Laura Bush's Book

YankeeFan · Apr 28, 2010

It's out before W.'s and might be the more revealing of the two.

From the Times:

Laura Bush has finally opened up publicly about the mysterious car accident she had when she was 17, a crash that claimed the life of a high school friend on a dark country road in Midland, TX.

...

On several occasions in the book, Ms. Bush admonishes her husband’s political adversaries for “calling him names,” and she pointedly rebuts criticism of some of his key decisions. She suggested that his highly criticized fly-over of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was in the best interests of the victims and aid workers on the ground.

“He did not want one single life to be lost because someone was catering to the logistical requirements of a president,” she says about the Katrina fly-over. “He did not want his convoy of vehicles to block trucks delivering water or food or medical supplies, or to impede National Guardsmen from around the nation who were arriving to help.”

Ms. Bush also suggests, apparently for the first time, that she, Mr. Bush, and several members of their staff may have been poisoned during a visit to Germany for a G8 Summit. They all became mysteriously sick, and the president was bedridden for part of the trip. The Secret Service investigated the possibility they were poisoned, she writes, but doctors could only conclude that they all contracted a virus. After noting several high-profile poisonings, she wrote, “we never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28laura.html?hp
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The poisoning thing is crazy. Either something really serious happened, or she's very paranoid.

BTExpress · Dec 15, 2014

Viktor Yushchenko says it's very possible.

Before poisoning After poisoning

Boom_70 · Dec 15, 2014

So does Barry:

BNWriter · Apr 28, 2010

YankeeFan said:

It's out before W.'s and might be the more revealing of the two.

From the Times:

I thought I read or saw somewhere that water was one thing that is sent over to an overseas location when the President travels. Not sure I have that right, but I recall seeing something somewhere that there are certain things from home a President (regardless of who holds the office) is provided on foreign trips. Can anybody confirm this?
Laura Bush has finally opened up publicly about the mysterious car accident she had when she was 17, a crash that claimed the life of a high school friend on a dark country road in Midland, TX.

...

On several occasions in the book, Ms. Bush admonishes her husbands political adversaries for calling him names, and she pointedly rebuts criticism of some of his key decisions. She suggested that his highly criticized fly-over of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was in the best interests of the victims and aid workers on the ground.

He did not want one single life to be lost because someone was catering to the logistical requirements of a president, she says about the Katrina fly-over. He did not want his convoy of vehicles to block trucks delivering water or food or medical supplies, or to impede National Guardsmen from around the nation who were arriving to help.

Ms. Bush also suggests, apparently for the first time, that she, Mr. Bush, and several members of their staff may have been poisoned during a visit to Germany for a G8 Summit. They all became mysteriously sick, and the president was bedridden for part of the trip. The Secret Service investigated the possibility they were poisoned, she writes, but doctors could only conclude that they all contracted a virus. After noting several high-profile poisonings, she wrote, we never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28laura.html?hp
Click to expand...

The poisoning thing is crazy. Either something really serious happened, or she's very paranoid.
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Herbert Anchovy · Dec 15, 2014

Did the poisoning cause him to put his hands on the German chancellor?

fishhack2009 · Apr 28, 2010

And of course, her husband NEVER called his adversaries names. :

Not sure I would have gone there if I were her.

Boomer7 · Dec 15, 2014

BTExpress said:

Viktor Yushchenko says it's very possible.

Before poisoning After poisoning
Click to expand...

Remember when that guy was supposed to be the great hope for democracy? The New Yorker had an interesting article last month (subscription required; I'd link otherwise) about how he spent most of his time focusing on raising awareness of Soviet atrocities under Stalin, rather than on, you know, governing. And then he got voted out in favor of the guy who would have won the fixed election in 2004. Sigh...

Ben_Hecht · Apr 29, 2010

fishhack2009 said:

And of course, her husband NEVER called his adversaries names. :

Not sure I would have gone there if I were her.
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Hey, when you're a spoiled, petulant, Bubble-Boy, Mama's-Boy, fratboy who
has the drydrunk personality model down to a science, why would anyone
expect anything else?

He'll be breaking his arm patting his precious ("I'M qualified!") simple self on
the back, for certain.

