Some Things Just Don’t Work Out
"I will restore honor and integrity to the White House" was a slam-dunk of a statement after the Clinton second term and Mr. Bush ran hard on it.
It’s possible he hadn’t yet sat down with Tom DeLay to get a feel for what Tom was up to over on K-Street, but not probable. Tom was a confidant. Which means that George Bush didn’t see anything morally unsound or dishonorable in auctioning off access to lawmakers and, in fact, making that access singularly Republican.
Which is an interesting, if somewhat pragmatic, definition of honor and integrity.
"I'm a compassionate conservative" was another of those misty-eyed statements that are hard to get a hook into. But what most of us thought he probably meant was that he had a place in his busy schedule and, perhaps even in his heart, for those who were caught out there on the edges of society. Not that he actually knew any of those people personally. But you don’t necessarily have to be a fisherman to know the smell of fish when you come across it.