Dekes for Truth
by J. Daniel Janzen

As members of a fraternal organization who have sworn loyalty to our brothers, it is difficult and painful for us to speak out against one of our own. Nonetheless, faced with the prospect of this individual leading our nation in its darkest hour, we have no choice but to come forward. The time has come to reveal the truth about the man who served as our leader 35 years ago: George W. Bush '68, President of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Yale Chapter.

For most of his political career, President Bush's college years have been described in terms of the timeless Deke virtues of alcoholism, truancy and mayhem. In reality, from his earliest days as a Deke, the future president showed unmistakable signs of responsibility, diligence, even somberness. His back-slapping, frat-boy image is a complete fabrication, painstakingly cultivated and preserved through the years by a conspiracy of silence among those in the know.

Around the Yale campus, Bush was known for stupendous feats of alcohol consumption. It was said he could polish off a hat trick of beer bongs and still balance a tennis racquet on his nose, something he was frequently seen doing. For all his life-of-the-party reputation, though, the man rarely drank, believing that it clouded the faculties more than would be responsible for the son of a government official. Instead, he carried around with him a Jim Beam bottle in which bourbon had been surreptitiously replaced with Pepsi (the fizz was a dead giveaway); the beer in all those bongs flowed harmlessly out of the corner of his mouth and down his body to be explained away as urine stains, a trick he mastered through long hours of practice. On those rare occasions that he did imbibe, Bush's lightweight capacity left him logy halfway through his second beer. He was no blackout drunk — just sleepy.

Bush's cocaine habit has no more basis in truth than his cheerleading skills (he was actually more of a downer for the teams he supported). Although he undoubtedly shoveled copious amounts of white powder into his sinuses, a more fitting destination might have been a glass of iced tea: As innumerable brothers discovered in raiding his stash, the congressman's son was using nothing stronger than Sweet 'n Low. He put on a good show, going on and on about what great blow it was and singing along to 1910 Fruitgum Co. records at the top of his voice. Wise to his ruse, other Dekes would plead for a line or two, knowing he would offer nothing but the usual response of "I don't have that much left, but I think Biff just got a shipment."

The president's undergraduate transcript has become a matter of public record, its gentleman's C's cited as evidence of fecklessness or intellectual weakness. Less commonly known is the amount of hard work and dedication that went into those grades. Late at night and into the wee hours, while the rest of the house was playing foosball, smoking dope and sodomizing underage townies, Bush, or "The Grind" as we called him, would be sequestered in his room with a stack of books and a thermos full of hot chocolate. Test day would find him pacing anxiously in the yard, reciting mnemonics and drilling himself on definitions. The results may not have been what he'd hoped for, but his heart was in the right place, and our hearts went out to him.

We were initially appalled when Bush announced his intention to run for president of the Dekes. Here this guy was the opposite of everything we stood for, and he had the temerity to want to lead us? We would have been justified in stapling his testicles to his forehead and throwing him in a fountain. Instead, we caucused among ourselves and decided that a more humane course of action would be to rig an election in his favor while selecting a more suitable candidate to rule from the shadows as vice president. Bush would receive the honor that meant so much to him, and perhaps some measure of scarce fatherly love; we would get the perfect stooge to bear the brunt of any university sanction that might befall the frat. It worked like a charm. Our new figurehead turned out to have a real knack for evading accountability for even the most egregious crimes.

All along, there was one thing that meant more than anything else to Bush: his dream of serving his country overseas. As an adolescent, he'd lied about his age in recruiting offices, only to be foiled by mathematical errors. As a young man, he'd been disqualified by a congenital disorder — we never did find out what it was. To console his son, Rep. George H.W. Bush arranged for a stint with the Texas Air National Guard, an organization more forgiving of defects. When Junior turned out to be no less unfit for this uniform, his despondency drove him to go AWOL and try to enlist once more in the regular army, only to be told that the armed services athletic teams had suspended the use of mascots for the duration. Back to Texas, to act out his frustration by deliberately and consciously running one business after another into the ground — just as his VC-killing dreams had come crashing down.

Whether or not he was a fighter, Bush sure as heck wasn't a lover. He rarely brought women back to the Deke house, and when he did, we could see them studying together through the open door. Half the time the girl would stick around and ball one of us later on, when she realized her date was all business.

We have additional information on this point from another organization, Bonesmen for Accuracy. On his initiation into Skull and Bones, Junior's recounting of his sexual history proved so uninteresting that the other members waived the requirement. His interpersonal relations were equally chaste; while a member of the secret society, he showed little interest in forging alliances or formulating elaborate schemes for controlling the world, as the club's traditions and bylaws stipulate. On the other hand, he was suspended more than once for violating the strict "no teeth" policy of the Crypt glory hole.

Perhaps the events of 35 years ago have no bearing on the situation today, and the lapses of a young man shouldn't be held against a world leader. Perhaps President Bush has nothing to apologize for at all. That's a decision for the American voters to make. We just want to make sure they have all the information they need to choose wisely.