The Family

by Kitty Kelley

  It is hot and sultry here. Won’t you please, as an experienced sailor, grasp the tiller and steer us to the “new frontier.” This is the time for greatness.

  Kindest regards.

  Two months later Richard Nixon’s running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, predicted a Negro would be named to the cabinet if the Vice President were elected President. As a member of the “truth squad,” Prescott quickly stepped forward to clarify the matter: “I think Mr. Lodge perhaps overstepped the bounds of propriety . . . He doesn’t name cabinet members and he knows that. He later qualified his statement to say he meant qualified Negroes would be considered for appointment.”

  Prescott campaigned doggedly and devotedly for the Nixon-Lodge ticket, and his wife was even more partisan. “They are the team for the times,” Dorothy told women’s clubs throughout Connecticut. “Senator Kennedy, who has missed 331 Senate roll calls, excluding the times he was ill, has generated an appeal similar to Frank Sinatra among teen-agers . . . The American people are too sensible to turn the election for President into a popularity contest . . . John F. Kennedy is a very ambitious young man who has neglected his work (by missing Senate votes) not only to fill his ambition, but the ambition of his father as well . . . It is fearful to think that a man of wealth can set out to gain an office and let it be bought for him.” Dorothy might have been shocked to hear people say the very same thing about her grandson during the 2000 presidential campaign.

  Prescott fired off telegrams to Nixon throughout the 1960 campaign, supporting his position on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu and denigrating Kennedy’s “irresponsible adventures” into foreign affairs, especially Cuba, which Prescott said had “come with ill grace from a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Tsk-tsking his colleague, Prescott concluded: “Senator Kennedy has been slighting his homework, due probably to his poor attendance record at committee meetings.”

  Shortly before Election Day, Prescott wired Nixon and predicted: “Connecticut will give you pleasant surprise early Tuesday night.”

  Instead, the state flabbergasted Prescott and disappointed Nixon by going for Kennedy. Adding to Prescott’s discomfort was the public drubbing he was receiving from Albert Morano, who, now out of Congress, threatened to run against him so that Connecticut could have a senator “who cares for all the people, not just a few.” Prescott never deigned to respond to Morano’s charges, but on December 30, 1960, he announced that he would run for reelection in 1962. At the time, he was not looking forward to returning to Washington, where the Democrats now controlled the White House as well as the Senate and the House of Representatives. In a handwritten letter to Nixon after the election, Prescott wrote:

  Dear Dick:

  As the smoke clears, I send you this word of my continued admiration and respect. Washington will not seem the same to me after eight years service there with you, and in an administration for which I had no other feeling than pride and respect.

  I had hoped we could continue in the same climate with you presiding. I could gladly have given my best to support your programs.

  You had conducted yourself with courage, decency, and great ability, thus earning the continued admiration of those, including myself, who have been privileged to support your campaign vigorously.

  With warm personal regards, I am

  Sincerely,

  Pres Bush

  Two weeks later Prescott sent a letter to President-elect Kennedy, albeit not handwritten or as heartfelt as his letter to Nixon but still collegial:

  Dear Jack:

  I congratulate you upon your brilliant campaign for the nomination and election. I trust that you may be given strength to do your utmost for our country. You have proven yourself an extremely able man, better suited for the Presidency than any of the aspirants who opposed you for the nomination.

  I shall try to be helpful whenever I can, especially in matters affecting our National Security, Defense and foreign policy.

  In January 1961, Dorothy attended the joint session of the Senate and the House after the Electoral College ballots were officially counted and Richard Nixon proclaimed that John Kennedy was elected President of the United States. “This was an unusual situation,” she wrote in her column, “the first time in 100 years that the vanquished candidate has had to announce the election of his opponent.”

  Dorothy would not live long enough to see history repeat itself in the year 2000, when the incumbent Vice President, Al Gore, had to announce the election, decided by the Supreme Court, of his opponent—Dorothy’s grandson George Walker Bush.

