The Highest Calling, page 35
TN: It became Pennzoil. The partners became very famous and very rich. The Bushes were well-off. They were never hugely wealthy. The money that allowed the Bushes to have the compound in Kennebunkport came from George Herbert Walker Bush’s mother’s family, the Walkers. By the way, George H. W. Bush was called “Poppy” because his grandfather was known as “Pop.”
DR: George and Barbara Bush’s first son was George W. Bush, and they had another child named Robin. What happened to her?
TN: Robin contracted leukemia, and she would die in 1953. Robin’s death was a horrible event for the family, and in many ways they never got over it, which I think is true in any family that loses a child.
DR: George Herbert Walker Bush is reasonably successful in the oil business. Why does he decide to run for the United States Senate in 1964, when he never ran for anything before? How did he do in that race?
TN: Texas politics were changing. Young Republicans had a sense that there was an opportunity to knock off a liberal Democratic senator named Ralph Yarborough. Bush by then had moved to Houston. Moving to Houston was part of his calculations about running for office. He helped create the Republican machine in Houston. Even though he didn’t like to brag, George Bush had deep self-confidence. He almost seemed Kennedyesque—handsome, vital. He seemed to be the face of the new Republican power in the South. Part of it was a little delusional. The Republicans had won statewide once, but in 1963–64 it was still very difficult to fight the traditional Democratic Party in Texas.
What’s important about the 1964 election is that George Bush violated his own sense of what was right and wrong in politics. He let his ambition get away with him. He ran as a Goldwater Republican, which meant he ran against the Test Ban Treaty that President Kennedy had signed with the Soviets just before Dallas. And Bush ran against the Civil Rights Act that was passed in 1964. Now, he didn’t run against the Civil Rights Act because he was a racist. Young George thought that the only way to win in Texas was to make a libertarian argument about civil rights—not that Black citizens didn’t deserve equal rights, but that the federal government had taken too large a role. But that was not the family’s position at all. In the end, this moral compromise for political gain didn’t succeed. He would get more votes statewide than any other Republican, but the fact of the matter is he lost. And what made it worse was that he knew he had acted in defiance of what believed.
When he decides to run for the House in 1966, he runs as a moderate Republican. When he finally made it to Washington as an elected official in 1967, Bush would line up with the kinds of people that he had opposed in 1964. George Bush was a key vote for the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the housing rights act. He realized that Americans could not deny African American servicemen the opportunity to buy a home for their families. He made the point that we can’t ask people to defend our country abroad and then mistreat them when they come home. It was a matter of right and wrong. Many of his supporters were bitterly disappointed in him. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.
DR: He decides to run for the United States Senate in 1970. Why did he think he could win that race?
TN: Bush thought, given that Richard Nixon had won the presidency, that in a rematch against Ralph Yarborough he could beat the liberal Democrat. What Bush didn’t count on was that Yarborough would be primaried and beaten by the more conservative Lloyd Bentsen. Nixon, however, sent money (which like so much of the Nixon political system was tainted) Bush’s way and backstopped him. Richard Nixon wanted attractive young Republicans like Bush to win. Bush understood that if he lost the Senate race in 1970, there was going to be some kind of job waiting for him with the Nixon administration. The chief of his campaign was his good friend and tennis buddy James Baker.
DR: After the election loss he goes to Richard Nixon and says, I’m ready for the soft landing, what have you got for me? What does Bush actually want and when does Richard Nixon decide to give it to him?
TN: President Nixon offers Bush the chance to be the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Nixon domestic advisor and future Democratic senator from New York, declines. Bush has no foreign policy experience whatsoever. He’s not completely deaf to foreign policy, but he didn’t have any particular expertise in it. He understood quickly, however, how some of his native talents, his inherent abilities, could be quite useful in New York—his ability to listen, his natural empathy, his willingness to work with leaders of all countries. It put him in great stead for the future, because he made friendships and developed allies with people from various countries who would move on to be even more powerful as the years went by. At the UN, Bush shows hints of the diplomatic gifts that he would use to great effect as president.
