Books, Arts & Manners - This Bush Has Thorns.

Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose (Random House, 179 pp., $19.95)

JUST as my enthusiasm for George W. Bush was beginning to wane, along came Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose to breathe new life into my love affair. Not, of course, that this was their intention.

A Nation contributing editor and darling of the northeastern media elite, Ivins is like former Texas governor Ann Richards without the big hair: mean and wrong but often entertaining. Her less well-known coauthor, Lou Dubose, edits the Texas Observer, the famous liberal weekly now past its prime. A New York Times review calls Shrub "a useful, opinionated brief for the prosecution." But the book is so predictable that it doesn't really lay a glove on Bush. Indeed, ambivalent conservatives will find it a convincing brief for Bush.

Shrub portrays Bush as a man with a Midas touch when it came to raising money for his failed oil ventures. Ivins and Dubose quote a supposedly damning assessment from a Midland oil executive: "He could go to New York and talk people into giving him money. That made him a success." Most Democratic politicians go to Wash ington and talk people into giving them money, and that's what makes them successes. The Washington money comes out of all our pockets. Bush's came from rich investors, many no doubt eager to cozy up to the president's family. But Bush's dry wells didn't cost me a dime.

"The single most common misconception about George W.," write Ivins and Dubose, "is that he has been running a large state for the past six years. Texas has what's known in political science circles as 'the weak governor system.'" This makes the job sound almost as useless as, say, the vice-presidency. But the book actually shows a highly effective leader who, whatever his powers, used them well. Behind the facade of a compassionate conservative is a man mean enough to be president.

I was bursting with pride as I read about Bush's stony refusal to so much as meet with Bianca Jagger when the glam crusader went to Texas to demand clemency for pickax murderess Karla Faye Tucker. (Bush has presided over 120 executions since becoming governor. Tucker became the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War.) Bush was also commendably hardhearted when Renee Mullins, daughter of the vilely murdered James Byrd Jr., came to lobby him in favor of a hate-crimes bill. When Mullins confronted Bush in his office and asked if he was going to support the bill, he replied in a monosyllable: "No." It was a lachrymose, no-hugs scene. Ivins and Dubose quote a shocked witness: "She [Mullins] was crying, and he didn't try to console her or even offer her a Kleenex. He was cold, icy."

Ivins and Dubose admit that the hate-crimes bill was "a bad bill filled with dangerous provisions, including an expansion of the death penalty." Yet they believe it should have been passed anyway, "if only to reassure minority communities that the government cares what happens to them." Talk about pandering!

Ivins and Dubose are also appalled that Bush tried to end paroles for such heinous crimes as rape, child molestation, and murder. He failed, but during the months leading up to his second gubernatorial election he did put a temporary stop to paroles for these crimes. Ivins and Dubose believe, possibly correctly, that this was a cynical attempt to prevent some parolee from committing an embarrassing crime as Willie Horton did on Gov. Michael Dukakis's watch.

As Dubose and Ivins see it, this hiatus in paroles had a tragic outcome. The authors tell the story of a trusty named Robert Hudspeth (whose crime-murder-they never reveal). Hud speth, denied his "well- earned parole" by Gov. Bush, became so distraught that he "walked away from his trusty's job, stole a car, drove to Marble Falls, and hanged himself."

The authors give Bush deservedly high marks for working hard-and successfully-to improve public education in Texas. Unlike Ann Rich ards, they note, Bush was willing to spend political capital in a bruising fight to reform the state's education code. "During legislative battles, he responded to every call and personally visited with state lawmakers in an effort to shape better education policy for the state." Laura Bush also receives plaudits for her involvement in the field of literacy: "Her sincerity and concern often make a deeper impression than more polished oratory."

Unfortunately, Bush the younger is the most inarticulate politician since Bush the elder. When asked about his plans to improve education, a theme of his campaign, he urged a high-school student in South Carolina to "write your governor." This is a nod to the Republican credo that education is a local issue. But if Bush is to be effective against Al Gore, the message must be stated more compellingly.

W. is not, as the authors take pains to point out, a great reader. In addition to Christ, he admires the Manhattan Institute's Myron Magnet and born-again author and activist Marvin Olasky. Magnet believes that the poor have picked up bad habits from the rich and blames poverty on federal anti poverty programs. Olasky, according to Ivins and Dubose, "sold Newt Gingrich on the idea that orphanages would be a swell place to rear children." To counteract such nefarious influences, Ivins and Dubose propose a reading list for Bush: Oscar Lewis, Kenneth Clark, Robert Coles, Michael Harrington, Jonathan Kozol, William Julius Wilson, Frances Fox Piven, and Nicholas Lemann-in other words, the standard pantheon of liberals.

Though Ivins can be an entertaining writer, there are many patches in Shrub that are drier than Texas dust. In a section on the B.C.C.I. scandal, the authors breathlessly reveal that Bush and his Harken oil company pals had "numerous links" to "individuals close to B.C.C.I." They likewise report that Bush parlayed a $600,000 investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team into $15 million over a number of years. This development is well documented and perfectly legal, but they compare it unfavorably with Hillary Clinton's murky and improbable stock-market triumph, which turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000 quicker than you can say "illegal political favor." According to the authors, Bush's return on his original Rangers investment "makes commodities futures look like peanuts."

This kind of double standard isn't unique to Ivins and Dubose. The national press will endeavor to paint Bush's completely legal fundraising as morally reprehensible in the coming months. Bush's ability to raise money, along with the Bob Jones University visit, will be the lines of attack by a muscle-flexing media establishment that feigns objectivity less and less.

For Ivins and Dubose, Bush is simply a likeable guy who traded on his father's name to get ahead. "In fact," they write, "one could argue that he's never really done anything else." Yet despite incessant jibes about "the poor boy who started with just a tiny trust fund," Bush doesn't come across this way. He was not as successful as his father in the oil business (always referred to as "bidness" in this book), but he seems infinitely more at home in the rough and tumble of politics.

Interestingly, Ivins and Dubose don't deal with the matter of the gender gap; for the first time in many years, the Republican candidate is as appealing to women as the Democrat. I like to think that's because women see through the demagoguery of the Democratic nanny state rather than because they respond to that sexy twinkle in W.'s eye; but perhaps I underestimate the erotic appeal of a pair of cowboy boots.

Oddly too, the authors let Bush off the hook on what this reviewer does regard as an unattractive exercise in employing Daddy's influence: his failure to serve in Vietnam. Bush served instead in the Texas Air National Guard, a unit that at one time or another included sons of Lloyd Bentsen and John Connally. "It is not George W. Bush's fault that he was born into the class the system was designed to protect," they observe. What they really object to is that this "son of privilege" never became a guilt-ridden liberal.

Does all this mean that Bush is a phony when he calls himself a compassionate conservative? Ivins and Dubose call this claim "half true." If you think it is "punitive" to try to "move people off welfare into jobs that pay a minimum wage" or to keep the likes of Robert Hudspeth behind bars, then you agree with them. But if you think that real compassion means keeping people like Hudspeth locked up for as long as the law allows or forcing people to forsake the culture of poverty, then you don't.

Shrub reveals Bush as the genuine anti-Clinton. His meanness is a sign that he can lead-he's willing to be disliked and, unlike Clinton, won't take a poll every time he has to go to the bathroom. Bush will be able to make the tough calls a president must make. After eight years of Bill Clinton's creepy sentimentality, a little toughness would be a refreshing change.