A classic: The Accidental Candidate

This is Sheehy's Vanity Fair article from 2000 (linked today in a post at Hullabaloo), and MAN! Reading it in retrospect is a trip. There is more than enough warning in this piece about exactly the kind of president Bush was going to make. One issue, one personality defect, one intellectual deficiency after another, it's all there. The guy was bound to be a train wreck.

snip>
A day later, flying from Cleveland to Austin, I ask Bush if he has any reaction to the new "civil union" law upheld by the Vermont Supreme Court allowing gays the rights and responsibilities of married couples.

"I missed that," he says. "Is that like gay marriage?" He wrinkles his nose.

Told it is a new alternative, he says, "I haven't heard anything about it. I'd only be interested if it were an issue in Texas."
....
This being a trip where Bush is intent upon bashing his rival, Al Gore, for the high price of gas, the governor mentioned in a speech the need to develop new oil and gas sources in the "overthrust belt." I ask him what it is.
"That's part of the West where the tectonic plates slide over each other." He pokes fun at us: "I'll have to take it a little slower—far be it from me to speak over the heads of the press and insult your intelligence."
"Just don't overthrust us too often," I tease back......"Is it environmental issues that have held back exploration there?"

Bush nods, as if only mildly interested. "Probably."
....
Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.... It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

http://www.gailsheehy.com/Politics/politicsindex_bush3.html