Middling grades at Yale and Harvard, where he got undergraduate and graduate degrees. In an interview with Gannett News Service in the governor's mansion in Austin, Mr. Bush said the only thing that counts is the man he is now. I am a comfortable guy, I am comfortable with who I am. I know exactly what I believe. Mr. Bush says he shocked his wife, Laura, in 1994 when he told her he wanted to run for governor, leaving a comfortable, more private life as part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
Baseball remains a passion.
Politics has not always been, although Mr. Bush did run unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978. His political career after that mostly was as a liaison between his father and senior aides in the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns. In surveys and focus groups, Americans tell pollsters Al Gore is a mystery man and Mr. Bush, by narrow margins, looks more like a leader. The doubts about Mr. Bush have been pushed along by wisecracks of late-night TV comedians and by Democrats' claims he has risky ideas or doesn't know much history or geography. The latest cut is that Mr. Bush is so unprepared for prime time that he has had to prop himself up with aging heavyweights from past GOP administrations.