At times grudgingly, George W. Bush traced virtually every early step his father took. Like his father, George W. went to both Phillips Andover Academy and Yale and joined the secretive Yale fraternity Skull and Bones.
Like his father – when starting out on his own career – George W. exploited both wealthy family connections and the nexus between oil and politics. Like his father, too, George W. joined the armed forces during war time.
But George W.’s early record had the look of a child shuffling around in his father’s oversized shoes. In school, George W. was a C student, while his father graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In sports, George the father was captain of the Yale baseball team while George the son was captain of the cheerleading squad.
George Sr. served under fire as a naval aviator in the Pacific theater of World War II, while George Jr. slipped past other better qualified candidates into the Texas Air National Guard where he would avoid service in Vietnam and leave behind long-term questions about his duty records and premature departure.
Bush’s checkered history with the National Guard coincided with a period of his life when he drank heavily and apparently abused cocaine, although he never exactly admitted to that last fact. During his presidential run in 2000, Bush acknowledged the drinking problem – in the context of saying he had licked the bottle with the help of his Christian faith – but he slid away from the cocaine question.
When pressed, he didn’t confirm or deny that he abused cocaine but asserted that he could have met his father’s White House personnel requirement that set time limits on how far back an applicant would have to admit illegal drug use.
Despite this implicit confirmation of drug abuse, most of the major news outlets, such as The New York Times, took Bush’s side and reported that there was no evidence Bush had ever used illegal drugs.
But what he may have lacked in early accomplishments, he made up for in ambition and charm, two traits that served him well in both business and politics. In 1978, his ambition led George W. Bush to embrace his father’s two career paths, oil and politics.
With almost no political experience, George W. launched an uphill campaign for the U.S. Congress in 1978. He lost badly to the Democratic incumbent. That same year, he incorporated his own oil-drilling venture, Arbusto (Spanish for bush) Energy.
George W. Bush’s oil business venture seemed promising at first. Just as his father had done nearly 30 years prior, George W. sought financial assistance from an uncle, this time, Jonathan Bush, a Wall Street financier. Jonathan Bush pulled together two dozen investors to raise $3 million to help launch Arbusto.
James Bath, one of George W.’s friends from the National Guard, also invested $50,000 for a five percent stake. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, scion of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family and half-brother of Osama bin Laden, who in the 1980s would be heading to Afghanistan to help Islamic fundamentalists resist the Soviet invasion.
Though responsible for investments for Salem bin Laden, Bath insisted that the $50,000 for Arbusto came from his own personal funds. (Salem bin Laden could not be questioned about the investment. He died in a 1988 plane crash in Texas.)
A History of Bailouts
In his subsequent business career, George W. was the beneficiary of three major bailouts.
The first occurred in 1982 when, despite the millions already pumped into Arbusto, the company faced a cash crunch. George W.’s balance sheet showed $48,000 in the bank and $400,000 owed to banks and other creditors.
George W. realized that he had to raise additional cash and decided to take Arbusto public. With the company so deeply in debt, however, George W. would need a new infusion of money to clear the books.
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