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That was The New York Times of January 1992.

The reporter was Times veteran Adam Clymer—the man Dubya Bush once called “a major-league asshole.” We hope Clymer saved his old, outdated, floppy disks so he won’t have to completely rewrite the second Bush war-and-recession story. He could have an intern do it. Drop the “Herbert” but not the “Walker.” Substitute “repeal the tax on dividends” for “repeal the capital gains tax” (done that). Cut all the flaccid Poppy Bush lines: “Message: I care” and “vision thing,” and you’ve got a perfectly recyclable, up-to-date Times dispatch for 2003.

As with Clymer, this is Dodds’ second Bush recession. It turns out that Bush père, the New England gentleman steeped in noblesse oblige, was a worse hard-ass than his blustery Texas son when it came to dealing with unemployed workers. Poppy vetoed an extension bill because he said there was no money to fund it.

“In the last recession, we had to fight like hell,” Dodds said. “In July 1991 we turned out twenty-five hundred people. Then in August we went to Washington. We had a big rally. Then we visited every member of Congress. We didn’t send people to meet with just their own congressman. They went into every office. They went in and said, ‘We’re the lobbyists for the unemployed.’ Within a week, Congress passed a bill.

“Bush vetoed it,” Dodds said. “Then he headed out to Kennebunkport for a vacation.”

To be fair, President Bush I didn’t veto the bill. He actually signed it before leaving for vacation and then he refused to sign the emergency funding provision to provide the money for worker benefits. It was a shiftier “Texas Sidestep” than the one the governor dances in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. You can almost get nostalgic when you think back to Poppy standing on the lush green lawn of his Walkers Point compound in Maine—tan and relaxed, sports coat, no tie, casual slacks and topsiders—telling the press pack why the nation could not afford an extension for jobless workers: “Yes, we’re coming through some tough economic times in the state of Maine, and other states as well. But it’s my view that we’re coming out of the recession.”

Poppy could make you smile. “Cutting the capital gains tax would create jobs instantly. [It didn’t.] It would be tremendous.” He was even cute in dismissing rumors that his chief of staff, John Sununu, was about to join the unemployed. “It’s a funny season down there in Washington. Kind of not too much happening down there. Congress is out. President’s gone. So you’ve got a lot of tick-tock stories going—who’s up and who’s down.”

Unemployed workers, who kind of figured they were in the “who’s down” category, joined Poppy and Barbara on their Maine vacation. What the hell, they were out of work anyway and figured the Bush family compound would provide them with good visuals. The Philadelphia Unemployment Project provided the buses and vans. It was all so unseemly. Poppy and the family trying to enjoy an afternoon in the speedboat while the unemployed and unwashed from Philadelphia and from all over Maine chased reporters all over town. MESSAGE: BUSH DON’T CARE read the sign one protestor carried to a press conference at the Shawmut Inn. An editorial cartoonist captured the spirit of the whole affair with a sketch of a golf ball sitting on the forehead of a prostrate and exhausted unemployed man. Above him stood Poppy, golf club in hand, ready to swing, but asking: “Do you mind if I play through?”

It took months after that for the unemployed to win, but before the end of the year Congress had passed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 1991. The senior Bush reluctantly signed it.

At least Bush II signed the bill the first time it was presented to him. Dubya Bush may not be the class act his old man was, but he dances a better Texas sidestep. As governor of Texas, Bush (and Karl Rove) did some of their best work through surrogates. “No Bush fingerprints,” was the way one senator described the killing of a bill back in the Texas Senate Judiciary Committee. “But ya know he did it,” he added