  During the 1960 presidential campaign Governor Abe Ribicoff had done such a spectacular job turning out Connecticut’s vote for JFK that the President tapped the governor to become Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

  “Abe went to Washington—in fact he lived a few houses from Prescott and Dorothy Bush in Georgetown,” said former Ribicoff aide Herman Wolf, “but after a couple of years he got restless with the bureaucracy and decided to resign and run for the Senate.”

  Galvanized by the specter of having to run against the popular governor in a state that now had more registered Democrats than Republicans, Prescott reached out to the Ribicoff constituency.

  The Connecticut Jewish Ledger of March 1, 1962, ran an exclusive with the headline: “Bush to Add Rider to Foreign Aid Bill Striking at Saudi Arabian Bias.” The story stated that the 1951 Dhahran Air Base agreement, coming up for lease renewal, gave the Saudis the right to reject any American they considered unacceptable. The principal use of this section of the agreement was the exclusion of American Jews from service at Dhahran. Prescott said, “In any new agreement with Saudi Arabia, we should make it unequivocally clear that we insist there be no restrictions because of religion, race or ethnic background of any member of the American personnel assigned to Dhahran . . . This is the time for us to assert our principles, to express our repugnance for discrimination and to demand equality for all citizens in any foreign agreement.”

  Two months later Prescott endeared himself to Connecticut’s Catholics by opposing the Eisenhower administration on federal aid to parochial schools. “As a matter of law,” he said, “I am convinced that the Supreme Court’s decisions allow room for aid to these schools and that federal loans would come well within the permissible constitutional limits.”

  Always responsive to his constituents, Prescott now worked overtime, responding to every letter and phone call that came into his office. When he received a complaint about “off-color” plays staged at the Westport Playhouse that were scheduled to tour South America as part of a cultural exchange program, he protested on the Senate floor.

  “I am most concerned about two plays—The Zoo Story by Edward Albee and Miss Julie by August Strindberg—that have been described to me as filthy,” he said. He demanded “some control” over plays performed by American acting companies in foreign countries, even if they were not sponsored by the government, and suggested he would introduce legislation that would set up a federal review board. Prescott’s outrage was triggered by a letter from the director of the Department of Overseas Union Churches of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. The director, who lived in Stamford, Connecticut, had asked: “How many Latin American viewers will be able to see through the filth to some abstract and artistic integrity? Why should we expect any people to respect us when we glorify prostitutes and homosexuals and gangsters under the guise of entertainment?”

  Forty years later, when asked about Prescott Bush’s censure of his play, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Edward Albee responded:

  I’ve gotten very used to Republican anti-intellectual and anti-creative posturing, and general congressional misbehavior in the form of such things as The House Un-American Activities Committee and the Army-McCarthy hearings.

  The interesting thing about Senator Prescott Bush’s condemnation of “The Zoo Story” was the height of objectivity which his ignorance of the piece gave
him. I’m also grateful that he put me in the company of Strindberg. I wonder if he had read “Miss Julie” either.

  I don’t want to get too much into my continuing and growing dismay with the Bush family beyond saying that democracy is fragile and that many people surrounding the present president [George Walker Bush] seem less concerned with the democratic process than I.

  When the 1962 polls indicated that Ribicoff would defeat Bush by 10 percent, Prescott called upon former President Eisenhower for help. Vacationing in Palm Desert, California, Eisenhower responded with a note: “. . . certainly want to do anything appropriate, and that in the opinion of the experts will be helpful, to aid in your campaign. The Republican Party needs more statesmen of the capacity and qualifications you have so ably demonstrated.”

  Taking this as a yes, Prescott wired back and asked Ike to appear at a political rally in Hartford on October 13, 1962:

  I understand that you will be on your way to Boston to appear there the next day. As you know I shall be engaged in a difficult campaign for re-election since it is contemplated that Secretary of HEW, Abraham Ribicoff, former governor of Connecticut is now planning to run for the Senate against me.

