41: A Portrait of My Father

by George W. Bush

  “Your behavior is disgraceful,” she said. I stared at her blankly. “Go upstairs and see your father,” she said.

  I defiantly charged upstairs and put my hands on my hips. “I understand you want to see me.”

  Dad was reading a book. He lowered his book, calmly slid off his reading glasses, and stared right at me. Then he put his reading glasses back on and lifted up the book.

  I felt like a fool. I slunk out of the room, chastened by the knowledge that I had disappointed my father so deeply that he would not speak to me.

  That was as close as we got to an argument. Dad was not the kind of man who engaged in verbal fisticuffs. He would let my siblings and me know when we were out of line, and he expected us to correct the problem. Eventually, we did.

  George Bush’s great gift to his children was unconditional love. No matter how we expressed our individuality, no matter how badly we misbehaved, he always loved us. Over time, that love itself became a powerful source of independence. There was no point in competing with our father—no point in rebelling against him—because he would love us no matter what. I took that lesson to heart when I became a parent. When Barbara and Jenna were teenagers, they had independent streaks that reminded me a lot of times past. I used to tell them, “I love you. There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. So stop trying.”

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  DAD ENJOYED serving in Congress. In the Capitol, he earned a reputation as a hardworking Congressman. He frequently flew back to Houston, where he stayed in close touch with his friends and constituents in the district. Like his father, he worked six days a week and spent most Saturday mornings signing letters and writing personal notes. Sundays were reserved for church in the morning and hamburger lunches in my parents’ backyard in the afternoons. The lunches, which became somewhat legendary, featured an eclectic blend of invitees: family members, staffers, fellow Members of Congress, neighborhood friends, visiting constituents, and Washington insiders like the journalist Charlie Bartlett. Dad also included friends that he had met in earlier phases of his life. One of my father’s most impressive qualities was his ability to make new friends while keeping old ones. No matter how high he rose in business or politics, George Bush never discarded old friends. The hamburger lunches were a great illustration of Dad’s range of friends. The diverse group of guests would mingle on the lawn, chatting and drinking beer, while Congressman Bush flipped the burgers.

  Mother was a willing hostess. She took to Washington quickly, setting up the new house and helping my younger siblings settle into their new schools. She easily made a circle of close friends, and she loved to organize tours of the Capitol and other Washington landmarks for visiting family and guests. Whenever my younger siblings had free time, she made sure they took advantage of the opportunity to experience the history and culture of the nation’s capital.

  One of my favorite memories of visiting Washington during Dad’s congressional years came when he brought me with him to the House gym. He knew the name of every worker and towel attendant in the facility. Dad loved to play paddleball, a fast-moving game that requires good hand-eye coordination. One of his favorite playing partners was Congressman Sonny Montgomery, a Democrat from Mississippi. They played to win, but all the while they whooped and hollered and needled each other, having a lot of laughs. It was a good reminder that Congressmen from opposite parties could put their differences aside and enjoy each other’s company.

  Like every new Member, Congressman Bush was assigned to several legislative committees. My father hoped for a position on either Ways and Means or Appropriations. Those powerful committees are usually off-limits to freshmen, but Dad had developed a relationship with Minority Leader Gerald Ford during his campaign, and his father pitched in by calling his old friend Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, the Ways and Means Committee Chairman. The House Republican leadership showed its confidence in Dad by making him the first freshman in sixty-three years to receive a seat on Ways and Means.

  While my father benefited from his father’s connections, he also benefited from his mother’s lessons. He worked tirelessly, kept his promises, and was willing to stay out of the limelight in order to share credit with others. Those qualities were often in short supply in Congress, and that made people gravitate to George Bush. He became especially close with other young Members of Congress, including Bill Steiger of Wisconsin, Jerry Pettis of California, John Paul Hammerschmidt of Arkansas, and Bob Price of Texas. In a preview of things to come, his fellow Republicans elected him president of the freshman class.

  In the late 1960s, two issues dominated life in Washington: the Vietnam War and civil rights. My father had supported the American effort in Vietnam from the beginning. He believed that allowing communists in North Vietnam to overrun the South would deny the people of South Vietnam the opportunity to live in freedom. He also worried about the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia. The United States had made a commitment to defend the South Vietnamese, and he believed strongly that America had to keep its word.

  The day after Christmas 1967, Congressman George Bush embarked on a sixteen-day trip through Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. He met with senior American officials. He also spent time with junior officers and enlisted men, including bomber pilots based on a carrier in the Tonkin Gulf, and asked for their unvarnished opinions on the war. Most told him that they were doing a lot better than the newspapers suggested.

  My father came away impressed by the troops and convinced that America was making what he called “remarkable military progress.” He also saw the resilience of the Vietcong guerillas. In a letter to his constituents, he described the intricate tunnels that the Vietcong dug through the jungles as evidence of their persistence. “I am now convinced that our objective is realistic,” he told a reporter. “We can succeed if we have the will and the patience.”

