by Kitty Kelley
Files in the Bush Presidential Library reveal a concerted effort on the part of George and his family to push him forward as Vice President. All of George’s biggest Texas supporters weighed in as well, including W. S. Farish III, president of W. S. Farish and Company, and H. Neil Mallon, chairman of Dresser Industries. Mallon’s letter to Nixon said: “Billy Graham is reported to have said that George Bush is the best on TV he has ever seen. I agree . . . You need him on the ticket.”
When George received a letter from his friend Louis F. “Bo” Polk Jr., vice president of finance for General Mills—who wrote that he was “pumping for Bush for Vice President as hard as I can. With your good looks and humor and my brains and ability as a lover to back you up, there would be no stopping you”—George responded: “Don’t just sit there mouthing platitudinous statements. Get in there and write Nixon a fiery letter.”
Prescott shrewdly advised his son to contact Thomas Dewey, the former governor of New York, who had lost the presidency in 1948 to “Give ’Em Hell” Harry Truman but still remained a power within the Republican Party. Dewey, a close friend of Prescott’s, presided over a secret coordinating committee to advise Nixon on a running mate. Dewey and George Champion made sure that the committee interviewed George Bush.
George went to the GOP convention in August full of hope that he might be chosen. He did not realize until much later that Nixon had discarded him early on because he was too inexperienced in government and had never won statewide office. After the riots of April 1968 in D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Trenton, Cincinnati, Newark, Detroit, and Boston, Nixon said he needed someone who understood the cities, and he narrowed his choices to mayors and governors, but no one expected him to choose the man who had nominated him for President in Miami Beach. Stunning everyone, including his closest advisers, Nixon announced his running mate was to be Maryland’s Governor Spiro T. “Ted” Agnew.
Prescott immediately wrote to Governor Dewey:
I fear, Tom, that Nixon has made a serious error here. He had a chance to do something smart, to give the ticket a lift, and he cast it aside. I can’t figure out why, when you were down to the last three names, any one of which would have been a better choice. I am sure Agnew is a good man. But to the press and the independents it seems like a pointless choice, or perhaps better, a wasted opportunity. And many seem to think it is worse than that . . . just a gesture to the Wallace South. If that pays off, I fear Dick will “lose on the peanut what he makes on the banana,” as the Italian fruit vendor said.
Three days later, Dewey responded to his old friend:
George has made such a fine impression in Washington and, indeed, on all the members of the Coordinating Committee where he appeared, that my expressed views about him for Vice President came from conviction and admiration. I was not alone in this I may say and I was in good company . . . I think there was simply a feeling that he had not been in public office long enough. Everything else was favorable and I am sure that he can look forward to a distinguished career with no limit on his future.
George was thrilled to read Dewey’s letter. He wrote to him immediately:
I am most appreciative of [your] interest and help.
The wine was a little heady—getting even considered for this post, but I do feel that the efforts made on my behalf were made with taste and in such a way as not to disrupt what I consider are many fine relationships in the Congress.
Thanks ever so much for your interest in this Silky Sullivan long shot. [Silky Sullivan, a racing term for a horse that makes a big run from far back, was named for the horse that once made up forty-one lengths to win a race.] Though we finished out of the money, it was a great big plus for me, and I am indebted to you for your interest.
When George responded to his friend Bob Connery, he wrote:
We did have a little somewhat abortive run for the vice-presidency. When I saw Nixon in San Diego last week he confirmed that he gave it very serious consideration, but decided against it because of my short service in the House. I hope the ticket does well and I feel that Agnew, off to a shaky start, has only one way to go and that’s up.
Privately George referred to Nixon’s choice of the Greek American Agnew as “Zorba, the Veep.”
Although Nixon had chosen the governor of Maryland to be his running mate, he was so impressed by George’s corporate clout that he made the young man his protégé.
From his father George had learned well the art of influence. He saw firsthand how it could fashion a successful political career. Like his father, he, too, would pull the family’s golden cords for each of his sons so that they could achieve financial independence. Then they, too, would insist they had made their millions on their own and that they had won election to high public office independent of the family’s dynastic assets.
During his 1968 campaign to be the vice presidential nominee, George carved time out of his frenetic schedule in June to attend his eldest son’s graduation from Yale, which was two full days of festivities. But George could only spare a couple of hours, and he stayed just long enough to see his son receive his diploma. Young George spent the rest of the time with friends.
“He hung out with my family for most of the two days,” said his Texas roommate, Clay Johnson. “I remember as his dad left, he made some comment about [wishing his] dad didn’t have these other obligations. ‘I wish . . . it would have been great if my dad could have been here during the whole time.’
“It wasn’t said in passing,” said Johnson. “Everybody wants their family there sharing with them . . . He’s very aware of the toll that public service takes on the family members.”
