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Sununu, like Bush, grew up in the shadow of a highly successful father in a comfortable home in a leafy bedroom community, attended private boarding school and displayed nary a flicker of rebellion. The crucial difference is that Bush was heir to both material and social comfort, while Sununu was always an outsider.
He was born in 1939 in Havana, where his father briefly distributed foreign films and other imported products. His father, whose parents were Lebanese, grew up in Boston. His mother hailed from El Salvador, though her parents were Lebanese and Greek. When Sununu was an infant, his family migrated to the tony neighborhood of Forest Hills, N.Y. Their home was filled with letters from relatives in half a dozen countries as well as books and conversations in several languages. Thanks to his mother, childhood trips to Europe and college studies, Sununu is fluent in Spanish, speaks decent French and reads German. But all his life he has been teased about his name. Even Bush once joked that he picked Sununu because his surname rhymed with "deep doo-doo." In Arabic, sununu means sparrow, and appears often in poetry and songs.
Almost as soon as he entered Catholic parochial school, little Johnny was spotted as something special. He was athletic, outgoing and excelled at his studies. He won a full scholarship to La Salle Military Academy, a boarding school on eastern Long Island. There Sununu rose to lieutenant colonel and commanded the other cadets. On graduation day, he won so many awards that the headmaster, rather than call him from his seat again and again, simply handed him a silver bowl and had him stand onstage to collect his loot. Though Sununu insists that he displayed no interest in politics until 1969, his fellow seniors in 1957 voted him Class Politician, as well as Outstanding Senior Student, Outstanding Orator, Most Energetic and Most Likely to Succeed.
Sununu went to M.I.T., where he earned a doctorate and founded an engineering firm. He met a young woman named Nancy Hayes, a tall, fair-haired, Irish American from Boston College. She found him smart and funny and "very sure for his age of where he was going." They married at age 20.
After graduation, Sununu taught engineering at Tufts University. At 27, he was a professor running his own consulting firm on the side. In 1969 he moved his family just across the state line, to Salem, N.H., in search of lower taxes and "a better life-style for my family." There he began his political career, winning a spot on the local planning board, then a seat as a state representative. He ran unsuccessfully for a number of higher offices, including state and U.S. Senator, before finally winning the governorship in 1982. That victory came at the trough of the Reagan recession. Sununu prevailed by promising to balance the state budget without broad-based new taxes. New Hampshire is one of the few states with no state personal-income or sales tax.