  Back at home, the war grew more divisive. Dad recognized the right of antiwar activists to express their views, but he was troubled by vitriolic and violent protests that demoralized the troops. He defended LBJ against the ugly personal attacks lobbed by activists. As the months went by, the Johnson administration failed to offer a clear rationale for America’s escalating involvement in the war. Thousands of young men were being drafted to fight a war that fewer and fewer people understood. For George H.W. Bush, the enduring lesson of Vietnam was that any commitment of the American military must include a clearly defined mission that the people can understand. Decades later, when he sent American troops to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, that’s exactly what he provided.

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  MY FATHER’S TRIP to Vietnam also influenced his outlook toward the other explosive question facing the country: civil rights. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall were forcing the issue to the center of American politics. Throughout the South, civil rights activists opposed segregationist policies through sit-ins, freedom rides, and marches. The nation’s television screens were filled with scenes of horrible violence, including the brutal crackdown on protesters by sheriff Bull Connor and the church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young African-American girls. I later learned that one of them was a friend of my Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s. In 1963, President Kennedy proposed legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, buses, and restaurants. In one of the most impressive acts of presidential leadership, President Johnson steered the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1964.

  My father had always been a strong believer in equal treatment of all people. Like his father, he had raised money for the United Negro College Fund. As party Chairman and a Congressman, he had reached out to African-Americans in Houston. In the 1964 Senate campaign, Dad had opposed the Civil Rights Act on federalism grounds. He believed that states, not the federal government, should control the regulation of public places.

  Vietnam changed his views. During his trip to the front lines of the war, my father saw black and white men
risking their lives side by side. In April 1968, the House of Representatives took up the Fair Housing Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in selling, renting, or advertising residential property. My father understood the argument that the federal government should not be able to dictate the conditions for the use of private property. But in his heart, George Bush is a fair man. He could not imagine telling an African-American veteran that he wasn’t allowed to buy a house for his family just because he was black.

  Dad’s congressional district was nearly 90 percent white and heavily opposed to the open-housing bill. He estimated that the letters to his office ran thirty to one against the legislation. But on April 10, 1968, Congressman Bush voted in favor of the Fair Housing Act. He was one of only nine Texans to vote for the bill. (The other fourteen members of the Texas House delegation, thirteen Democrats and one Republican, opposed it.) President Johnson signed the bill into law the next day.

  The reaction was swift and nasty. Dad’s office received one angry phone call after the next, and at least one person threatened his life. The congressional postal office later reported that he received more mail than any other Member of Congress that year, much of it ranting against his vote on the open-housing bill.

  When he went home to Houston the weekend after the vote, Dad confronted the issue head-on. He held a town hall meeting that was packed with hundreds of constituents. Many of them greeted their Congressman with catcalls and boos, much like the reaction when Prescott Bush had denounced McCarthy.

  What this bill did, he said, was “try to offer a promise or a hope—a realization of the American Dream.” He recounted his conversations with African-American soldiers in Vietnam, some of whom had told him about their desire to come home, get married, and buy a home. “Somehow it seems fundamental,” he said, “that a man—if he has the money and the good character—should not have a door slammed in his face if he is a Negro or speaks with a Latin American accent.” (Negro was an accepted word at the time.)

  He acknowledged the differences of opinion. “I voted from conviction,” he said. “I knew it would be unpopular—I knew it would be emotional—but I did what I thought was right; what more can I tell you!”

  To his amazement, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Most of them probably didn’t change their minds about the open-housing bill, but they did change their minds about their Congressman. They recognized that he had courage and that he was honest. In the fall of 1968, seven months after the open-housing vote, George Bush ran for reelection unopposed.

  I followed the open-housing debate, and I was very proud of my father. I admired the way that he took a principled position, defended his decision, and stood up to the political mob—all while maintaining his dignity. The lesson of his vote on the open-housing bill is that although citizens might not agree with the decision you make, they appreciate a leader who is willing to make a tough decision. George Bush did that throughout his career. I kept his example in mind when I faced tough decisions of my own, such as ordering the troop surge in Iraq or approving major government intervention in the marketplace to prevent a meltdown during the financial crisis.

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  IN THE PRESIDENTIAL race of 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had stepped forward to run when LBJ shocked the country by declining to seek reelection. Nixon carried thirty-two states and more than three hundred electoral votes. He took his oath of office on January 20, 1969. An hour later, LBJ departed the nation’s capital, where he had been a fixture since his election to Congress in 1937. He left with few friends.

  Out of both respect and sympathy, Dad decided to go to Andrews Air Force Base to see off the former President. Amid the large crowd, a few other Congressmen showed up, including LBJ’s longtime friend Jake Pickle, but Dad was the only Republican. When Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary, Liz Carpenter, noticed Dad standing in the crowd, she pointed him out to the outgoing President. LBJ walked over, shook his hand, and said, “George, I’m grateful that you’re here. Come visit me and Lady Bird at the ranch sometime.”

