These are distressing days for the Bush family patriarch, only the second former president in American history, after John Adams, to see his son take the White House. At 83, he finds it tough to watch his son get criticized from the sidelines; often, he likens himself to a Little League father whose kid is having a rough game. And like the proud and angry Little League dad who cannot help but yell at the umpire, sometimes he just cannot help getting involved.I can appreciate the complexities of a father-son relationship and the many levels that it can have. As a theatre scholar, I can tell you that the dynamics between parent and child have been a rich vein of drama from the Greeks -- Oedipus Rex -- to modern times, including the works of Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Robert Anderson, and Lanford Wilson.
The official line from the White House is that 41, as he is known in Bush circles, gives advice to 43 only when asked. But interviews with a broad range of people close to both presidents — including family members like the elder Mr. Bush’s daughter, Doro Bush Koch, and aides who have worked for both men, like Andrew H. Card Jr. — suggest a far more complicated father-son dynamic, in which the former president is not nearly so distant as the White House would have people believe.
Go back and read Long Day's Journey Into Night and see how, in the case of the Bushes -- or any family, for that matter -- life imitates art.
