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 downtown, and dreamed of growing up to be baseball star Willie Mays. This is not George W. Bush, privileged member of a political dynasty, but George W. Bush, ordinary likeable guy. That's remarkable because the candidate has one of the most undistinguished bios of a presidential aspirant in living memory. It is a place that breeds myths of egalitarianism and self-invention that America hangs on to regardless of the privileged baby boomers that this year are vying to be President of the United States.
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 America with more Rolls Royces per capita than any other city. When he is asked what distinguishes 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 his grandfather, Prescott, a senator who insisted his sons dress formally for dinner. The Bush family, George, Barbara, their four sons and one daughter, is close and Big George is its centre. The eldest son looks remarkably like the father, and his whole life has been spent resisting, then following, his father's path, even if his achievements have not, so far, matched those of his overachieving parent.