With support from the University of Richmond
History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Roundup: Media's Take

Was Bush a Deserter?

Spencer Ackerman, writing in the New Republic (subscribers only) (Feb. 9, 2004):

It's true that Bush isn't a deserter in the narrow sense: He never abandoned his post under attack. But he came as close as one could to deserting the Texas Air National Guard. As The Boston Globe meticulously documented in 2000, Bush's Guard records indicate that he failed to perform a year of service from 1972 to 1973. Despite the Globe's investigative work and a string of non-denial denials from the Bush campaign during the 2000 election, the press largely gave Bush a pass on his military service--a crucial test of character for Bill Clinton eight years earlier. If either Clark or John Kerry--both highly decorated Vietnam vets--won the Democratic nomination, he might be tempted to raise Bush's military service as a character issue in the general election. What Jennings taught Clark last week is that the media probably won't tolerate it.

When Bush graduated from Yale in 1968--just months after the Tet Offensive--he found a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard waiting for him. A Bush clan ally, Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, had phoned state Guard officials to inquire about a place for George W. Despite a dismal score on his pilot aptitude test, Bush received a six-year stint in the Texas Air National Guard, which would require him to undergo flight training and report for periodic drills through 1974, according to the Globe. Of course, Bush was hardly unique in seeking alternatives to serving in Vietnam; many members of his social class--with notable exceptions, such as Kerry and Al Gore--did the same. Where Bush did distinguish himself was in failing to perform even the minimal service that he had signed up for.

Less than two years after finishing his initial pilot's training, Bush was offered a job in Alabama with the 1972 Senate campaign of former U.S. Postmaster General Winton Blount. Bush asked Guard officials in May of that year if he could fulfill his continuing duty obligations by serving with a mail squadron based in Montgomery, but they turned him down, noting the unit's lax drilling schedule. Bush left Texas anyway--with his Guard responsibilities unresolved--joining the campaign in Alabama that month. In August, he failed to take his annual flight physical, which meant losing his flight status. A month later, he requested and received permission to perform his fall Guard duty with the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Montgomery before returning to Houston's Ellington Air Force Base after the election. But he apparently never showed up: The Globe investigation found that Ellington had no record of Bush performing service in Alabama. In fact, the 187th's commander--Bush's commander--William Turnipseed told the paper, "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not. I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered." His memory was corroborated by Bush's discharge papers, which showed neither any service in Alabama nor any training by Lieutenant Bush at all after May 1972.

Bush was supposed to return to Houston after Blount's losing race. But, by May 1973, his commanding officers in Texas noticed that they could not write his annual performance evaluation for the simple reason that Bush wasn't there. "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report"--May 1, 1972, to April 30, 1973--his evaluation reads. This was a serious charge: Delinquent guardsmen could be inducted into the Army. Just after the report was issued, Bush received two "special orders" commanding him to return for nine days of active duty in May, and he subsequently logged 36 days of duty by July 1973. Explained the Texas Air Guard's then-personnel director, Albert Lloyd Jr., "I'll bet someone called him up and said, 'George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.'" Bush officially ended his Guard career on October 1, 1973, eight months shy of his six-year obligation.

The Bush campaign's reaction to the Globe story was swift. Bush told reporters the day the story broke that he "did the duty necessary" to merit his honorable discharge, which elided the real question of whether he had in fact consistently shown up for duty. He painted Turnipseed's comments as an instance of he-said, he-said: "I read the comments from the guy who said he doesn't remember me being [in Alabama], but I remember being there." (Never mind that Bush's discharge papers affirm Turnipseed's story.) To explain away Bush's missed 1972 physical, the campaign resorted to inanities, such as arguing that Bush's doctor was in Houston at the time--even though flight physicals have to be performed by Air Force physicians. And, as the Globe noted in October 2000, Bush refused interviews with the paper concerning his military service.