Bush Celebrates in Maine--but Texas Is Home

He has talked disparagingly about “sucking salt air” along the coast of Maine. On Saturday, he reiterated his determination to spend August at his ranch in Texas.

But President Bush is by birth and upbringing as much New Englander as Texan, and his annual visits to his parents’ seaside home bring out the dual--and sometimes conflicting--elements of his psyche.

“Welcome,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as Air Force One carried Bush to Maine on Friday, “to the North-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line White House.”

Of all the factors that contribute to public perceptions of a president’s fundamentals, perhaps none is more important than the place he calls home. It goes to the heart of his values, familial ties, his very foundation as an American.

And even before his parents planted new roots just after World War II in oil-booming Texas, their lineage was well-established in New England--in Maine, where the Bushes had spent each summer since the turn of the century; in Massachusetts, where the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, was born, and in Connecticut, where the 43rd president, George Walker Bush, was born 56 years ago Saturday while his father was studying at Yale University.

The appeal is undeniable: On any given summer day, it is likely to be cooler in Maine than just about anywhere else in the lower 48 states, and certainly more so than in Crawford, Texas, where the president bought a ranch in the last year of his Texas governorship.

On Friday, overnight temperatures dipped low enough to make a blanket a bedtime comfort. It is what the president’s father would happily call “good sleeping weather” when he escaped from Washington for regular visits here during his presidency.

On Saturday morning, as the sun transformed itself from a glowing burnt umber to bright gold just above the horizon, the president was in a long-sleeved sweater as he teed off at the century-old Cape Arundel Golf Club.

In Crawford, the high temperature was predicted to hit the low 90s, cool by standards there.

“It’s a little warmer there,” conceded the former President Bush as the father-son combo began their two-hour-and-18-minute round of speed golf. The family sport leaves little time for chatter--or miscues--as they travel the 5,881-yard, 18-hole course.

To see the president with his 78-year-old father is to see a man at ease in these surroundings, which he had not visited since his last birthday.

The two environs--Kennebunkport and Crawford--couldn’t be more different.

In Crawford, the two-block downtown features a secondhand store, a barber shop, and a gas station-restaurant.

In Kennebunkport, the shopping district includes A Source of Joy, featuring plush rabbits, as long as they are white and wearing costumes of pink or lavender frills; Games People Play, which sells “fine games and puzzles;” Shades of Summer, a sunglasses emporium, and a store offering “personalized” children’s books (“grandchildren spoiled here,” reads the window sign).

Neither town commands much of the president’s attention during his visits: two to Kennebunkport since taking office, and 13 to the ranch.

And on this trip, he did not appear overly distracted by work either. His weekly radio speech Saturday, its words lifted almost directly from the Fourth of July speech he delivered in West Virginia, was taped ahead of time.

Aides said he was working on the speech he is scheduled to deliver to Wall Street on Tuesday demanding tougher corporate accountability. But on Friday, soon after setting down, he was out on his father’s boat, casting a fishing-pole line into the steel-gray waters off Walkers Point, the promontory where the family compound sits.

On Saturday, he set out a post-golf agenda that included a “mechanical run,” meaning a treadmill workout, lunch with his family, and, for his birthday, “maybe a surprise party.” He was seen tossing a ball to the family dogs.

“Other than that, just hanging out with my family, which is a wonderful gift unto itself,” he said.

He was certainly relaxed.

Last year, the president showed up for his birthday round of golf in a baseball hat bearing the number 43. His father pulled out a hat marked 41. Each designated their place in the order of presidents.

On Saturday, President 43 wore a cap marked “El Jefe.”

“That’s French,” he joked.

Bush and his father call each other, in a studied formality that actually speaks of their informality, by their titles: “Yes, Mr. President!” says the younger approvingly as the elder hits his drive. “Mr. President,” says the father, summoning his son to meet an old friend encountered at the golf course.

But notwithstanding the moist salt breeze, the vistas from the great house on the rocks overlooking the Gulf of Maine, and the family history here, Bush calls his 1,600-acre ranch in Central Texas home. It offers political ties more muscular than the Texas accent that sets him apart from his father.

Historically, roots that run as deep as the Bush family has planted in New England have spoken politically of wealth, privilege, and detachment from the masses, says Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist. Texas roots do not.

Since Sept. 11 and his re-creation as a wartime president, all that may have less importance as Bush establishes a track record outside the country’s borders.

Still, it is important in Bush’s political orbit, said Buchanan, “to be perceived as a Texan rather than as a New Englander with roots in Kennebunkport and New Haven. Texas offers ‘everyman’ roots better than Yale does.”

There is also the braggadocio of Texas. It rankles diplomats in Europe, who would prefer a more diffident U.S. administration, Buchanan said. But “Americans sometimes welcome it--it stands for assertive leadership.”