by Kitty Kelley
Barbara later admitted that she had leaned too heavily on her young son. She didn’t realize what she was doing to him until she heard him one day tell a friend that he couldn’t come out because he had to stay inside and play with his mother, who was lonely. “I was thinking, ‘Well, I’m being there for him,’” she said. “But the truth was he was being there for me.”
Having given up some of his carefree childhood to his emotionally needy parents, especially his grieving mother, young George would overcompensate years later. Forsaking his role as the responsible firstborn son, he would chase his adolescence well into adulthood. Yet at the age of forty, he would put the lie to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous dictum that there are no second acts in American lives. For George W., his sister’s death would remain a defining experience, not just establishing the powerful bond with his mother, but also affecting how he dealt with the world. Life would become a party, full of humor, driven by chance, shaded by fatalism. Even as a teenager, young George told his friends, “You think your life is so good and everything is perfect; then something like this happens and nothing is the same.”
CHAPTER NINE
Hollywood could not have cast a more impressive-looking U.S. senator than Prescott S. Bush. Tall and elegant in pinstripes, monogrammed shirts, and silk pocket squares, he looked like Jay Gatsby had dressed him. In autumn, he favored glen-plaid suits; in summer, two-tone shoes. For black tie, patent-leather slippers and a paisley silk cummerbund.
“I remember him wearing green linen slacks at the Chevy Chase Club,” said Nancy “Bitsy” Folger, whose father, Neil H. McElroy, was Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower.
“I remember spectator shoes, gold cuff links, silk hankies—the works,” said Marian Javits, wife of New York’s Senator Jacob Javits.
“Today he’d probably be on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly,” said Ellen Proxmire, wife of Wisconsin’s Senator William Proxmire.
With his year-round country-club tan, Prescott Bush looked as dashing as Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind. Aswim in a sea of shiny blue polyester suits, white Dacron shirts, and string ties, Prescott stood out in “the world’s most exclusive club” like a Rolls-Royce in a Studebaker showroom.
No one looked more like he belonged in the Senate than this very lucky investment banker from the Nutmeg State. Upon his arrival in Washington in November 1952, Prescott assumed the role of the senior senator from his state because he was filling Senator McMahon’s unexpired term. His committee assignments included Banking and Currency as well as Public Works.
As sure-footed as he appeared on the surface, Prescott took a pratfall in January 1953, when he signed on as one of sixty-three co-sponsors of the Bricker Amendment. The legislation, introduced to curtail the treaty-making powers of the President, appealed to conservatives who were still haunted by Roosevelt’s deal making at the 1945 Yalta conference. They believed that a sick and doddering FDR had carved up the world with Stalin while Winston Churchill, bloated with brandy, nodded off. Bricker’s ardent supporters included the Liberty League, Daughters of the American Revolution, the American Medical Association, the Committee for Constitutional Government, the Chicago Tribune—all of whom presented petitions signed by over a half-million Americans.
As a son of the establishment, Prescott Bush didn’t think twice about co-sponsoring the amendment, especially when he saw the opposition: the League of Women Voters, the Americans for Democratic Action, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the American Bar Association’s Section on International and Comparative Law, the American Association for the United Nations, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Anything that Mrs. Roosevelt was for, Prescott was against, until he found out that Eisenhower was also opposed.
“I’m so sick of this I could scream,” the President was quoted as telling his cabinet. “The whole damn thing is senseless and plain damaging to the prestige of the United States. We talk about the French not being able to govern themselves—and we sit here wrestling with a Bricker amendment.”
Once the President’s opposition became known, Prescott reevaluated his stand. In those days either a senator was an Eisenhower man or he wasn’t, and when Connecticut newspapers started tweaking Bush for disloyalty to the President who had gotten him elected, he quickly reversed himself. Just as quickly the White House rewarded him with a seat on the President’s Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, which meant frequent trips abroad to research policies of international trade, at taxpayers’ expense. When the showdown on the Bricker Amendment came on February 26, 1954, Prescott was safely back in the fold to help the administration win a tough battle by one scant vote.
