It hurts father Bush to see W in the dock

There are times in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd, that people, perfect strangers

There are times in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd, that people, perfect strangers, come up to him and say the harshest things — words intended to comfort but words that wind up only causing pain. “I love you, sir, but your son’s way off base here,” they might say, according to Ron Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Mr. Bush, who has witnessed any number of such encounter — perhaps at a political fund-raiser, or a restaurant dinner, a chance meeting on the streets of Houston. They are, he says, just one way the presidency of the son has taken a toll on the father.

“It wears on his heart,” Kaufman said, “and his soul.” These are distressing days for the Bush family patriarch, only the second former president in American history, after John Adams, to see his son take the White House. At 83, he finds it tough to watch his son get criticized from the sidelines; often, he likens himself to a Little League father whose kid is having a rough game. And like the proud and angry Little League dad who cannot help but yell at the umpire, sometimes he just cannot help getting involved.

The official line from the White House is that 41, as he is known in Bush circles, gives advice to 43 only when asked. But interviews with a broad range of people close to both presidents — including family members like the elder Bush’s daughter, Doro Bush Koch, and aides who have worked for both men, like Andrew H Card Jr — suggest a far more complicated father-son dynamic, in which the former president is not nearly so distant as the White House would have people believe.

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They talk almost every morning by phone, and Bush studiously avoids saying anything critical of his son, close associates say. But he has privately expressed irritation with some of his son’s aides. At times, he has urged White House officials to seek outside advice, and he has passed on his own foreign policy wisdom to the president, even as he makes a point of saying his son’s administration is not his.

He views himself, in Koch’s words, as “a loving father, first and foremost,” but as he himself suggested to a group of insurance agents at a recent dinner in Minneapolis, loving fathers find it tough to stay away. “Any parent in this audience knows exactly how I feel,” Bush said in response to a question about what it was like to have a son as president. “It’s the pride of a father in his son.”

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