The problem for George Bush was that though Nixon promised him a job, he didn’t promise him any influence. Secretly, Kissinger and Nixon were opening the door to relations with China that would involve the United States ultimately turning its back on Taiwan being in the United Nations, but Bush didn’t know anything about this.
DR: Despite that, George Bush does like being UN ambassador. At one point, when Richard Nixon has some political problems, he asked Bush to come down and become the chairman of the Republican National Committee, replacing Bob Dole. Did George Bush really want to go back to Washington in that role?
TN: George Bush, I think, was ready for a change. And he didn’t realize that he was accepting a poison chalice when he agreed to become the head of the RNC. The current RNC chief, Senator Bob Dole, was critiquing some of the political activities that Nixon’s henchmen like Charles Colson or Chuck Colson were engaged in. It isn’t clear how much Bush knew of Dole’s concerns. In general at the time, Bush thought that Nixon’s enemies were exaggerating Nixon’s dark qualities. Bush, who had just lost his father to cancer, was too trusting of Nixon, who had superficially been very helpful to him professionally. With Dole unwilling to accept every order he received from the White House, Nixon wanted a more dependable head of the RNC. Bush also had a useful reputation as a clean politician, a good guy. The White House desperately needed that, too. The Watergate break-in had already occurred.
In sum, as 1973 starts, Nixon very much wants someone with a good-guy reputation to be the head of the RNC, but most of all he wants a lapdog. Bush’s opinion of the president would shift over the course of his time at the RNC, and he turns out not to be the lapdog that Richard Nixon had hoped him to be. In the summer of 1974, when the so-called smoking-gun tape transcript is released—which proved that Nixon not only knew about the cover-up but was an architect and had lied to the American people and elected Republicans about it all—George Bush decides that Nixon has to resign. He doesn’t go public with it. He provides this advice to the president.
DR: Gerald Ford becomes president. Does Bush want a job from President Ford? What job does he actually get?
TN: He thought he had a chance to be vice president. Bush viewed the vice presidency as a stepping-stone to the presidency and Bush had an ill-concealed desire to be president. He had thought the vice presidency was a possibility as far back as 1968 and that ambition burned brightly in the Ford years. Instead Ford offered him any ambassadorship that he wanted in Europe, and George Bush surprised him by saying no. He wanted to go to China. It was a good place for him to decompress. He was also very personable there. He had July Fourth parties, had hot dogs. He made the American presence in China more approachable.
DR: Whose idea was it to send him to what was seen as a political dead end, the CIA?
TN: Gerald Ford was surrounded by a number of very ambitious young men: Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld played a role, using Kissinger a little, to maneuver Bush into the open CIA position, on the assumption that nobody who was the head of the CIA could ever be a viable presidential candidate. To understand that, you have to know a little bit about the ill-repute the CIA had fallen into in the’70s, largely because of the Church Committee investigations of attempted assassinations against foreign leaders, but these came in an ocean of dramatic revelations that came out in the mid-1970s about a secret world that Americans didn’t know about. Despite the CIA being in great disrepute, Bush was a good soldier despite the potential cost to his political future. Besides, Bush didn’t share the public image of the CIA. He knew people who had gone into the agency. He took the job and loved it. Next to being president, George Bush was proudest of and loved most his time as CIA director.
DR: He wasn’t there that long, but he was so well regarded that the CIA building in Langley, Virginia, was named after him.
TN: The left was attacking the CIA for its bungled plots and for secret activities that seemed to be beyond the pale morally. The right was attacking the CIA for being too supportive of detente with the Soviets. Bush thought he could come up with a way to satisfy the right without destroying the agency. He supported a plan to have these far-right analysts get access to the same intelligence the in-house Soviet experts had. The Soviets were on an unexpected, unpredicted strategic missile–building spree. Bush approves a team A/team B approach to try to mitigate these pressures that the agency was under.
DR: Gerald Ford runs for election in 1976, loses to Jimmy Carter. Did Bush want to stay at the CIA under Carter?