  I can think of no single thing which would be [sic] fortify me and the rest of the candidates on the Republican ticket as having you present on that date for this meeting. I have cleared this with Senator Barry Goldwater, chairman of the Senatorial Campaign Committee and also Bill Miller, National Chairman. Both give it their blessing and both will concur in the hope that you can be with us in Hartford.

  I am most anxious about this and do hope you can fit it into your plans.

  With respect and warm regards, I am sincerely yours,

  Prescott Bush, USS

  Eisenhower’s response had to leave Prescott feeling slightly whipsawed. Nine months before the scheduled event, Ike said he was “uncertain” about his plans:

  May we leave the whole matter in abeyance for the time being (and will you go ahead with your own plans as though I could not be present). When I get back East, I shall have a talk with Bill Miller to determine exactly what he wants me to do in the campaign, and what I can, without the expenditure of too much time and energy (and opposition from Mamie) do to accommodate his suggestions.

  On his sixty-seventh birthday, May 15, 1962, a few weeks before the GOP convention in Connecticut, Prescott made a momentous decision. After conferring with his wife and his doctor, he called party leaders together in Hartford the next day and announced in a choking voice that he would not be a candidate for reelection.

  “The vigorous seven-day work week of the past few months has convinced me that I do not have the strength and vigor needed to do full justice to the duties of the campaign ahead nor to the responsibilities involved in serving six years in the Senate, most of which would be in my seventies,” he said. “The advice of my physician has strongly reinforced my decision.”

  The announcement shocked the political press corps in the state and eased the way for Ribicoff’s election. Despite early polls showing Ribicoff’s lead, most Connecticut newspapers had given Prescott an even chance of winning reelection, but no one thought it would be an easy campaign, especially without Eisenhower’s coattails.

  “A lot of people felt Bush bowed out rather than get beaten by Ribicoff,” said Herman Wolf many years later, “but I honestly think Bush would’ve won that election. The people of Connecticut were not all that happy with Abe for leaving them in 1960 to join JFK’s cabinet.”

  In her first column after her husband’s surprise announcement, Dorothy Bush wrote that she was grateful for his decision to retire: “Dizzy spells at the end of days spent on the road followed by sleep-destroying nervous pains in the stomach from worry over whether or not he would have the physical strength necessary to get through the six months and six years ahead, was the warning.”

  What she didn’t write about was her concern that the pressure of running for reelection would trigger Prescott’s drinking, which Dotty never admitted was alcoholism. To her, alcoholism was not a disease but a moral failing, and that was not something she could accept in the husband she adored.

  “We both knew that once the convention had taken place, the Senator would have to keep going, even if he died in his tracks,” she wrote. “After these warnings, suppose he collapsed in the middle of the campaign? What a weapon to hand an opponent!”

  “No,” she concluded. “The chance must be given to nominate a younger, more vigorous candidate whose strength is not in question.”

  Prescott always regretted his decision. “As I look back on it,” he said four years later, “I think it was a mistake. The information we had at that time, about the prospects for the election, were very favorable . . . A public opinion poll which we had showed that I probably would beat anybody they [the Democrats] could put up. So as I look back, having not been happy in retirement for four years, or nearly four years now, and watching the scene down there with great interest . . . I often wish I had gone to a hospital and rested up for about 4 or 5 days or a week, and I’ve often wished my doctor had said to me, ‘Now, listen—don’t make any decision now. You’re in a terrible state of mind. Go over to the Greenwich Hospital and rest for a week, and then I’ll talk to you.’ But no, she said, ‘You’d be a fool if you ran.’ I remember her language. But I was in a state of exhaustion, frankly, and that’s no time to make an important decision. So I do regret it . . . I’ve been awfully sorry, many times, that I made that decision.”

