Bush Senior: Breaking Out Into Assholes

Just to join in on all the Watergate excitement, I thought I'd share my favorite quote of the Watergate book I'm reading, The Final Days by Woodward and Bernstein; which is all about the final days of Nixon's presidency.

It was towards the end and a "smoking gun" transcript of Nixon discussing how he wanted to use the CIA to cover-up the Watergate break-in was about to be released. So they had to tell all of the important Republicans first, including George Bush Sr. who was the Chairman of the RNC at the time.

Briefly Timmons worried about whether Haig had contacted all the key people. "Dean, does Bush know about the transcript yet?"
"Yes."
"Well, what did he do?"
"He broke out into assholes and shit himself to death," Burch replied.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what the line means; but it sure is funny.


Oh, and there's this paragraph too. It's about when the House Minority Leader John Rhodes was finally told about the transcript. He was one of Nixon's key supporters, and had announced a big press conference to defend Nixon, but had been warned against it and had to pretend to be ill so he could delay it. Finally, Nixon lawyer Fred Buzhardt, political advisor Dean Burch, and Mr. Assholes George Bush Sr went to Rhodes' house to tell him about the transcript. They didn't necessarily want Bush to go with them but, "Bush had asked to go along. It would have been impolite to refuse". As the book says:

The three men left, satisfied. The consensus was taking hold. Rhodes later let it be known that he was offended that Bush had been briefed before he was.

None of this is particularly relevant to Watergate. I just liked reprinting a few digs at our Prez's dad. He was a boob then, and his son's a boob now.