Where the Bushes live

There are a couple of media mentions today of where the George Bush's, Jr. and Sr., live. Kos thinks that Jr. will be leaving Crawford as soon as he doesn't need it as a campaign prop. That sounds eminently plausible to me. How much of a ranch hand is Bush, really?

Meanwhile, back at the original Bush family stomping grounds, New England, John McCain stopped by Kennebunkport and visited the President Bush that even some Democrats miss, George H. W.

The first President Bush and the former first lady, Barbara Bush, opened their large shingled home on a dramatic promontory in the Atlantic Ocean for a brunch and tour for contributors to Mr. McCain.

George & Laura have 1,600 acres, but the ranch is in the sweltering summer Texas heat. Meanwhile, Dad, having abandoned any pretense of being a resident of Texas, enjoys a view of the ocean in Maine. Personally, I, too, would take the northern climate right about now. But of course I don't have the option of picking up and moving wherever I want to.

George H. W. Bush had a semi-legitimate reason for claiming to be from Texas: he moved there, built a business there, represented part of it in Congress. But was he ever really a Texan? Culturally? I'm not in a position to judge, not being from the Lone Star state, but somehow I just don't see him in a ten-gallon hat or even on a horse. But it was a convenient antidote to being a preppy elitist. Ironically, he lost his two Senate races in part because he was a carpetbagger preppy northeastern elitist.

One detail of W.'s life that I have always found amusing is that he went to Harvard for business school partially because he was rejected by the University of Texas Law School (PBS has an excellent chronology of his life here). W. has a more legitimate claim to being a Texan than his father - the family moved there when he was 1. But they sent him back East for high school (Andover), and he went to college there (Yale) and grad school (Harvard).

So now the father is back in Maine, now that he no longer needs to pretend not to be a prepster, and the son will probably be at least leaving the homestead in Crawford (although Laura is a Midland native, so they might stay in Texas itself).

Sort of like the Clintons left Arkansas for good a long time ago. And the wonder of it all is that, if W. does sell the spread in Crawford, some people might actually be surprised.