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Bush presidencies: Like father, like son

The son watched his father, vowing not to repeat his mistakes.

The weekend before George W. Bush defeated Texas Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, he stood in the backyard of his Dallas home hitting tennis balls into the swimming pool for his dog to fetch and ruminated about the future with his media strategist, Don Sipple.

"At one point, Bush talked about his father, and he said, 'Sip, my man, don't underestimate what you can learn from a failed presidency,' " recalled Wayne Slater, a Dallas Morning News reporter and one of Bush's earliest biographers.

With that harsh assessment long before he took office as the 43rd president, Bush had decided he would do things differently from his father. But as he prepares to leave office after eight years, there are many similarities he might have wished to avoid as part of only the second father-son presidential duo in history.
Read entire article at Chicago Tribune