  A few months later, Dad accepted the offer. LBJ drove him around the sprawling grounds of his ranch in Johnson City, Texas. At lunch, Dad asked him a question: Should he leave his safe seat in the House to run for the Senate against Ralph Yarborough in 1970? The former President, who had served in both the Senate and the House, replied in classic LBJ style.

  “George,” he drawled, “the difference between the Senate and the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.”

  While he didn’t put it quite so colorfully, President Nixon agreed that Dad should run. He promised to help with the campaign and assured Dad a soft landing if he didn’t win the race.

  Not everyone thought that Dad should run. Many in his district urged him to keep his coveted seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. Once again, however, George Bush decided to take a risk. In January 1970, he announced that he would leave his safe seat in the House to run for the Senate. While many factors played a role in Dad’s decision, I’ve always suspected that part of the reason was that he wanted to serve in the same body in which his father, Senator Prescott Bush, had served.

  By the time Dad launched his 1970 Senate campaign, I had finished my pilot training and was flying planes with the Texas Air National Guard in Houston. I had time between training sessions to help out with the campaign. I traveled across the state with him on his kickoff tour. This time I was very optimistic, and so was Dad. The state’s demographics were changing, Dad had built a good reputation, and Senator Yarborough was increasingly out of step with most Texans.

  On the day my father cruised to victory in the Republican primary, the dynamics of the race changed dramatically. I remember riding with Mother, Dad, and some of his campaign aides when a radio broadcaster announced that Lloyd Bentsen had defeated Ralph Yarborough in the Democratic primary. That was not good news. Bentsen was a decorated World War II pilot, a former House member from South Texas, and a successful business executive in Houston. Like my father, Bentsen was a young, charismatic candidate who had run hard to the right of Yarborough. The philosophical distinctions in the race had just been erased, and Bentsen would benefit from a huge advantage in voter registration. Dad suddenly faced an uphill battle. The car fell silent for a few seconds. Then my father tried to reassure us. “It’s okay,” he said. “We can still win this thing.”

  Two factors ultimately doomed Dad in the race. First, Bentsen was able to appeal to Texans’ longtime political heritage with his effective slogan “Texas needs a Democratic Senator.” (The other Senator at the time was John Tower, a Republican.) Second, the Texas legislature had placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow each county to vote on whether to approve the sale of liquor by the drink. The measure drew heavy opposition from rural Texans in dry counties, who derided the amendment as an “open saloon” law. As a result, rural turnout was high—and in those days rural Texans voted overwhelmingly Democratic. I remember going to rural Kaufman County in 1970 to shake a few hands on Dad’s behalf. When I arrived at the county courthouse, the building was nearly vacant. I asked where everybody had gone. One of the few people left said, “They heard a Republican was coming.” (In a sign of the changes in Texas politics, I received a warm greeting when I returned to the Kaufman County courthouse as a Republican candidate for Governor in 1994. On Election Day, I carried the county.)

  Thanks to Bentsen’s strength as a candidate and the rural Democratic turnout, he defeated Dad 53 percent to 47 percent. This loss hurt a lot more than 1964. That one could be explained away by the Johnson landslide. This one seemed like the death knell for George Bush’s political career.

  Dad was gracious in defeat. He thanked everybody that he could find. He returned to Washington for the conclusion of his congressional term—likely the final months of his career in elected office. He was not bitter. He held no grudges. He accepted the voters’ decision and prepared to move on with his l
ife. Then one day he got a phone call from the President. Richard Nixon wanted to see him at the White House. From the despair of a second defeat, a career-changing opportunity arose.

  Even as a young man at Phillips Academy, George Bush displayed a natural leadership ability. People have always gravitated toward him and wanted to follow him. George Bush Presidential Library and Museum (GBPLM)

  George Bush enlisted on his eighteenth birthday and became the youngest pilot in the Navy. His plane was shot down over the Pacific on September 2, 1944. GBPLM

  Lieutenant George Bush married Barbara Pierce on January 6, 1945, while on leave from the Navy. Dad says the engagement ring is a star sapphire; Mother still suspects it might be blue glass. GBPLM

  I was born on July 6, 1946, while Dad was a student at Yale. It’s hard to imagine how he did it all—top student, star athlete, loyal friend, and devoted husband and father. As Mother put it with characteristic bluntness, “He worked hard.” GBPLM

  As Captain of the Yale baseball team, Dad met Babe Ruth during his senior year. The photo became iconic: one great man near the end of his life, another embarking on his. GBPLM

  Family has always come first to Dad. Walker’s Point, our family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, is a close second. Here we are celebrating the Silver Anniversary of Prescott and Dorothy Bush in 1947. GBPLM

  I kept a copy in the Oval Office of this 1949 photo of Mother and Dad and his parents, Dorothy and Prescott Bush, in Odessa. I have always been grateful to George and Barbara Bush for raising me in West Texas. GBPLM