A little later we’ll have more on the Ben Barnes story.
But for now, we seem to have a bit more detail on what the president was doing in Alabama in 1972. The president’s story is that he got an opportunity to serve on a political campaign in Alabama and then put in for a transfer to serve his Air National Guard duty in that state. But the timing of what he did when has never added up. Nor are there any records to document the president’s service. And there’s never been anyone who seems to remember what Bush was doing — or rather anyone who remembers and has been willing to go on the record.
And now Salon has some details that clears up part of the picture.
Jimmy Allison, was a campaign consultant and newspaper owner from Midland, and he was very close to the Bush family. In 1972 he was managing the Senate campaign of Winton Blount in Alabama.
According to his widow, that spring the president’s father, George H. W. Bush, called up Allison and asked if he could find his son a job on the campaign to get him out of Texas and out of trouble. “The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy’s wing … I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him.”
Asked if she’d ever seen the younger Bush in uniform during his time in Texas, Allison’s wife Linda said, “Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way.”