By then, the Bushes had settled into their new life in Washington. Prescott had never been happier, and Dotty thrived on being able to share her husband’s work. She visited his office frequently, and on occasion helped out with the mail. She became a daily visitor to the Senate gallery and mastered legislative issues, particularly those pertaining to Connecticut. She wrote her children long newsy letters about her exciting life in the nation’s capital. “It’s wonderful with a Republican in the White House for the first time in twenty years,” she wrote. She quoted her father in her relief to be rid of “those awful Roosevelts” and “that Terrible Truman.” She made Washington sound like a little Paris on the Potomac, an international gathering place for the good and the great. She confided chatty personal details of the famous people she and the senator met at embassy balls, Georgetown dinners, garden parties, congressional teas, lectures, gallery openings, and White House receptions:
I went to play badminton at Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss’s with Martha Krock, wife of Arthur Krock of the New York Times, and several other girls. Mrs. Auchincloss is the mother of “Jackie” Kennedy, wife of the nice young Senator from Massachusetts, who has been laid up so long with a bad back. I was delighted to hear from her that after this last operation, in which they removed a great deal of pin from his spine, that he seems to be recovering rapidly.
Her husband’s political mentor, Ted Yudain, asked her to write a similar letter that he could publish in Greenwich Time and distribute as a weekly column to other newspapers throughout the state. “I agreed only because he said it would help Pres,” Dotty recalled years later. And help Pres it did, greatly warming up his frosty image for his constituents. Her column, signed Mrs. Prescott Bush, appeared regularly as a society-page feature titled “Washington Life as Seen by a Senator’s Wife.”
Ordinarily, she wrote with a honey gloss, especially about her husband (“Every personal contact with that man increases my respect for him, if such a thing is possible”) and her grandchildren (“The feel of those little pairs of arms around my neck meant more to me than any diamond necklace ever could”). A devout, even adamant Christian who grew up going to Presbyterian church three times every Sunday, Dotty infused her columns with her religiosity. She frequently quoted from the Bible as well as the prayers and incantations she liked best from the many church services and spiritual lectures she attended: “When I saw John Foster Dulles, our Secretary of State, just named ‘Man of the Year’ by Time magazine, with his truly modest bearing, passing the bread and wine, I was reminded of Christ’s words: ‘He that would be great among you, let him become your servant.’”
Believing that everyone should pray at least twice a day, Dotty was incensed when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional:
The six judges who concurred in that decision seem to completely ignore the fact that we are a nation founded under God. The first thing the Pilgrim Fathers did when they landed on the bleak Massachusetts coast was to kneel and give thanks to God.
This country was founded so that its citizens could be free to practice religion—freedom of, not from religion.
Are we going to weaken our country by denying our children their rightful heritage?
She was equally forthright about her strong partisan views. In one column she dismissed the Soviet General Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, as “a dou
ble-dealer” and demanded to know: “How do the leaders of a law-revering nation, with high moral standards, deal with the Russian leaders who have no regard at all for the truth?”
She also voiced her dismay at “the official support given to the exchange of Cuban rebels when nothing is being done for American citizens imprisoned in China.”
In another column, she chastised the Senate for taking too long to confirm President Eisenhower’s appointments:
When our boys were little, one item on their report card read, “Claims no more than his fair share of time and attention,” abbreviated in our family to “claims no more.” Well, the Senate Committees have certainly been getting a good fat minus in “claims no more,” especially where Presidential appointments have been concerned.
She adored Eisenhower and wrote emotionally when he appeared at the Republican Women’s National Convention after suffering a heart attack:
Television makes him look so pale, that it was a joy to see him in the flesh, and see for ourselves how ruddy and vigorous he looks.
It was a very moving moment. All the women clapped and screamed and waved, but the really touching thing was that after he had spoken, there was hardly a dry eye around me, and I’m not ashamed to say that my handkerchief was in use, too. There is just something so big and fine and noble about that man.
