By this time, by October 1986, he took it for granted; wouldn’t have said a word about it, even if he didn’t. The few hints to his attitude, the bright sparks of reaction, flashed only briefly, more than five years before, when the fact of his Vice Presidency began to sink in on him.
There was the first trip, to Massachusetts, 1980, even before inauguration, to represent the White House-to-be at the funeral of the venerable Speaker, John McCormack. It was as George Bush left the church, and all the other mourners were held at the door, as he was guided through a gauntlet of men to the limousine waiting in a ten-car train, as the agents closed him in behind bulletproof steel and glass, and stood round the car, scanning the sidewalks and the empty street ahead, as the motorcycles roared to life and George Bush could no longer hear the men and women with whom he had prayed only minutes before, and he could see only the backs of the agents and the streak of two-wheelers past his shaded window, as even the church was rendered invisible by the men and machines walling him away, then George Bush drew one deep breath, as he turned from the window, and he said to friends in the car:
“God! ... Isn’t it great? D’ya ever see so many cops?”
It takes a special man to enjoy the Vice Presidency, but George Bush was the man for the job. Didn’t matter that the writers and the pundits couldn’t see it—he had talent, and he knew it. It wasn’t brains, although he wasn’t stupid: Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, if anybody cared to look. Anyway, the job didn’t call for deep thinking: if you thought too much, brought your insight and intellect to bear on the problems of the nation, you’d get out front of the President, or worse still, off to the side. That’s the surest way down the trash chute in the White House. There’s only one question that the Vice President needs to ask: “What’s the President saying on this?” Anything else is begging for trouble, and George Bush had brains enough to figure that out.
“A bucket of warm spit,” was how Vice President Garner described the job. At least that’s how they wrote the quote from Cactus Jack, the first Texan to hold the position, as FDR’s Number Two (till Roosevelt dumped him in the 1940 campaign). Problem was, no Vice President was really Number Two, or even Three or Four: a Chief of Staff, Secretary of State—any Cabinet officer—a Senator, even a Congressman ... hundreds of people had more legal and practical power over how things went in the country, even how things went in the White House. In fact, Walter Mondale, the last man but Bush to sit this pointy flagpole, was the first Vice President to have an office in the White House. (Before that, VPs were warehoused safely out of West Wing earshot, in lofty and ornate offices across the street in a gray granite pile called the Old Executive Office Building, or in a suite even more remote, equally grand and futile, in the U.S. Capitol, the locus of their only Constitutional duty, presiding over the U.S. Senate, and voting in case of a tie.)
It also fell to Mondale to pioneer in the stately Victorian house on Massachusetts Avenue, NW, the Official Residence, provided for the Vice President’s use in 1974. Joan Mondale used to give over the whole ground floor to art exhibits and tour groups. It wasn’t enough poor Mondale’s job was to sit around in mothballs; now he was living in a damn museum! But that wouldn’t happen to George Bush—not with Bar in charge. When she took over, the tours stopped and the old wooden house got homey, with tablesful of framed family photos (kids at play on the rocks in Maine), funny hats for George and his friends in the front hall closet, and grandchildren pounding through the halls to the kitchen, to see if the stewards had cookies. (They did.)
Nelson Rockefeller wouldn’t even live in the house, or the bubble, they tried to make for him. He moved out after one day, said he had better security—and fewer fellas in the way—at his own home in Washington. But when George Bush began to live every minute surrounded by a half-dozen trim young fellows, he had ... six new friends! Every day! If only he could throw a horseshoe like Jimmy here, then his happiness would be complete. (But! Wait till the next match. There might ... be a surprise from the Veep ... an upset ... hah!)
Lyndon Johnson, the last Texan in the job, was never the same after three years as second banana to a glamor boy who disdained him. They mocked him, all those Kennedy guys. It ate at him like a worm inside, and it left him embittered. But when George Bush took the job, he decided Ronald Reagan was going to be his friend. George and Bar decided without even talking: they were going to like the Reagans. And they did, right away. They loved the Reagans. The only surprise, Bush told his old friends, was how easy it was. Reagan turned out to be a great guy! The way he told those funny stories! You had to like the guy.