TN: I believe that George Bush wanted to stay. Bush believed that the way to depoliticize the agency was to depoliticize how presidents selected the head of the CIA. He had this idea that the CIA director should be able to work for presidents of different parties. But Jimmy Carter didn’t think twice about removing Bush. First of all, Bush had been head of the RNC. Second, Jimmy Carter had deep misgivings about the CIA. Initially he wanted a liberal Democrat, John F. Kennedy’s celebrated speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, to run the CIA.
DR: Bush goes back to Texas. Does he start running for president in 1980 right away?
TN: Bush is impatient and restless, and he wants to grasp the brass ring almost immediately. So yes, he is thinking about 1980. Nobody else in Washington, let alone the country, is thinking seriously about George Bush for 1980. He was well regarded, but many politicos thought him quite weak. He had lost two Senate races. He had been ignored by the national security team at the Nixon White House when he was at the UN. He had been put at the RNC at the worst possible time. He goes out to China and gets some good press, but he’s certainly not part of the Washington scene. He comes back, and is rewarded for his loyalty by leading what was viewed by many Americans as a disreputable organization. He wanted to stay and was told by a new president that he had to leave. Despite his stellar CV, he was not seen as a man of conviction. Yet he was convinced that he could be president, which made him seem like an eccentric candidate until he began to win votes in early 1980, and surprised the political elites in the United States.
DR: It was said that his base was his Christmas card list. Ronald Reagan is the presumed favorite. To the shock of the political world, George Herbert Walker Bush wins Iowa. What happens next in New Hampshire?
TN: The loss in Iowa was a great shock to the Reagan campaign. In New Hampshire, the Bush team wanted it to be Reagan versus Bush. The Bush people thought that if you went man-to-man with Reagan, there were enough traditional Republicans, Eisenhower Republicans, to beat him. Reagan’s genius was not to give Bush a chance to make it a two-person race. George Bush’s mishandling of the debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, undermined whatever momentum he had developed in Iowa. He says to Reagan, “I’m not going to debate the other candidates. I’m only going to debate you.” Reagan then says, “I paid for this microphone, and they’re staying.” Bush loses the primary and never recovers politically from New Hampshire.
DR: The result is that Reagan goes on to win the nomination. Bush pulls out reluctantly. Does he really think he is going to be picked as vice president at the convention?
TN: No. George Bush does not think he’s going to be picked as Reagan’s running mate. Ronald Reagan didn’t really want to pick George Bush as vice president either, but James Baker and others made the argument that to pull the party together, the second-most-successful candidate in the primaries should be the running mate. Even though Reagan didn’t trust Bush’s instincts—he didn’t really think Bush was a conservative—he agreed. Bush accepted the offer but also understood that, publicly at least, his position on social issues had to change.
DR: Ronald Reagan asked him, could he support the Republican platform? And Bush said yes. Which meant he had to support the position on abortion, which was a pro-life position. Is that correct?
TN: That’s completely correct. George Bush in 1968 had supported legislation that decriminalized the use of contraceptives. He supported family planning, supported Planned Parenthood. But to demonstrate his loyalty to the top of the ticket, he had to take a position on abortion that was against the position his family had long taken on the subject.
DR: Bush and Reagan win in 1980. In eight years as vice president, did Bush develop a closer relationship with Reagan? Did Reagan really want George Bush to succeed him?
TN: Ronald Reagan developed respect for Bush. The Bushes and the Reagans, however, never developed a close personal relationship. The Reagans never invited the Bushes upstairs to the residence of the White House, for example. But Reagan was willing to give his political support to George Bush.
DR: Bush runs for president in 1988. Who does he run against?
