As you’ve no doubt heard (the Pep Squad is all abuzz!), Jenna Bush is engaged to be married to Henry Hager, recipient of the coveted Silver Spoon Award from the National Nepotism Society. Amazingly (as Tbogg reminds us), s.z. predicted the blessed event in this post from November 8, 2005:
A time to check in with some of our old friends, and see if they’re still alive, or what.
Today’s guest: Henry Hager. When we last cared about him (January 2005), he was escorting Jenna Bush to inaugural balls (and around town), while she balanced him with her other interests.
Henry, the son of tobacco heir John Hager (the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, and a current Bush appointee to the Department of Education), was a WH intern who worked for Karl Rove (uh oh!) about three years ago. After that, he joined the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. He was described as “smart” and “ambitious,” but as of early this year, nobody was sure what he was doing. (Sources told the Wash Post that he worked “in administration circles” in some unidentified capacity, while the NY Daily News sources reported that he wasn’t “really doing anything” except for maybe studying for the GMAT so he could follow his future father-in-law’s example and attend Harvard Business school.)
In February, Laura Bush declared on national TV that Henry wasn’t “a serious boyfriend.” (Which has to hurt if you’re an ambitious young man who has, since August 2004, been dating the President’s daughter at the instruction of your mentor Karl Rove.)
Since then, we spared him nary a thought.
However, Henry made the news again this month when he appeared on the official guest list for the White House dinner held in honor of Prince Charles and Not-Princess Camilla. (As the UK’s Daily Mail put it, “Strapping young Jenna Bush attended with her boyfriend,” and “Vice-President Cheney’s rather bow-legged daughter turned up with her girlfriend.”)
So, we did some Googling to find out what Henry’s been up to. And it turns out that when he isn’t visiting trendy watering holes with Jenna, he’s a “Policy Analyst” at the Department of Commerce. I don’t know exactly which policies he analyzes, but he does stand-in for his boss, Carlos Gutierrez (the Secretary of the Commerce) at meetings of the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. [Insert jokes here]
And in a strange coincidence, Henry’s dad John Hagar is also a member of this committee –but as we know, nepotism is so hated by the White House that it discloses CIA sources and methods to fight it, so we are sure that his father’s position and connections have nothing to do with Henry’s prestigious job or assignment.
If you have an intellectual disabiliity, you could email Henry with your concerns, However, I don’t think it would be appropriate for Leon Kass to contact Henry to say that he is concerned that Jenna is spending her most fertile years unprotected (except by the Secret Service), lonely, and out of sync with her inborn nature — and it’s not Leon’s job to order Henry to make an honest woman of Miss Jenna. But it is true that with all that tobacco and war-profiteering money to draw on, the young couple wouldn’t have to rely on Jenna’s salary as a part-time charter school teacher, so she could stay home and have babies as soon as they tied the knot.
Anyway, it is possible that the happiness evidenced by newlyweds Charles and Camilla inspired Henry and Jenna to start thinking about marriage, and an announcement about wedding plans could be made as soon as the President’s approval ratings slip another 5% . If not, I hope that fellow gala guest (and Jenna’s uncle) “Neil Bush, Chairman, Ignite! Learning” got the youngsters thinking about safe sex.
By “safe sex”, I hope you’re talking about seperate bedrooms, and a product that requires batteries.
Left by Bill S on August 16th, 2007