But it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been no charming jokes, if Reagan had been a vicious drooler; just as it did not matter that Reagan had no talent for friendship, no personal connections apart from Nancy. In fact, Reagan couldn’t remember his grandchildren’s names, and he had no friends, only the husbands of Nancy’s friends. It didn’t matter! Bush had the talent, a genius for friendship. And like every genius, he worked at it: if Ronald Reagan connected with others solely by means of funny stories, George Bush would bring him funny stories. In fact, the Vice President’s staff knew he didn’t want briefing memos for the weekly lunch with Reagan: the way to earn a stripe in the OVP was to give him a joke for the President. This was no laughing matter to Bush. It was the core of his life’s method. Back in 1978, when George Bush was an obscure ex-CIA chief, just starting to run for President, someone asked him: What made Bush think he could be President? “Well,” Bush said, without pause, “I’ve got a big family, and lots of friends.” Later in that campaign, he learned the “proper” answer, some mumbo-jumbo about experience, entrepreneurship, philosophy of government. ... But the first answer was true. George Bush was trying to become President by making friends, one by one if need be, and Ronald Reagan was a Big One.
It certainly didn’t matter that they disagreed—that Voodoo Economics thing, and a few other differences, on civil rights, the environment, education, energy, and U.S. policy on Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Soviet relations. Of course they disagreed, because George Bush knew five times more about the governments of the world—his own included—than Ronald Reagan ever would. But it didn’t matter! The fact is, they didn’t disagree anymore, because George Bush would not disagree with the President. This was another of George Bush’s talents: accommodation. He had the capacity to act on the judgments of others, to live within the bounds of received wisdom. It was a talent that had smoothed his path from his parents’ home, through prep school and the U.S. Navy, where the lessons of life were delivered explicitly, and later through Yale, business, and politics, where things grew murkier, and the judgments one lived by had to be doped out. But he did divine them: he was always sensitive to the ethic around him. And to the extent he could accommodate himself, he flourished, and made friends every step of the way. In 1964, he first ran for Senate as a Goldwater man, and though Bush lost, Goldwater was still a friend twenty-two years later. In 1966, for a House seat from Houston, he ran as a Main Street Republican, then served and voted with the moderate mainstream, as a backer of Richard Nixon. And in 1970, when he ran and lost for Senate again (this time, slightly to the left of his rival), he asked his Big Friend, President Nixon, for a job at the UN, which he’d roundly reviled as a Goldwater man. By 1980, the accommodation to Ronald Reagan was just a walk in the park.
And it did not matter if the Reaganauts couldn’t see him as one of their own. They screwed most of his friends out of jobs, stopped talking when he came into the room, made jokes about him when he was absent. He knew it, just as surely as Johnson had known. Hell, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, the way reporters would ask his staff: “People, uh, in the Cabinet meetings tell me Bush never says anything. ... Is that true?” Or they’d just print it: “Administration sources said the Vice President had nothing to contribute. ...” Of course he knew who the sources were. Some were the same hypocrites who came to his office before the meeting, asking him to b
ack their schemes, talk to the President for them. ... Then, when he wouldn’t, they’d have some columnist in for breakfast and, just in passing, smiling, with a wedge of grapefruit on their spoons, they’d saw Bush off at the knees. Oh, he knew the game! Still, he never got into that White House cockfight: an eye for an eye, a leak for a leak. Could have had a pro, Jimmy Baker, do it for him. But he wouldn’t: it was a matter of loyalty to the team, loyalty to the President; most of all, a matter of discipline.
