As we ‘re inundated with quotes from Robert Draper’s revealing book on Bush, I kind of enjoyed this one, on drinking:
Discussing his past battles with alcohol, he says he would never be able to make decision on war if he was still drinking.
“Exercise helps. And I think prayer helps,” he says. “I wouldn’t be President if I kept drinking. You can get sloppy, can’t make decisions. It clouds your reason, absolutely.”
Wasn’t the War on Terror modeled after the struggle against Nazism? And didn’t Sir Winston Churchill make a resounding re-entry in the daily lexicon after the events of 9/11? What would the world have looked like if Sir Winston had applied the same rigor to his alcohol consumption as GWB? Here’s a clue:
His drinking habits were admirably fetishistic - preferably Pol Roger, served at precisely the right temperature (he was delighted when the gift of a refrigerator from Beaverbrook in 1926 obviated the need to dilute it with ice) and interspersed with much brandy and port.
The papers of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s lend-lease administrator, contain several good examples of the war leader’s zealous interest in his own consumption. For instance, Hopkins describes finding Churchill in January 1943 ‘in bed in his customary pink robe, and having, of all things, a bottle of wine for breakfast’. Viscount Alanbrooke made the same observation, and Eden’s diary mentions Churchill taking a ’stiff whiskey and soda, at 8.45 a.m’.
A Foreign Office official described a dinner with Churchill as ,a varied and noble procession of wines with which I could not keep pace - champagne, port, brandy, Cointreau: Winston drank a good deal of all, and ended with two glasses of whisky and soda.’
Cheers.
Are you telling me that Winston Churchill did the best work of his life while totally sauced? I think we now know why Hitler didn’t win the war then dont we? He didn’t drink.
In the words of Abe Lincoln on General Grants victories and drinking “Find out whatever Grant is drinking and send a case to each of the rest of my Generals.”
Note to self: Send a twelve pack of beer to 1600 Penn Ave for the President
If this were true, though, the Russians would have won the Cold War. The Kremlin alone probably consumed enough vodka to float a battleship.
great, let’s put Hitchens in charge, couldn’t be any worse.
Read Charles Mee’s book, “Meeting at Potsdam,” and see if you come out of it with a renewed appreciation of Winston’s drinking problem. In it we see a half-soused Churchill taken to the cleaners by a flattering, far more clever Stalin.
The fact that Churchill was apparently able to run England’s war effort while aided by copious amounts of alcohol does nothing to negate President Bush’s statement that he would not be able to make a decision on the war if he were drinking. Based on what we know of Bush’s life before he stopped drinking, it appears that he could not make any type of decision about anything while he was drinking. Of course, what we know about his life after he stopped drinking also does not inspire confidence. While Bush has made many decisions in the “war” (whatever your definition of that word may entail), it has become clear that Bush has made very few (if any) good decisions. If Bush were still drinking, at least he could attempt to blame some of his bad decisions on the alcohol.
Funny comparison, but flawed. Churchill was smart. Bush is dumb, though probably dumber sober. The key medication that would sharpen him up enough to get some insight flashes would be cocaine. That wouldn’t be a new thing for him, and maybe bring back his edge.
Anybody who works out a lot knows it can make you kind of laid back and complacent, in a nice way. I’ll often go running myself, escaping a messy apartment. Before I set out for the run the apartment mess will be driving me crazy, and I’ll feel determined to clean it up when I return. But when I get back, all my irritability has been wrung out, and I’m content to plop down amidst the mess. The endorphin therapy of exercise eases clean-up compulsivity and brings a calm self-confidence.
George Bush certainly projects this jocky self-confidence. But what is he confident about? Exercise benefits are brain sculpting patterns that have to start with decent clay to bring good to man. Serial killers who go running will become more calmly confident about their evil ways. Dumb presidents who work out will become more confident about their disastrous policies.
John: So basically, what you’re saying is “he couldn’t make good decisions anyhow”?
Regarding alcohol and leader: I find it noteworthy that leaders who drink so much, and can do so but still be very successful, are also people who seem to handle alcohol generally very well. Yes they drink a lot, but they don’t behave like I behave when I’m drunk.
Examples:
- Winston Churchill
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
- Oscar Schindler
Interesting you mention Alanbrook, as many see him as the eminence grise who really won the war. It’s tempting to consider anything unBush as a good thing, the reality is something different.
But the amount someone drinks is probably beside the point: there has to be some truth to the cliche “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink at all”. And of course Bush is in this camp now…
Waht’s your point? Yes, someone can drink, even alcoholically, and still function at their job. It is called compartmentalizing. Do you want examples of people that drank themselves out of jobs? Or drank themselves out of even being in contention for such high-ranking jobs in the first place?
A sharp mind is a sharp mind even drunk. Bush’s mind is feeble, unfortunately more weakened by alcohol and drugs. He stopped at age 40 and by then his mind was completely addled. Churchill was widely read and wrote brilliantly. He had a first class brain that alcohol could not extinguish.
M. Stratas is on to something. I immediately had to think of Christopher Hitchens, a noted drinker and brilliant writer.
Funny post, but there is simply no comparison between Churchill and Bush. Churchill won the Nobel Prize for literature. Needless to say that Bush is unlikely to … Bush embarrases himself when he tries to make these comparisons.
The Meglomainia. The effort not to face any dissenters. The constant lying and changing of his story. The need for absolute control of every situation. The desire to capitialize on his power by making serious money after his term is over…These are the symptoms of what we call a dry drunk, or someone who has had an “alcohol problem” but has not changed the behaviour behind the drinking and whats worse has magnified it with folks that enable him not to change, but see these charactor traits as assets. Bush simply shifted this ideation to that other elixer of the addictive mind… self worth through constant adulation and power.
