In late December of 1999, Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain appeared to be strong challengers to the leaders in the race for America’s Democratic and Republican political party nominations—Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush. In the summer of 1999, Gore and Bush were far ahead in the amounts of campaign money that they had raised and in the opinion polls. By January of 2000, both men were almost out of money and stumbling in those same polls. Bradley and McCain called themselves “reformers,” and the message was starting to take root in the public imagination.

It took only two months for the Bradley and McCain challenges to be broken. One can argue that Bradley and McCain’s failures to triumph had much to do with their unique personalities as candidates, but a sober and honest assessment reveals that the challengers never really had a chance. America’s political system rewards money and incumbency. It also a system that fights off critiques of its own corruption and cynicism very effectively—even brutally at times. It’s not that “reform” can never happen in American politics. It’s just an agonizingly slow process.

In Gore’s case, there is a clear track record. He’s been vice-president (and a national figure) for nearly seven years. He has been defined by the policies of the Clinton Administration. He’s also written two books for a general readership—1993’s ecological manifesto, Earth in the Balance and a hopelessly dry 1995 tome titled Common Sense Government: Works Better and Costs Less. You can disagree with Gore’s record on the environment and on government reform, but his rhetoric in these books is clear and comprehensible.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, has less to define him. He is, of course, the son of President George Bush. But he has a surprisingly short track record and an even shorter trail of words. He is charming but slippery. He confesses to having a strong conservative bent, but he also possesses a charm that softens the harshness of that conservatism.

As we move towards the November elections, however, we are beginning to get a better sense of who George W. Bush is. Two recent books have helped to illuminate Bush as a person and as a candidate. They are worth a considered discussion.

The first, A Charge To Keep, was written by Bush himself with the help of his communications director. The second, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, is a biting examination of Bush’s record as the governor of Texas, written by the witty Texas political columnist Molly Ivins and Texas Observer editor Lou DuBose.

A Charge to Keep is a political and personal autobiography, but no one will confuse it with any classic of that genre. Observant readers may argue, as they fight their way through the rough prose and turgid morality of the book, that Karen Hughes (the “communications director” who helped Bush write the book) intentionally sabotaged her boss’ effort. The book’s stylistic faults and pathetic argumentation are that bad. At some moments, the language breaks down into something that is not even proper English.

One such passage in the book concerns the book’s title, which is taken from a Protestant hymn written by Charles Wesley. A Charge to Keep is also the title of a painting by W.H.D. Koerner that depicts a lone horseman riding up a hill. (A “charge,” by the way, is an antiquated way to refer to a moral or divine command, and the painting is a banal allegorical rendering inspired by the line from Wesley’s hymn.)

The painting was loaned to Bush for his office by its owners. “It fit perfectly on the wall across from my desk,” writes Bush, “and it hangs there today. In April, I sent a memo about the painting to my ‘hardworking staff members.’ ‘I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission,” I said. ‘When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for your service to our State. God bless Texas!’”

Where does one begin? Bush didn’t “say” his memo, he “wrote” it. And “this is us” is so unclear as to be incomprehensible. What is “this” exactly? The painting? The horseman? The ride up the hill? Add Bush’s dubious and absurdly simple-minded comparison of his election as governor with a divine mission and the additional comparison of that mission—piled on top of the previous comparison— to a horseman resembling a cowboy figure like John Wayne and the passage becomes simply unbearable.

The reader learns so little about Bush from his own words in A Charge to Keep that a realization suddenly breaks upon the reader. Perhaps Karen Hughes was not sabotaging her boss. Perhaps she can be regarded as a master of photographic realism, accurately depicting the emptiness of Bush’s politics and personality.

Even at the end of A Charge to Keep, in a chapter in which Bush states his various positions on large issues, the vacuum of actual thought is stark. My personal favorite is a passage in which Bush defines the phrase that he likes to use about his politics (“compassionate conservatism”), He writes: “The phrase ‘compassionate conservative’ recognizes that a conservative philosophy has sometimes been mistakenly portrayed as mean-spirited. I like to joke that a compassionate conservative is a conservative with a smile, not a conservative with a frown.”

Translated into the banal language preferred by America’s “service economy,” where the customer is a king deserving of slavish obedience and a smile at all times, Bush’s accomplishment has been to turn the “frown” of conservatism “upside down.”

Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose’s book about Bush will certainly turn that smile upside down into a frown once again. Their verdict is that Bush has such a slender record to analyze for one simple reason—he’s done nothing as the governor of Texas. As Ivins and DuBose observe in their introduction:

The single most common misconception about George W. is that he has been running a large state for the past six years. Texas is what is known in political circles as “the weak-governor system.” You make think this is just a Texas brag, but our weak governor system is a lot weaker than anybody else’s. Although the governor does have the power to call out the militia in case of an Indian uprising, by constitutional arrangement, the governor of Texas is actually the fifth most powerful statewide office: behind lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and land commissioner but ahead of agricultural commissioner and railroad commissioner.”

Shrub (a word which is a diminutive for “bush”) is marred stylistically by its reliance on Texas slang, but it is a convincing examination of Bush’s career. It explains how Bush used political connections to escape the Vietnam War and rise quickly in Texas politics. It also dissects his record on things that even the “weak governor” can affect: environment, education and crime.

Ivins and DuBose are particularly biting on the last point, noting Texas’ status as the state that executes the most people. “At every single turn where he could have done something to make the system less savagely punitive,” write Ivins and DuBose, “(Bush) went out of his way to do the opposite.”

In fact, the death penalty in Texas has become a sickening farce. In late May of this year, one Texas convict on death row attempted to sell tickets to his execution on the Internet. But even more disgusting is the tendency that the Texas criminal justice system (under Bush’s supervision) has to execute the mentally retarded. Ivins and DuBose write that “you’ve met Labrador Retrievers brighter than some of the people that Texas executes.” The authors of Shrub amplify their point about Texas and executions with some pungent examples:

“One retardate thought he had been sentenced to death because he didn’t know how to read and kept trying desperately to learn while he was in prison, thinking it would save him. Another kept asking his legal aid lawyer what he should wear to his funeral, under the impression that he would be there for it. And there is a possibly apocryphal story—we were not able to confirm it—about a retarded inmate who asked for pudding for dessert with his last supper. When guards asked why he hadn’t eaten the pudding, he said he was saving it for later.”

It’s difficult, I think, for even a compassionate conservative to put a smile on those stories.