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It wouldn't be quite right to call the Bush clan a patriarchy, although Dad and grandfather Prescott Bush dominate the family mythology. Both were tall, athletic, elegant men who made their fortunes early in life and slipped neatly into politics like a bespoke suit, then into one of the corner offices on government's higher floors. Both had done more by the time they were 40 and became politicians than most people do in an entire lifetime.
Even if Dad hadn't been on the road so much, first as an oilman and then as a loyal party man, George would have taken after his mother. The pivotal players in Bushland have always been the moms, the ones who hectored and carpooled and den-mothered the boys who would be President. Dorothy Walker Bush taught George W.'s dad never to use the first person singular, to avoid "braggadocio" and always, always to "do your best." These mantras were drilled deep into Dad's bedrock, and he extracted them over and over throughout his life, from the tennis court to NATO headquarters. Barbara Pierce Bush, a publisher's daughter raised in Rye, N.Y., was zanier, frostier and edgier than her mother-in-law, and her first son was a virtual carbon copy. "I have my Daddy's eyes," "W" says, "but my mother's mouth."
Which is why "W" was always regarded by the other kids as the fun one, a hot ticket. "Half the time he acts younger than all of us combined," said Marvin, his youngest brother. It was "W" who was detained in college for pranks and disorderly conduct and "W" who delighted in his bad-boy role in Houston and Kennebunkport, Maine, walking with a strut, chewing tobacco, gnawing on unlighted cigars, saying things like "crock of s___." Everyone knew it was kind of an act, but they liked him for it anyway; it was part of his outrageous charm.
For "W," being wired so much like his mother made it all the harder to be like his dad. "He is always anxious to please his father," one of the President's oldest and closest counselors said a few years ago, "and he did it by emulation. He went to Yale. He was a pilot. He went into the oil business in Midland, Texas. He ran for Congress. In his way, he tried to relive segments of his father's life. The others have been more independent." Even the Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, has done it his own way, marrying a Mexican woman early in his life and moving to Florida in part just to get away from the rest of the family.
Jeb seemed to realize that rather than match the old man, he had to push off from him. "If I felt like I had to follow his footsteps and follow a path he had set for me, I would fail," Jeb told author Bill Minutaglio. "I came to grips with that a while back. A lot of people who have fathers like this, or moms, who have lived such extraordinary lives, feel a sense that they have failed because they haven't reached the same level of just being a human being as their predecessor--and it creates all sorts of pathologies." "W" never veered from the Pattern, but like McCain, he struggled with it. Maybe the expectations were too high for the first son, or seemed that way, because he took a lot of time settling down--nearly his first 40 years.