a scene right out of "Forrest Gump," the young Kerry had an extraordinary opportunity to visit with the president.
Arriving late for his date, Kerry was directed into the house and saw a man standing against a wall, his back turned. As Kerry approached, he realized it was his hero. "This guy is standing there, he turns around, and it is the president of the United States," Kerry recalled. "I remember distinctly saying, 'Hi, Mr. Kennedy,' and we chatted. He said, 'Oh, what are you doing?' I said, 'I just graduated from St. Paul's. I am about to go to Yale.' "
"He was incredibly warm, incredibly friendly, just relaxed," Kerry recalled. After a conversation about his brother's Massachusetts Senate race, the president took Kerry down to the dock, where they and some others went sailing on a Coast Guard yawl in Narragansett Bay. A White House photographer snapped the scene on the Manitou: There is Kennedy, at his handsomest in white pants, blue-as-the-bay shirt, and dark sunglasses; and there is Kerry, his white shirt-sleeves rolled up, leaning back, soaking up the sun and the presence of power.
Kranish rewarmed this profile for his book John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, and added gush:
...[Herbert] Church, Kerry’s English teacher, spent many hours outside class with Kerry at the school’s living quarters....”I can remember him sitting on my sofa in the evenings, talking a long, long time. I remember thinking the world of him, as I do still,” Church said. “I thought this was a man that might go somewhere. I thought he might very well go into diplomacy. The thing that impressed me always was his very serious idealism. A lot of guys wanted to be head of Daddy’s Wall Street firm, nothing wrong with that, but this young guy, you had a feeling he would do something for the world. He was a sincere idealist.”
Kranish and the Globe are not sincere idealists. They've shown themselves to be insincere partisan hacks.