Those of us in the know think the President is one of the sickest men ever to hold office since his actions border on the psychotic aka “Not in touch with reality” most of the time.
William H
Malibu CA
Thus far no one has found it apposite to quote Churchill himself: “All I can say is that I have taken far more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”
It is to be soberly doubted that President Bush could make the same declaration - there being so little evidence of his having enough wit or sense for any substance or habit to have deprived him of, or even to have enhanced in him. Nearly every clever frat boy can play domestic politics; but it took Churchill’s extraordinary industry and genius for him to master autodidaction, memory/recall (Churchill’s remained photographic well into his dotage), polo, journalism, politics, profundity of insight and extent of grasp, authorship, oil painting, masonry, prose, oratory and debate (persuasive and inspirational in spite of his lisp), English, his “Black Dog” of depression, warfare, leadership, and - yes - alcohol.
As far as I can make out, the only endeavor in which Churchill’s and Bush’s share mediocrity is parenting: the offspring of both proved themselves to be dull, and often mildly - and occasionally egregiously - embarrassing. But here there’s also a telling distinction to be made: From Bush’s parenting the acorns fell quite near the oak; from Churchill’s the acorns fell astonishingly far.
Erratum and Apology: in the first sentence of the final paragraph of my original comment I ought to have removed the possessive apostrophe and “s” from the two subjects’ names.
What’s really strange is that Churchills’ father thought he was an idiot - compared to himself of course - and that the best he could do was to get into Sandhurst. Which is what he did, and was not a great student except in the subjects he liked.
But it’s true, he still started with more mind to begin with, and exercised it. And I think maybe everyone was a bit smarter and more verbal back then.
I would take issue with JOL’s final comment about Churchill’s parenting. Churchill was no worse a parent than was typical for a man of his time and socioeconomic class. If anything, he over-indulged his children in reaction to the painfully distant relationship he had with his own father. His son Randolph was accomplished enough, but suffered in comparison to his brilliant father, and suffered, too, for having inherited his father’s taste for liquor but not his tolerance. Sara had the artist’s temperament and finally succumbed to depression, also probably inherited from Winston. Youngest daughter Mary seems to have done reasonably well with her long life.
Of course, any comparison with Bush is merely depressing by its stark contrasts.
-D.P.
Um… how do we know that Bush isn’t still drinking alcohol? Are we to take him at his word that he isn’t? He still acts like an alcoholic.
I recall reading an interesting idea to try if war were to have ever broken out between the Russians and the Americans. That was to place stockpiles of Alcohol behind the Russian front lines. Given the severe rate of alcoholism in the Russian ranks, it had some merit.
FYI Alcohol (and drug) use in Warfare goes back to the beginning of both and was an essential ingrediant on most battlefields even today.
Hacking someone up with an Axe or a Broadsword or being smack dab in the middle of a no holds barred melee required liquid courage if one was to survive with your mind intact. Russian Troops on the Eastern Front in WWII (and the Germans too) suffered horribly and you would have had a revolution if you had taken away thier only comfort to the horror of Modern Warfare… Vodka.
William H
Malibu CA
I rather doubt George is drinking now. The only moment I thought he might be was that telling little glob of white substance in the corner of his mouth during one of the Gore/Bush debates. I figured that was probably the result of some replacement substance.
The cluster bomb will fall when he is out of the White House. He will not be surrounded by those fleeing rats whose best interest in their own fortunes was to keep him sober. Think about it. It will all be gone for him. Iraq is going to fall into flames. If he dares to say he has cried for those lost boys and girls in this conflagaration, I anticipate sobs and dissipation when the full force of his ’sober’ decision to squander America comes to him in a lonesome moment.
I am going to have a martini in just a bit. And a cigarette. I am going to toast Winston Churchill. As for George Bush, well….
… only hurting yourself.
We all know that Bush sees himself as some sort of descendant of Churchill. Perhaps his psychic inheritance is tinged with more than just a bit of fetal-alcohol syndrome…
It is a true but little known fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was all hopped up on goofballs most of the time, and in a constant state of ooby-gooby during the entire Casablanca conference. And we all know that Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to ensure his supply of Arkansas Polio Weed.
@Max Edison
What the heck is ooby-gooby?
I think we should all get sauced, what a nation that would be.
“I think we should all get sauced, what a nation that would be.”
That nation is Britain! Booze put the “Great,” in Great Britain. God - we’d never even get to breed if it wasn’t for alcohol!
[...] thinking about this in relation to this post Andrew Sullivan linked to today, by Pieter Dorsman. I think Dorsman needs to rethink this a [...]
I’ve always thought that Bush relies heavily on his team to provide him with information that they want him to have and to make the decisions they want him to make. If such is the case, it doesn’t make a lot of difference whether Bush is drink or sober– except drunk, he’d probably be more difficult for his advisers to manipulate.
[...] had argued that excessive drinking would probably yield better policy results. Nonsense of course, the crux of putting Bush and Churchill together was to underline that alcohol, either using it or teetotalling, does not play a role in shaping a [...]
Well, what does it say about the Democrat party that they couldn’t defeat a dumb drunk? What does that make the Democrat elite? How f’ed up do you have to be to have people choose a puppet over you? And if the American people are so stupid, why couldn’t you out trick them?
For Republicans, Bush is almost out, but Democrats still have the same losers. Good luck fighting the last elections.