  Prescott’s consolation prize came in June 1962, when he received an honorary degree from his beloved Yale along with the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and President John F. Kennedy. The President, Harvard class of 1940, rocked the house when he underscored Harvard’s scholarship and Yale’s social status. “It could be said that now I have the best of both worlds,” said Kennedy, “a Harvard education and a Yale degree.”

  George had flown to New Haven to watch his father be honored by his alma mater. As usual, he had left Barbara and the children behind in Texas. During those years of their marriage he traveled at will while Barbara stayed home. He frequently went to New York City on business, and then stayed to play. He flew to St. Louis so often that he became a member of the St. Louis Country Club, and he regularly visited his parents in Washington, D.C., whereas his housebound wife once went for four years without seeing her in-laws. Nor did George ever miss a summer in Kennebunkport, if only to fly in for a few days to see his Uncle Herbie. Barbara and the children only made it to Maine every other year because, she claimed, they couldn’t afford the expense of the trip as a family. When they could, she drove the children in the family car and George flew.

  From the very beginning, the Bushes’ marriage was run to accommodate George. Part of that equation was the mentality of Barbara’s generation, which believed that wives should stay home, raise children, and keep house. The other part of the dynamic was Barbara herself. “In a marriage where one is so willing to take on responsibility and the other is so willing to keep the bathrooms clean, that’s the way you get treated,” she said.

  She knew that she had married a man who wanted a wife exactly like his mother, so she tried to emulate her mother-in-law at every turn. “Barbara worshipped Dotty, and she said she tried to pattern her life on her,” said Mary Carter Walker, who was married to Uncle Herbie.

  Barbara dyed her white hair for many years because her mother-in-law asked her to. Dotty thought Barbara would look better for George, but every time Barbara went swimming, her brown hair turned green. Then one day she stopped trying to make herself look better. “George Bush never noticed,” she said almost bitterly. “So why had I gone through those years of agony?”

  George needed his wife to be as adoring as his mother had been, and he let Barbara know whenever she missed the mark. “I remember George said to me once when we were first married, ‘You know, you ridiculed me in public, Bar, and I wish you wouldn’t do that,’�
� she recalled. “Well, it was just a dumb thing, but he was dead right, and I never did it again.” (Years later, when he called her “a blimp” on television, she absorbed the insult with a smile and told reporters that her husband had a wonderful sense of humor. Proving the power of parental example, George W. Bush made a similar remark to reporters years later, describing his wife, Laura, as “a lump.”)

  Barbara was a great mother for boys—tough, athletic, and disciplined—but while she shared the same unyielding grit as her mother-in-law, she lacked Dorothy’s soft touch. “My grandmother [was] an unbelievable person,” said George W. Bush, “one of the most gentle, kind souls I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t necessarily describe Mother . . . as a gentle soul.”

  With her husband gone most of the time, Barbara had to take her pleasure in her children. As Donnie Radcliffe noted, “She was highly organized. Her cupboards were stocked, her children’s scrapbooks up-to-date, her thank-you notes always in the mail. She methodically sewed nametags in her children’s clothes and cooked commendable spaghetti. She never missed a meeting with the teachers and never played bridge. Her housekeeping matched her mind: no clutter.”

  “She always made me feel like a slob,” said her Texas friend Marion Chambers.

  Still, it wasn’t easy for Barbara, as she admitted years later. “I had moments where I was jealous of attractive young women, out in a man’s world. I would think, well, George is off on a trip doing all these exciting things and I’m sitting home with these absolutely brilliant children, who say one thing a week of interest.”

  Barbara longed to have more of her husband’s time and attention. When she broached the subject of needing some verbal demonstration of tenderness, George brushed her off. “You shouldn’t have to tell that. You see it. You know it.”

  By the time they moved to Houston, Barbara knew that her husband was steering their life in another direction. She had seen him sprawled on the floor watching the 1960 political conventions on television. “I’m going to be up there one of these days,” he told her. “Just wait.”