This was another of Bush’s great talents: personal discipline. There were no leaks from the OVP: there was not one story saying George Bush was unhappy with this or that decision, or the President overrode objections from George Bush. In fact, there were no stories suggesting Bush had opinions at all, even before a decision came down, even when it would have gotten him off the hook. It would have been so easy: when Ed Meese was filling Reagan’s ear with some Neanderthal antiblack screed, sticking the administration’s nose into a civil rights fight, putting them all in the soup ...on the wrong side of the issue! And here’s a reporter in Bush’s armchair, gently inviting: “Mr. Vice President, it seems that you might be less comfortable with something like this. ...” But Bush wouldn’t bite. Never. Christ, the reporters were easy. One of his own aunts came at him, drove him right out of his chair, trying to have a serious discussion—why Ronald Reagan refused to have arms talks with the Russians. Years later, she was still half-convinced Bush was willfully stupid, or had the attention span of an eight-year-old. Didn’t matter! They could all think so, and he wouldn’t lift a finger to prove them wrong. He wouldn’t even let his staff help. His first Chief of Staff, Admiral Murphy, used to haul every staffer in for a talk, to let them know they had only one job: to help George Bush do his job, and his job was to help the President. There would be no disagreement between members of the Vice President’s staff and the President’s staff. They could not argue with anyone in the White House. Admiral Dan had them all in, down to the girls who’d answer the phones. And with the same flair he’d once shown as Commander of the Sixth Fleet, he’d warn:
“Honey, tonight, you’re gonna go out with your boyfriend. And you’re gonna go to a bar, and you’re gonna have a drink. And you’re gonna want to tell him what a wonderful guy you’re working for, and what a great thing he did today ... and how he saved the President from the most awful thing that somebody else was trying to do. ... Sweetheart, you don’t know who’s in the next booth, do you? So ... DON’T SAY A GODDAM THING!”
It got so the whole OVP was a whisper zone in that gray granite building across the street from the White House. People and paper moved back and forth down the dark, lofty halls of the Old EOB—earnest young people, of good families, sons and daughters of George Bush’s friends, would run between the offices, flushed with the press of business for the Vice President. And nothing came out! George Bush would go out to speak, all over the country, twenty, twenty-five days a month (he wouldn’t duck a chance to help the Party, the President) ... and nothing would be heard of him! True, the speeches weren’t about George Bush, or what he was doing, or what he thought. They weren’t about anything, really, except what a great country, and a great President, we had. That was fine with Bush. All the positions, all the speeches, were just politics to him. The rest, the friendships, or loyalty to the President, those were personal matters—matters of the personal code. That was where Bush’s talents lay, and the only thread of steel running through his life to his seventh decade. He wasn’t going to let politics change the way he was. God forbid! It was all personal with George Bush. He couldn’t see things any other way.
Of course, he would accommodate. After he came off like such a stiff in the ’84 reelection, and his personal polls took a dive, and reporters on his plane got so nasty, then his friends ganged up and made him change the staff: they told him he had to, if he ever wanted to be President; they called it a more “political” support team. That’s when he signed on Lee Atwater—neither son nor friend to any old Bush-friend—to run the PAC and the campaign to come. That’s when he had to let Dan Murphy go, and hire Craig Fuller as the new Chief of Staff. Fuller was a young White House pro: neat, calm, organized, and people said he knew how to stick the knife, if he had to. But he was another stranger. Jeez, Bush would call the office now, and half the people who answered were strangers! He’d live with it, if that’s what it took. But it just wasn’t ... friendly. And it wasn’t really fair to Dan. Those rules weren’t Dan’s rules, they were Bush’s. Bush told him just how he meant to do the job, even before he got elected. It was the fall of ’80, at the same lunch where he offered Dan the job. Murphy had been his deputy at the CIA. They could talk frankly. And Bush told him point-blank, wanted him to know how it was going to be, had to be ...
“I’ve thought a lot about it,” Bush said. “I know I’m not gonna have much input on policy, nothing substantive to do at all ...
“And I’ve decided, I can be happy with that.”
And he had been happy. That’s what no one could get through their heads, except Bar, of course. That’s one of the reasons he loved her: she understood things without talking. She was better at it than he was!
What was the Vice Presidency?
A wonderful adventure.
