From Boys To Men
In a year that rocked America, two scions of famous families came of age
Nixon's aides tried to find ways to discredit Kerry but never succeeded. Kerry and other leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were shadowed by FBI agents. Some of his friends say they believed "agents provocateurs" were planted in antiwar rallies to infiltrate the movement and make it appear that the leaders were all interested in revolution (which some were).
To this day, some Kerry opponents say he was associating with people who aimed to destroy the system with violence, but Kerry says he never believed in such tactics. David Thorne, a lifelong friend, supports him on this. "We were always trying to sort out what was responsible," Thorne told U.S. News . "He was a serious student of political science at Yale, not a bomb thrower." Still, not even his fame could propel him into elective office. Derided as a carpetbagger and an opportunist, Kerry would lose a bid for a Massachusetts congressional seat a year later. But he was on his way to bigger things. Says Thorne: "John always had an aura of destiny about him."
The drifter. That's not something friends of George Bush were saying about him. In 1971, Bush's mission seemed much more simple: to have a good time. His father had lost a Senate run in Texas the previous autumn, and his parents had just moved to New York--where George H. W. Bush had been appointed United Nations ambassador--leaving young George W. Bush behind in Houston. "His jumping around at this time was no doubt a reflection of his general attitude toward life," write Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer, authors of The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty . "George W. would spend those five years after Yale [he graduated in 1968] drifting. He had seven apartments in three different states, held three different jobs, and had many girlfriends." For his part, Bush once said, "there are some people who, the minute they get out of college, know exactly what they want to do. I did not. And it didn't bother me."
Being at loose ends, at the time, seemed to suit Bush just fine. His application to the University of Texas School of Law had been rejected, and he wasn't particularly thrilled with his new job, as a trainee at an agriculture conglomerate called Stratford of Texas. The company's founder, Robert Gow, had been an executive at the elder Bush's oil company. "Bush was wrestling in his mind with how he could get ahead in life," says Gow. "He had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do. He was confused."
He wasn't lazy, though. He showed up for work each morning at 8 o'clock sharp in a Brooks Brothers suit and cheerfully completed his assignments on time. Not that the work was taxing. Bush had to fly around the country and go down to Central America to inspect plant nurseries Stratford was looking to buy. The young man occasionally would knock on Gow's office door wanting to talk about his future, unsure whether it was business, politics, or what Gow calls the "do-gooder-type stuff," like working with disadvantaged youth. Gow, who had been president of the elder Bush's Zapata oil company, noticed that the younger Bush shared some of his father's qualities, like a knack for remembering names. But there were differences, too. The younger Bush, Gow recalls, "wasn't one of those people who you said, `Boy, whatever he does, he's going to be a big success.' "
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