TN: Bob Dole is his major opponent. Bush has to fight for the nomination, because regardless of what the president is saying, Reaganites do not view him as the successor to Ronald Reagan. This is essential to understanding the challenges that Bush would face as president. He is not beloved by the base of his party, which has changed over the course of the Reagan presidency. In many ways, Bush is a pragmatist. He is not an ideologue, he does not believe in fixed positions. It’s not that he was a flip-flopper, it’s that the world changed, and he changed with it. People in the Reagan core of the party want him to make clear that he will not alter the Reagan approach to taxes, and they want him to do it publicly, in a very humiliating way. He does it for the first time in New Hampshire. At the convention, he then says: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Now, the irony about this is that Ronald Reagan had raised taxes. But Reagan’s team had been clever about hiding these taxes as so-called revenue enhancements. To this day, Reagan has a reputation as being a staunch tax cutter. Bush didn’t enjoy the same trust with Republicans. In order to win the nomination, let alone the election, Bush basically handcuffed himself, saying, “I won’t raise taxes.”
DR: Who does he pick at the convention to be his vice president?
TN: He picks Dan Quayle, senator from Indiana. Dan Quayle is considered a dedicated conservative. No one doubts his conservative bona fides. In many ways Bush is choosing him because he’s young, full of energy. Let’s face it, Quayle is not going to be a real challenger to Bush, who is hoping for two terms.
DR: They get elected. How was the campaign against the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis? Dukakis was actually ahead until the end.
TN: At the beginning of the campaign, Dukakis is ahead. The Reagan presidency was hobbled at the end by the Iran-Contra scandal. As an unusually active vice president, Bush is involved in the scandal. He never faces criminal proceedings, but Reagan did seek his advice, particularly on the Iran side of it. The Cold War has not ended, but it seems to be moving in that direction. Many Americans were beginning to think, okay, it’s time to move on. It’s time to rebuild the country. The Democrats choose Michael Dukakis, in many ways a perfect foil for George Bush, because Dukakis has his own awkwardnesses, which weaken his appeal. In an era when a few bad pictures can alter a public’s view of a political candidate, the fact that Dukakis appears in a tank with a helmet on makes him look silly, rather than defiant and strong.
The most infamous of the Republican tactics was only used once, but even before social media it sort of went viral. A group supportive of George Bush, but not an arm of the Republican Party, takes advantage of a furlough program that Governor Dukakis had supported in Massachusetts, which allowed felons to leave for the weekend. During one such furlough, a man named Willie Horton had killed a person. Willie Horton was African American, and this group featured him in an ad. It seemed like a Reaganite dog whistle. The Bush campaign is attacked for it. In being attacked, the ad gets more and more currency. It’s a stain on the Bush effort. Bush went low to beat Dukakis.
DR: Bush gets elected president and, early in his administration, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.
TN: That’s not the most important thing that happens early. The Berlin Wall falls. Bush’s strengths were called upon during this potentially dangerous moment in world history when the Soviet Empire collapses. Bush understands how important Gorbachev is to a soft landing of the Cold War. The U.S. government and Bush recognize that Gorbachev had let loose forces he could not control, but he was the only one who could manage how the Soviet Union responded to these forces. When the Berlin Wall falls, there are many commentators who were expecting George Bush to announce that the United States has triumphed in the Cold War. Instead he says, in effect, “I’m not going to dance on the Berlin Wall.” He recognized that what you don’t do with a failing adversary is to humiliate them.
The Berlin Wall falls in late 1989, and it’s in 1990 that Bush has to make a series of tough decisions that show remarkable leadership. Bush understood that there were a number of key changes that the world needed to be a safer place, and one was the unification of Germany. In addition, if you find a way to get the Russians to allow a reunified Germany to ally with the West, you’ve eliminated the greatest cause of the Cold War. In actively seeking these two goals, Bush not only had to face skeptics on his own team, he faced skeptics in London and Paris. What Bush had to do in 1990 was to manage these two contradictory things simultaneously: one, a good relationship with Gorbachev that did not undermine him as the Soviets were losing power, and two, supporting West German chancellor Helmut Kohl in his bid to unify Germany. These are absolutely contradictory objectives, unless you can convince Gorbachev that what Kohl is doing is inevitable. That’s what Bush did.