He had decided—they had decided—that it would be, just as he had decided how he was going to do the job. This was the ultimate triumph of discipline, and George Bush’s greatest talent: the power of mindset. He could decide—they could decide—how it was going to be, and then it was that way ... because no one, no one, would ever see them treating it any other way.
They loved the Reagans.
Why?
Because they loved the Reagans. They had decided.
And it didn’t start in 1980. Talent like that comes from a lifetime. There was the time George Bush’s career picked them up and moved them to Houston, and the wife of a business friend gave a tea for Barbara, to show her off to the ladies.
So they came to meet her, and one after the other, they asked: “And where do you come from?”
Bar said sweetly: “I live in Houston now.”
“Oh. Yes, but ... where do you come from?”
And Bar, with her smile still placid, beatific, replied: “Houston is my home now.”
They weren’t going to put her in that box, thank you. And they weren’t going to hand her husband a carpetbag, either. She had decided.
But the brilliance of it was, it wasn’t one party, one lunch with Admiral Dan, or one talk to the staff. It was there every day, unwavering.
What is the Vice Presidency?
A wonderful adventure. Every day.
So, every day, he did a little more, made another friend, signed more photos, wrote more notes to people he’d met ... every day. If no one could see that ... it didn’t matter! He had it in the bank. And every day, he did a little more.
Fly across the country and back for a ball game?
A wonderful adventure! He’d get his son Jeb to fly in from Florida, and bring his son, George P. ... And he’d call his eldest son, George, too. George and Laura were in Midland, just across the state, they could fly in, with friends. ... He’d make it a friends-and-family thing. Bar’ll come. Sure, she’ll come. It’ll be fun!
So the kids flew in to Houston, and they all met at the Astrohall, at the cocktail thing, before the game, and it was fun, sort of ...
But then they walked to the Dome, and the Service whisked the VP away to some bathroom downstairs, or some damn place, and the others were led to their seats in the park, the Vice President’s party to the owner’s box on the first-base line, and the others to seats somewhat removed. And that was the first bit of trouble: George W. Bush, George Bush the Younger, who’d gotten his wife and a couple of friends, and the friends’ private plane, and had flown across the state from Midland, Texas, to be with his father and mother at the ball game ... Georgie Bush, the firstborn, first son, the biggest and most jagged chip off the old block, Junior, as some friend
s now called him, George W. Bush ... along with his wife and friends, whom he’d roped into flying across the state, five hundred statute miles, and back, in the same night, for this game, to be with George H. W., and Barbara Bush ... was sitting off behind home plate.
“These our seats?”
Junior’s voice was mild, but the Advance man hastily checked the envelope to make sure. There was edge on that word, “our” ... there was a hint of ominous meaning in the glance Junior cast to his right, toward the field, toward the biblical Box Seat. Suddenly, there was more than a whiff of trouble in the air. This almost subsensory impression was reinforced a moment later, as Junior added quietly:
“Bullll-sheeit.”
The Advance man decided he’d better run off and check.
What the fuck is GOING ON here? They were screwing around with the wrong guy. Junior was now standing, staring at the Box Seat, watching who sat down behind Barbara Bush and the seat reserved for his father. There was Jeb, and his boy, P. They got seats with the old man. ... And a lot of them were Service. Most of them would leave. Anyway, they had to be there. Wait a minute! There was Fuller, the new Chief of Staff, and one of his paper-pushers. Are they sitting DOWN? ... Well, wait just a damn minute!
Fuller! There he was, with every damn oily hair in place, and his Washington suit stretched across his back like aluminum siding. It wasn’t enough that he wouldn’t return a damn phone call. He’s going to sit right behind them, right in the front-row box! We’re being moved out! Maybe he doesn’t know Junior’s here—the hell he doesn’t, he oughta—or that he might want to sit with his parents, have a few laughs with the family ... or that he likes to be seen in Texas, might want to run in Texas someday. What would that asshole know about running? Never ran for Sheriff! Tell you one thing: that sonofabitch doesn’t know the old man, if he thinks he can move the family out. The old friends were right: This guy’s an asshole! ... I’ve been replaced by STAFFERS!
What It Takes Page 3