“My father died in 1986,” recalled Roland “Bowly” Betts, George W.’s fraternity brother and close friend. “George told [my family] a story about how after he graduated from Yale, he wrote my father a letter, thanking him for being his father-in-absentia. Nobody’s closer to their father than George, but his father was . . . busy. And he [George] just started bawling. Of course, then I’m bawling, and my wife is bawling, and soon all of us [my two daughters and George] are bawling.”
On his son’s graduation day, Congressman Bush had issued a press release denouncing the Poor People’s March on Washington and their encampment on the Mall known as Resurrection City. He had written to the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who led a ragtag army to the nation’s capital in a mule-drawn covered wagon to petition the government. Abernathy’s mission was to lobby Congress for a $2.50 minimum wage, 1 million federal jobs, and a guaranteed income. George said he was “disturbed by the powder keg atmosphere” of the assembled poor. His press release thundered: “This Congress will not buy threats.”
To his cousin Ray Walker, Uncle Herbie’s son, such a reaction on George’s part was in keeping with the Bush family’s grandiose sense of entitlement.
“Does anyone from that family understand what it is to be poor? No,” he said. “And the bigger question is: Do they understand their own ignorance?” Ray Walker included the Walkers as well as the Bushes in his disapproval, saying that both families lacked genuine empathy for those less fortunate.
Congressman Bush was not interested in getting to Yale in time to hear the speech of Dick Gregory, the black comedian and social activist. Gregory had arrived on the eighteenth day of a thirty-two-day fast to protest the war in Vietnam. He was unshaven, and his eyes were bloodshot. But he said he came to give Yale graduates an insight into what it was like to be Negro in America:
Think about going to buy a pack of cigarettes. You put your money in the machine, but nothing happens. You put more money in, and still nothing happens. You did what you were supposed to do, but nothing happened. So you kick the machine and you kick it again, but still nothing happens. It’s frustrating as hell. That cigarette machine owes you a pack of cigarettes, but it doesn’t deliver.
The class of 1968 gave the comedian a standing ovation. Years later, when he wrote his political memoir, George W. Bush remembered Gregory’s speech. “It
was a different perspective,” Bush said, “and it made a lasting impression.”
His father’s preoccupation at that time was to punish those who kicked the cigarette machine by inciting arson, looting, and violence during the 1968 riots. Bush introduced legislation to remove from federal employment anyone convicted of unlawful acts in connection with civil disorders. His bill went nowhere in Congress, but the publicity he received in Texas reinforced his hard-rock credentials as a law-and-order conservative who reflected the views of his constituency.
En route to the graduation ceremony at Yale, Congressman George Bush bypassed the Prescott S. Bush Mall, a sixty-unit low-rent housing project for senior citizens in New Haven that had been named in honor of his father. As a senator, Prescott had helped launch one of the most comprehensive programs of urban development in America and was honored for his interest in slum clearance and urban renewal. “In the beginning, when we were pioneers, my job as Mayor of New Haven was lonely and filled with frustration,” said Richard C. Lee at the dedication ceremony. “There was one voice, however, that was always heard, and it was the voice and vote of the senior senator from Connecticut.” Rents for the Bush development, including heat and hot water, started at forty-five dollars a month.
On that particular day in 1968 the difference between Prescott Bush and his political son could be measured in the miles that separated the muddy covered wagon in Resurrection City from the shiny black limousine speeding through the slums of New Haven to the lush oasis of Yale.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
George W. Bush was determined to go to Yale. His family’s long line of Old Blues stretched back four generations to his great-great-grandfather the Reverend James Smith Bush (class of 1844). His grandfather Prescott, whose devotion to the school never flagged, was known on campus as the senator from Yale. As a member of the Yale Corporation for twelve years, an associate fellow of Yale’s Calhoun College, and a member of the Yale Development Board, Prescott could easily tug his old school ties to get his grandson admitted if George really wanted to go.
“George, Yale is not a choice; it is a commitment. Do you know what that means?”
“I think so, Senator,” said the grandson, who was not allowed to address his grandfather in any other manner. “It means sticking with something no matter what.”
Prescott pointed to the young man’s breakfast plate. “It is the difference,” he said, “between ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed.”
Prescott liked to express himself in folksy ways. When he resigned from the Yale Development Board a few years later, he was asked if he would like to serve on an advisory committee. He wrote to Yale’s president Kingman Brewster:
I felt like the old colored preacher who was retiring at age 70 after 45 years with this same congregation, and in making his farewell prayer he said: “Oh Lawd . . . thou knowest that I have served thee long and to the best of my ability, thou knowest of my love for thee, and thou knowest that, even retired, I shall want to do all I can to help thy people here, but only, Oh Lawd, in an advisory capacity.”
After visiting his grandfather, young George returned to Andover and talked to the dean. He was told that his mediocre grades probably would not meet Yale’s stringent requirements. The dean suggested that George list two other choices for college. George wrote down: “(1) Yale, (2) Yale, (3) Yale.” As a backup, he applied to the University of Texas, but only because the dean insisted. George’s prep-school record, which he has never allowed to be released, was problematical, and not simply for less than stellar grades. During his years at Andover—1961 to 1964—he plastered a large Confederate flag on the wall of his room, which made the black students there feel distinctly unwelcome. Such blatant racism was tolerated by the school, especially from the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, one of Andover’s most esteemed alumni.
