If you've paid more than casual attention to the Bush family, you've probably heard it mentioned that Jeb Bush is the smarter Bush brother, the one everyone expected to run for president before his brother, George W. That impression probably came from the Bush family and their friends, says Anna North at The New York Times, "but it may not be correct." It dates back to their childhood, Bill Minutaglio, who wrote a biography of George W. Bush, tells North:
Jeb's older brother was given to the kind of backslapping, grinning, and preening that led some family members and friends to believe he was not entirely a sober, serious individual with the requisite gravitas to be presidential timber. He was great at social lubrication but a dud in the classroom, and hardly remembered by anyone at Yale for his academic achievements.... It wasn't that Jeb was oozing an arching intellect or compelling profundity as he grew up. It was just that, in juxtaposition with his more careening brother George Walker Bush — the one who drank, who ran into problems with the police, whose fraternity was accused of hazing and branding pledges — Jeb appeared more stable. [Minutaglio, to The New York Times]
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