Slouching Toward Populism

WASHINGTON — It must be frustrating for the George Bushes.

They go through all the motions of proclaiming that they're self-made Texas bidnessmen.

They become president by acting more red-blooded than blue-blooded.

They whup small, backward countries that brutalize their own people and get dizzying approval ratings.

And then, after everything they've done, after all the laurels and plaudits, that darn economy gets its knickers in a twist.

And they are hounded by the same old question they have designed their lives to avoid: Can a Bush — born on third base but thinking he hit a triple — ever really understand the problems of the guys in the bleachers?

Despite the efforts of W. and Karl Rove to use Poppy's one-term presidency as a reverse playbook, to instead aim for the populist two-term touch of Ronald Reagan, the junior Bush now finds himself combating the same accusations of elitism that cost his father re-election.

By November 1991, with the demise of the blue-collar bard Lee Atwater and the decline of the economy, the rich white guys running the first Bush administration were openly admitting they were in a fog of privilege.

"Bush's idea of solving a domestic problem is to fire the maid and yell at the butler," chortled the Democratic senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

The Democrats are going to town again on Bush obliviousness. America is repulsed by corporate gluttony and accounting racketeering. And the younger Bush must prove that his connection to the common man goes deeper than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The 180-degree turn from "Kenny Boy" to "Book Kenny" is going to be tricky.