She lambasted Senator Wayne Morse, the Republican turned Democrat from Oregon, for opposing Clare Boothe Luce to be Ambassador to Brazil. As the senior senator from her state, Prescott had escorted Mrs. Luce into the hearing and made a robust statement of support for her in front of the Foreign Relations Committee. Immediately, Senator Morse objected to her 1944 campaign statement charging that President Roosevelt was “the only American President that ever lied us into war.” Lighting cigarette after cigarette, Mrs. Luce conceded that her language had been “most intemperate.” Morse maintained that such language disqualified her from diplomacy. She fingered the fur piece on her lap and kept taking her glasses on and off. After several hours of wrangling, she departed for New York. She was overwhelmingly confirmed days later, with only eleven Democrats voting against her.
Responding to reporters’ queries, she said she was delighted to be the new Ambassador. Then she added: “My difficulty, of course, goes some years back and begins when Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was kicked in the head by a horse.”
Within the hour, Morse claimed the floor of the Senate for a point of personal privilege. “Not so soon did I expect that those of us who voted against Clare Boothe Luce would be proven so right,” he said. “I am not surprised that this slanderer that the Senate confirmed just a few minutes ago would make this kind of statement . . . I will pray for God’s guidance for this lady so she will be more stable in the performance of her duties than she was when she issued that statement this afternoon.”
The Senate listened tensely as several members who had voted for her confirmation now expressed regret for having done so. Three days later Mrs. Luce went to Washington to meet with President Eisenhower, who accepted her decision to quit.
Prescott Bush issued a statement saying he deeply regretted the necessity for her resignation, but Dotty Bush was not so politic:
[T]he appointment of Mrs. Luce would have been so acceptable to the Brazilians and it seems a pity that her talents cannot be used because of one man’s vindictiveness. Last week’s performance by Senator Morse in his attack on Mrs. Luce did a real disservice to his country as I feel sure Clare Boothe Luce would have done a marvelous job for us in Rio. Oh my! Washington! Why we don’t all have ulcers, as we seem to leap from one fight into another.
Dotty considered wasting time a sin, which is how she described the “inordinate number” of congressional committee hearings that cabinet members have to endure:
They place an unbearable burden upon the departmental heads of government. Why couldn’t a new system be worked out? Why couldn’t every Representative and every Senator on every committee on the Hill having to do with defense, send his questions in writing, and then the Secretary could appear for as many days as necessary to answer all the questions? In this way, all the duplications would at least be done away with.
When Congress proposed a 50 percent pay raise for itself, her husband objected. “I don’t think that anybody who wants to make money ought to be a Senator or a Congressman,” Prescott said. “I look upon this job as a service job like the ministry, like teaching; and, if you want to make money, if you want to be in business for profit, then don’t be a Senator or a Congressman.”
Prescott, who made $12,500 as a senator, had given up his seven paid directorships in publicly owned companies when he took office. He continued to receive a handsome partnership income from Brown Brothers Harriman, which was allowed in those days. Other senators received income from their law firms or their businesses back home.
Prescott did support a pay increase for federal judges because they had to give up all outside income, but he tried to block the raise for members of Congress. His Connecticut colleague, William Purtell, objected. Purtell asked Bush if one of the tests in Congress should be acquired or inherited wealth, both of which Prescott had by that time, and whether members of Congress with growing families should be required to choose between “providing for their loved ones” and “serving their constituents.”
Prescott retorted that many in Congress never had it so good and many were not worth what they were currently getting paid. “The mere fact that one man says he can’t make ends meet doesn’t indicate we should raise the pay 50 percent,” he said.
Revering the Senate as a public trust, he genuinely felt that the office should be above mere money, but he did not recognize, or at least acknowledge, that such high-mindedness was much easier to maintain with a continuing flow of cash from Brown Brothers Harriman, plus the large inheritance that his wife received (put in trust for her children) upon the 1953 death of her father.
