This might the key to unlocking his personality.I suspect that he has always had this vindictive streak since he was quite young -- encouraged by his mother, who felt that letting people "get away with something" was a sign of weakness. It's one of the ways in which he justifies being a bully -- claiming he is protecting himself or the people close to him -- like a warped parody of the "strong father". He's gone beyond "the end justifies the means", to the bullying itself becoming a central focus of his life.
There are a lot of examples of him trying (in sometimes petty or childish ways) to show up people whom he feels have insulted him, even if it just involved showing him up in some way. He plays nasty practical jokes on reporters, and others whom he feels have crossed him. Whether his retaliation is out of all proportion to the perceived insult -- or even whether he punishes someone who really was innocent -- doesn't matter to him, because he perceives the "focus groups" as interchangeable. He doesn't like reporters in general, so he throws a football really hard at one of them.
http://www.americanpresident.org/history/bushgeorgew/biography/lifebeforethepresidency.common.shtml"“Can you imagine how much it hurt,” Bush joked, “to know that Dad’s idea of the perfect son was . . . Al Gore?”"
"“I would agree that he’s not contemplative or reflective,” Michael M. Wood, a friend at Andover and Yale, told the New York Times in 2000. “He’s not a guy who would go off by himself thinking of something. He’s more likely to be hiding in a tree to jump down on somebody.”"
"As a freshman, Bush approached university chaplain William Sloan Coffin and mentioned his dad, who had just lost a bruising Senate race in Texas to Democrat Ralph Yarborough. “Oh yes, I know your father,” Coffin replied. “And frankly, he was beaten by a better man.” If that seems a tactless and inconsiderate way for a man of the cloth to speak to a college freshman, that is also the way it seemed to Bush, who mentioned this incident in his autobiography. though Coffin says he doesn’t remember the conversation quite the same way"
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-10-13/pols_feature8.html"The only time he showed any sign of anger was when he was asked about then-Gov. Ann Richards' comment about his father being "born with a silver foot in his mouth." The blue eyes narrowed as he responded to the reporter who asked the question. "It was mean and uncalled-for," he said. "It didn't bother my dad. He's lived with 'Doonesbury,' so he's used to that. But it hurt my mother." Gov. Bush talks like his father, who was as prone to malapropisms and non sequiturs, but he thinks like his mother -- which is a way of saying that he believes grudges should be transgenerational and involve corruption of blood and children avenging the wrongs visited on their parents. In 1988 in New Orleans, Bush wanted to get even. And that was just for a slight aimed at his father but felt most keenly by his mother."
"They're keeping lists. Of every insult, no matter how small. Of every criticism, no matter how fair. Of every news clip. Of every joke, no matter how innocent."
"But as chair of the House committee hearing Bush's 1999 welfare reform measures, Naishtat held the line on the governor's punitive welfare proposals, and the entire welfare reform package collapsed. One evening, while Naishtat left the Capitol in the company of friends from New York, Bush slipped up behind him and put him in a playful headlock -- as state troopers stood by and laughed and the New Yorkers worried that maybe this really was Texas. Come January, when the Legislature convenes, the headlock won't be playful. To make matters worse, Naishtat has been one of very few Democrats who has talked to the press -- including "major-league asshole" Adam Clymer of The New York Times."
http://www.nndb.com/people/805/000050655/"In April 1986, while the couple was eating at a Dallas restaurant with their 4-year-old son, a very pissed-off George W. Bush stormed over to their table and unloaded on Woodruff's husband: "You fucking son of a bitch. I saw what you wrote. We're not going to forget this." (Hunt's transgression was having predicted in the Wall Street Journal that Jack Kemp would win the 1988 Republican nomination instead of Vice President George H.W. Bush.)"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704I.shtml"Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."
http://www.bushwatch.com/bushclean.htm""Bush never forgot it. He has a long memory for slights....Which is part of the problem with Bush's presentation of himself as a man so 'comfortable in my soul' that he hardly cares whether he wins or loses....It's still pretty easy to get a rise out of Bush." And when a specific group, rather than an individual, disagrees with George, he's capable of withdrawing in a sulk and saying, "'I don't care. I really don't care. Does anyone ever say, 'Fuck you?' I don't care if they do,' he barks.""
"Dubya picks up a football. "Bush has a pretty good arm," reporter Tucker Carlson writes, "except that all the passes appear to be aimed at the gaggle of reporters watching him from the sidelines. A Fox News correspondent looks up just in time to save his pearly caps from a particularly clean spiral. Bush laughs and cocks his arm again. A newspaper reporter turns out to have slower reflexes. The ball hits him square in the chest, almost knocking him down. Bush throws another, even harder. This one beans a cameraman. It's clear that Bush is doing this on purpose....Bush is trotting around the grass with a demented look on his face.""
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