truly wanted to detach himself from his father and from the traditions of a long line of ancestors, he chose a curious path-in effect, retracing his father's footsteps. Kent Hance, who trounced Bush in his 1978 congressional race, insinuated that Bush was not a true Texan and accused him of 'riding his daddy's coattails.'

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of baseball, who is a Bush family friend and himself the son of a Bonesman, says, 'Young George is as unlikely a Bonesperson as I've ever met.' Young George has not attended a Yale reunion since he graduated.īush's dismissal of Yale and all it stands for may be a response to the repeated charges of political opponents that he is not much more than a papa's boy. George W., in contrast, has publicly made a point of his disdain for the elite northeastern connections that shaped his father's world and, to some extent, his own. The elder George holds his fellow Yalies-particularly his Bones brethren-in great esteem, and over the years has often gone to them for advice. The junior George's diffidence in the matter of his secret name seems to reflect a larger ambivalence toward Yale and its select, the most elite of whom are the members of Skull and Bones. (In recent interviews I asked a number of Bush's Bonesmen classmates about the name and elicited no denials.) According to one report, nothing came to mind, so he was given the name Temporary, which, it is said, he never bothered to replace Temporary is how Bush's fellow Bonesmen know him today. was not assigned a name but invited to choose one. William Howard Taft and Robert Taft were Magogs. The name Magog is traditionally assigned to the incoming Bonesman deemed to have had the most sexual experience, and Gog goes to the new member with the least sexual experience. Averell Harriman was Thor, Henry Luce was Baal, McGeorge Bundy was Odin. The banker Lewis Lapham passed on his name, Sancho Panza, to the political adviser Tex McCrary. Many of the chosen names are drawn from literature (Hamlet, Uncle Remus), from religion, and from myth. The name Long Devil is assigned to the tallest member Boaz (short for Beelzebub) goes to any member who is a varsity football captain. The leftover initiates choose their own names. Some Bonesmen receive traditional names, denoting function or existential status others are the chosen beneficiaries of names that their Bones predecessors wish to pass on. New members of Skull and Bones are assigned secret names, by which fellow Bonesmen will forever know them. was 'tapped' for Skull and Bones, at the end of his junior year, he, too, naturally became a Bonesman-but, it seems, a somewhat ambivalent one.

to uncle Jonathan Bush to cousins George Herbert Walker IIIand Ray Walker. There were other Bush Bonesmen, a proud line of them stretching from great uncle George Herbert Walker Jr. Inside the temple on High Street hang paintings of some of Skull and Bones's more illustrious members the painting of George Bush, the most recently installed, is five feet high. George Herbert Walker Bush, George W.'s father, Yale '48, was also a Bonesman, and he, too, made a conspicuous success of himself. Prescott Bush, one of a great many Bonesmen who went on to lives of power and renown, became a U.S. Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, Yale '17, was a legendary Bonesman he was a member of the band that stole for the society what became one of its most treasured artifacts: a skull that was said to be that of the Apache chief Geronimo. Bush, Yale '68.īush men have been Yale men and Bonesmen for generations. This is the home of Yale's most famous secret society, Skull and Bones, and it is also, in a sense, one of the many homes of the family of George W. On High Street, in the middle of the Yale University campus, stands a cold-looking, nearly windowless Greco-Egyptian building with padlocked iron doors.

Skull and bones