Bush: "I Don't Remember What I Was Doing In 1981"

Posted by Pam Spaulding at 1:00 PM on October 18, 2007.

This post, written by Pam Spaulding, originally appeared on Pam's House Blend

Perhaps it might have something to do with the alleged blow and confirmed boozing that he was doing in back in the day. (Raw Story):

Deflecting a question about the recent Israeli missile strike on Syria, President Bush refused to comment on his reaction to a similar strike by Israel 26 years ago saying he doesn't "remember what I was doing in 1981."

At the time, Bush was a 34-year-old oil man living in Midland, Texas running a company he founded two years earlier after a failed bid for Congress. Bush would not become governor of Texas for more than a decade and White House ambitions were even farther in his future.

During a White House press conference Monday, NBC correspondent David Gregory asked Bush whether he supported Israel's destruction of the Osiraq nuclear reactor in Iraq. "Ya know, Dave, I don't remember what I was doing in 1981," Bush said. "I don't remember my reaction that far back."

...Old friends of the president told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in 2000 that Bush was a "late bloomer," who had perhaps a bit too much fun in his younger days.

"[A]s he approached 40, an age when Al Gore was already a senator running for president," Kristof observed, "George W. Bush was just a heavy-drinking, fun-loving oilman struggling to control his temper, salvage his business and hold on to his marriage."

Flashback -- 1992, when Bush was supposed to have kicked the booze (he said he got off the bottle cold turkey in July 1986). From The Smoking Gun, video of him at a wedding looking quite, er, toasted.

Pam Spaulding blogs at Pam's House Blend.