Prescott enjoyed every bit of decorum that accompanied his position, and demanded the perquisites of his high office. He insisted that his grandchildren call him “Senator,” according to the recollections of Jeb Bush. Prescott’s sister Margie Clement, who lived in New Haven, was encouraged to fly the American flag whenever he visited. “I lived a couple of houses down on Bishop Road,” said Michael Lynch, the registrar of vital statistics in New Haven, “and everybody always knew when Mrs. Clement was expecting company. She would put out a small American flag—I don’t think it was even three by five—when Prescott arrived. They didn’t put out the flag on any other occasion.”
Prescott expected the same kind of respect from his Senate colleagues. During a 1953 debate on interest rates for government bonds, Senator Albert Gore, Democrat of Tennessee, caught himself calling Senator Bush “the gentleman from Connecticut,” which is the way House members address each other. In the Senate, the rules call for members to address each other as “the distinguished Senator.”
Gore immediately apologized, saying it was his first Senate speech after a long career in the House and that he had lapsed inadvertently. He assured the Senate that while he considered Prescott a gentleman, he also regarded him as a distinguished senator. Prescott accepted his apology with a forgiving smile. Such civility was not evident forty-seven years later when Prescott’s grandson battled Gore’s son for the presidency.
Nor was Lyndon Johnson so courteous. The Texas senator once interrupted Prescott on the floor of the Senate in a debate over trade. Prescott tried to assert his right to continue talking when Johnson insisted he stop his “bush league” debate so he could proceed with Senate business. Harry McPherson, who worked for Johnson at the time, recalled the incident as coming close to violating the Senate rules of civility. “I remember I was sitting in the well of the Senate and my head snapping back as Johnson said that. You know you’re not supposed to speak directly about another member that way. Prescott Bush continued gamely to make his point, but I think he was trying to call attention to the inappropriateness
of what Johnson had said.”
On another occasion Louisiana’s Democratic Senator Russell Long took vigorous exception to something Prescott said on the floor of the Senate. “They frequently disagreed,” recalled Hamilton Richardson, Long’s legislative assistant, “and I think Senator Long got a little carried away in his comments about Senator Bush, although I don’t remember the exact issue . . . What I do remember is Senator Bush getting up and saying that Senator Long’s conduct reminded him of the Roman Emperor who made his horse Consul of Rome. ‘Only in that case, unlike with Senator Long, the Emperor appointed the whole horse.’”
Many Senate aides remember Prescott Bush as a formidable man of patrician carriage who fawned over his betters, charmed his peers, and was utterly unapproachable to underlings.
“During the 1950s there were no restaurants on the Hill, so you’d see everyone eating in the cafeteria,” said Bobby Wood, an aide to Alabama’s Democratic Senator Lister Hill. “Most senators ate there with their staffs while a few, only a few, preferred eating in the senators’ private dining room in the Capitol. Prescott Bush was one of the few who never ate in the cafeteria with the help. In fact, he didn’t even like being on the same elevator with us. He’d always take the ‘Senators Only’ elevator.”
“I remember him as a dark and scowling man,” said Frank Valeo, a former staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “but exceptionally well dressed.”
“He looked more like a senator than any senator I’ve ever met,” said William Hildenbrand, the former secretary of the Senate. “He would never come on the Senate floor unless looking impeccable. He was the kind of guy who probably put out the garbage in pressed pajamas, or wore black tie to bed. He carried himself with all the confidence of an aristocrat.”
“God, he was a stickler for the details of etiquette and doing things just so,” recalled Pat Holt, former chief of staff for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I remember meeting up with him on a foreign trip in Guatemala at a social function one night. He was an enthusiastic golfer and had asked the attaché to arrange a golf game. The attaché apparently invited five people to play. Bush took him aside and said, ‘I used to be president of the U.S. Golf Association, and I must tell you that serious golfers do not play in parties of five. We play only in foursomes.’”