J-School Blue · Apr 29, 2010

I have to admit, I always wondered what the woman thought of those years, as she seemed to be a rather normal person trapped in a surreal environment.

The excerpts I've read sound very unenlightening and apologist, however, so I think I'll skip it.

andyouare? · Apr 29, 2010

I thought this part was pretty interesting, too:

But it is her description of the deadly accident, and its subsequent impact on her life and her faith, that is the subject Ms. Bush had most shied away from speaking about in her public life. On a November night in 1963, Ms. Bush and a girlfriend were hurrying to a drive-in theater when Ms. Bush, at the wheel of her father’s Chevy Impala, ran a stop sign on a small road and smashed into a car being driven by Mike Douglas, a star athlete and popular student at her school.

“In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,” she says. “The whole time,” she adds later, “I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.”

Ms. Bush concedes that she and her friend were chatting when she ran the stop sign. But she also suggests a host of factors beyond her control played a role — the pitch-black road, an unusually dangerous intersection, the small size of the stop sign, and the car the victim was driving.

“It was sporty and sleek, and it was also the car that Ralph Nader made famous in his book Unsafe at Any Speed,” she states. “He claimed the car was unstable and prone to rollover accidents. A few years later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration went so far as to investigate the Corvair’s handling, but it didn’t reach the same grim conclusions. I was driving my dad’s much larger and heavier Chevy Impala. But none of that would ever ease the night of November 6. Not for me, and never for the Douglases.”
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Boom_70 · Apr 29, 2010

andyouare? said:

I thought this part was pretty interesting, too:

But it is her description of the deadly accident, and its subsequent impact on her life and her faith, that is the subject Ms. Bush had most shied away from speaking about in her public life. On a November night in 1963, Ms. Bush and a girlfriend were hurrying to a drive-in theater when Ms. Bush, at the wheel of her father’s Chevy Impala, ran a stop sign on a small road and smashed into a car being driven by Mike Douglas, a star athlete and popular student at her school.

“In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,” she says. “The whole time,” she adds later, “I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.”

Ms. Bush concedes that she and her friend were chatting when she ran the stop sign. But she also suggests a host of factors beyond her control played a role — the pitch-black road, an unusually dangerous intersection, the small size of the stop sign, and the car the victim was driving.

“It was sporty and sleek, and it was also the car that Ralph Nader made famous in his book Unsafe at Any Speed,” she states. “He claimed the car was unstable and prone to rollover accidents. A few years later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration went so far as to investigate the Corvair’s handling, but it didn’t reach the same grim conclusions. I was driving my dad’s much larger and heavier Chevy Impala. But none of that would ever ease the night of November 6. Not for me, and never for the Douglases.”
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Really strange - when story first broke in 2000 it had the guy driving doorless jeep that he was thrown out of. I remember one of news shows even did a piece on in showing the intersection and discussing Jeep.

Laura Bush Recalls Painful Past

The Associated Press
Thursday, March 2, 2000; 7:15 p.m. EST

PROVIDENCE, R.I. –– Laura Bush, wife of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, on Thursday recalled the pain of a 1963 accident that killed her boyfriend, saying "it was crushing."

"All I can say about that (is) it was a very, very, tragic accident I was involved in when I was 17 years old, almost 40-something years ago," Bush said. "It was a terrible accident. It was terrible for everyone involved."

Bush said the grief remains.

"I know this as an adult, and even more as a parent, it was crushing ... for the family involved and for me as well," she said.

Bush would not comment further and quickly resumed talking about her husband.

The accident occurred Nov. 5, 1963, when Bush was talking to a friend while she was driving to a party in her hometown of Midland, Texas, the New York Post reported.

At an intersection, she apparently failed to see her boyfriend, Mike Douglas, driving south. The vehicles collided and Douglas was thrown from his doorless Jeep, breaking his neck. He died instantly.

Midland officials would not release the full accident report, referring Freedom of Information requests for the document to the attorney general of Texas. He has until May 15 to decide if he will make the report public.

An abbreviated version of the report concluded neither Douglas or Bush could be blamed for the accident, the Post reported.

© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press

andyouare? · Apr 29, 2010

The excerpt doesn't mention it was her boyfriend. Holy crap.

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