“George senior was a huge legend at Andover,” said Genevieve “Gene” Young, a New York editor who served on the Andover board with Bush. “He was known as a rock—that’s the Andover speak for a really big man on campus.”
George Herbert Walker Bush, who was on the Andover board of trustees from 1963 until 1979, had to intercede with the school on more than one occasion for his errant sons. Jeb was required to repeat the ninth grade when he entered Andover from the Kinkaid School in 1967. He later violated the zero-tolerance ban on alcohol and was suspended, but after his father’s intercession he was allowed to stay on. When Jeb graduated in 1971, his father handed out the class diplomas. Jeb’s brother Marvin entered Andover in 1971, and he, too, had to repeat the ninth grade. The next year Marvin and several friends were caught doing drugs. The friends were expelled, but again Daddy Bush interceded. He pleaded his son’s case so effectively that Marvin was allowed to finish his sophomore year. Instead of expulsion, Marvin was given an “honorary transfer” that enabled him to enter Woodberry Forest in Orange, Virginia, in 1973, and finish his last two years of high school.
Young George was admitted to Andover in 1961 as a tenth grader—what the school then called a “lower middle.” He entered with his younger cousin Kevin Rafferty, the son of Barbara’s sister, Martha; an older cousin, Prescott S. Bush III, P3, the son of Prescott Bush Jr., was already in attendance, proving that Andover was the family’s adolescent way station. From the moment George arrived, he struggled to survive. He labored to pass the basic diploma requirements: four years of English and expository writing; three years of math and a foreign language with no English spoken in class; one and a half years of science and history; one year of religion and one of art or music; plus four electives, from Russian to anthropology. Although 110 students in his class of 290 made the honor roll, George never did. He ended up graduating near the bottom of his class.
“George’s grades were the same as mine—a bare-bones C,” said J. Milburn “Kim” Jessup. “We passed by only a prayer and a whisker, but both of us got into Yale because we were legacies of our Yalie fathers.”
Time magazine had cited Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as “the nation’s best prep school.” For a public-school kid from Midland, Texas, who did not know his way around grammar and had never met a dictionary, Andover was academic boot camp.
“It was cold and distant and difficult,” George admitted years later. “Hard, hard, hard . . . In every way, it was a long way from home . . . Forlorn is the best word to describe my sense of the place and my initial attitude . . . My feelings of loneliness eased pretty quickly, though, as I made friends fast. The studies came slower. Andover was hard, and I was behind.”
George’s first English assignment was to write an essay about an emotional experience. He chose his sister’s death. He struggled to find the right words. He wanted to write “and the tears ran down my cheeks,” but he had already used the word “tears” several times. So he turned to the thesaurus his mother had given him when he left home. He searched for another word for “tears.” He wrote: “And the lacerates ran down my cheeks.”
The essay was returned to him with a big red zero. Scrawled across the top were the words: “DISGRACEFUL. See me immediately.” George was so scared, he asked friends, “How am I going to last a week?”
Years later he told the “lacerates” story to illustrate how poorly prepared he was for the rigors of Andover. Neither his previous education nor his home life had fostered any kind of appreciation for learning. He did not realize that most fifteen-year-olds of his social and educational level would have known the difference between “tears” as a noun and “tears” as a verb.
“In those days, Texas boys who got shipped off to school were usually in trouble with their parents,” George wrote in his autobiography. “In my case, Andover was a family tradition; my parents wanted me to learn not only the academics but also how to thrive on my own.”
George senior had loved Andover. He felt the school’s rigorous discipline—the strict dress code of jacket and tie and daily chapel—was exactly what his unruly son needed. Big
George also knew that Andover was the only prayer little George had of getting into Yale, and for the Bush family Yale was the ultimate ticket-punch.
Barbara was heartsick when her firstborn left for school. She had come to rely on him for companionship because her husband was rarely home. The dependent nature of the mother-son relationship showed itself on the day in the 1960s when Barbara had a miscarriage and young George drove her to the hospital because his father, as always, was traveling.
Halfway there, Barbara said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to get out of the car.”
“I’ll take you to the emergency room, don’t worry,” said her son.
As Barbara recalled the incident, Georgie picked her up at the hospital the next day. “He talked to me in the car and he said, ‘Don’t you think we ought to talk about this before you have more children?’”
When Georgie left for Andover, Barbara felt as if she were losing her best friend. “Every day I walked down the driveway to meet the mailman to see if he had written. I was homesick . . . Finally, the mailman, John Taylor, rang the doorbell and thrust a letter into my hands with a big smile on his face. He knew how much I missed Georgie. Fortunately, he didn’t hang around to see me open the letter. It started out, ‘Last weekend was the greatest in my life’ . . . I burst into tears . . . Our boy had the best weekend of his life without us.”