Prominent London Newspaper Editor Supports Kitty Kelley Book On Bush

[Sarah Sands is the editor for the Daily Telegraph Weekend Edition.]

There has been some managing of expectations by the Bush Administration of Kitty Kelley's new biography, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. It has so far been described both as"garbage" and"tittle-tattle".

"But they haven't read it yet!" wailed Miss Kelley on the Today programme. In which case, there may be some even rougher language in store from the Bush lexicon. (And there is plenty. According to Kelley, a journalist once asked George W what he had just been talking about with his father."Pussy," he replied.)

The argument used against Kitty Kelley is that she is a chick- historian, dealing in private lives rather than public policy. Everybody would be much more comfortable with a book such as James Naughtie's Blair, The Accidental American, which analyses politicians' speeches or presidential reflections in the back of campaign aeroplanes.

Yet Kelley goes further than many serious historians I have read in tackling the enigma of President Bush. The fact that she does so without managing to talk to any of the main protagonists or being allowed access to official papers is to her credit (although she is slightly extravagant with secondary sources).

It means that she casts her net wider and tends to scoop up the divorced and the dispossessed. Sharon Bush, George W's estranged sister-in-law, gives a poignant account of the strength of the family dynasty and how cold it is outside.

But the most plausible description of the President comes from his former Yale pals. Many are vexed that George W should have become president when his contemporaries regarded him as a benign dunce. One, Tom Wilner, railed against the injustice:"George had absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel. He didn't read the newspapers. He didn't watch the news; he didn't even go to the movies... how anyone ever got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me."

Naturally, one has warmed to Bush by now. More so, after a hilarious account of his Yale contemporaries wrestling with their consciences over whether or not they should join him for a 35th-year reunion picnic. One of those who did show up had changed his name from Peter to Petra. George W said to her:"Now you've come back as yourself."

Bush's knack of simplifying complicated matters becomes winning. He really does make everyone around him look too clever by half. One is suddenly glad that the former layabout won through, rather than all his pleased-with-themselves contemporaries. George W Bush must be the only person in America who did not grow up expecting to be President of the United States.

Everybody loves a Prodigal Son, especially one who is so kind to his mother. According to Kelley, Barbara Bush depended on her sunny-natured son. It was George who drove her to hospital when she had a miscarriage, and who kept her company when his father was allegedly distracted by his passion for Jennifer Fitzgerald (a relationship lasting several years and of absolutely no interest to serious historians).

Kelley's many detractors accuse her of casting Democrat slurs on George W, but I would say he emerges from the book with his reputation slightly strengthened. The only sign of Kitty's Democrat tendencies is in her chivvying of the Bush wives for being too accommodating.