In a nation that, deep down, wants life to be like an episode of Little House on the Prairie , the Republican Party is gently pushing Americans to look to Midland, Texas, to find the soul of George W. Bush. They want Americans to think of little George growing up in a family town of 25,000 people, tearing around the dusty streets on his bicycle. The George who went to public schools like everyone else, had his bottom paddled by the headmaster for drawing a beard and sideburns on his face, watched Roy Rogers films and dreamed of growing up to be baseball star Willie Mays. This is George W. Bush, ordinary likable guy, not George W. Bush, privileged member of a political dynasty. The Republicans have shot footage in Midland of a startling flatness, a dull landscape of tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes, a place where men came to make their fortunes or go bust, a place so upright its gun-toting sheriff once, in the 1970s, ordered a legal porn shop to shut its doors.
Midland is an ugly, dusty town, but it was never meant for tourists.
Its concrete office blocks rise on the hot Permian Basin, so choked with oil that it was once the richest town in the US, with more Rolls-Royces per capita than any other city. When he is asked what disting- uishes him from his father, former President George Bush, he says it is this town. No doubt the town did influence the young George W., but there is cynicism in the packaging of the candidate as a regular guy whose father just happened to be the President of the United States, and whose grandfather, Prescott, a senator, insisted his sons dress up in coat and tie for dinner. Well, you know, it's not George Smith. It is George Bush.