Welcome Home, George and Laura

DALLAS, Texas — “Welcome Home, George and Laura!”

The little white yard signs are all over my neighborhood, where the former President and First Lady moved after the Obama inauguration this past January. And these poster-board rectangles with the former Bush campaign logo put to a new (and arguably more effective) use have an interesting story behind them, apocryphal or not.

Apparently, some enterprising kid made several hundred of the signs last December and sold them for an extremely high price to neighborhood residents eager to show their support for the past president, who the liberal American media “just didn’t understand.” I should mention that these are largely the same individuals who put white crosses in their yards every spring bearing the phrase “He is Risen!” within clear view of the street, so it’s really no surprise that the “Welcome Home” signs fared so well. The kid (at least in the version of the story I heard) is said to have made some serious jack—we’re talking several thousand dollars here, and all for little pieces of poster-board he probably designed at Kinko’s one Saturday afternoon. Perhaps he earned enough to make “George”—as he’s often referred to around here, sans the last name—proud.

What gets me most about the whole Bush “homecoming” down in Dallas is that so many people here have no idea that the rest of the country—I’m thinking of the two coasts, not the giant landmass north of Dallas and south of Canada—would probably not, to say the least, be impressed that they know “George” personally and/or still believe him to have been a terrific president, irrespective of the numerous economic and political disasters that characterized his presidency.

But in Dallas, it’s almost as though a hero has finally come home after years in the midst of a bitter struggle with “the Arabs” overseas and the evil intellectuals on the domestic front. And the extent to which Bush has been welcomed with open arms down here sheds light on one of the oddest things about Dallas—the way in which it decides who belongs and who does not.

It is possible to be a “Dallasite” without having lived in Dallas for all that long, just as it is possible to live in Dallas for a lifetime without anyone extending that invitation.

When a prodigal son like our very own “George” walks back in after more than a decade in Washington and Austin, he is hailed as the very essence of the city. But the millions of others who come to town for a piece of the (formerly) booming North Texas economy will likely never really fit in with the establishment, even if they become wildly successful.

Just as in other places, money alone really isn’t enough to “make it” in Dallas, so it’s not really surprising that the city’s elite were quick to grab hold of a former president coming back into their neck of the woods. Having Bush around, knowing him, and calling him “George” have thus become signs of membership in the Dallas establishment. And the zeal with which the former president has been defended, celebrated, and championed is a testament to the city’s obsession with social hierarchy.

The “Welcome Home” signs are, in one sense, tangible evidence of typical Dallas exclusivity. . In other words, George Bush is one of “us,” and together, “we” belong.

But my question isn’t about this exclusivity itself—I wonder about its display.

Do you really “belong” if you have to tell people you do? Are you really one of “us” if you have to advertise it on your front lawn?


James K. McAuley ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Currier House.