by Kitty Kelley
Months later the President missed another opportunity to mend racial divisions when rioting broke out after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. The verdict was announced on April 29, 1992, as Bush was leaving a state dinner for German President Richard von Weizsäcker. Standing in his tuxedo and black patent-leather dancing slippers, the President made a statement that would be replayed for the next seven days, making him look foppishly cavalier and out of touch with the real world.
“The court system has worked,” he said. “What is needed now is calm and respect for the law until the appeals process takes place.”
His remark was idiotic because when the defense wins a criminal case, there is no appeal.
What erupted was bloody chaos and the violent deaths of fifty-four people in the most deadly riot in U.S. history. A tornado of destruction whipped through South Los Angeles, turning the area into an incinerator after 4,000 fires, staggering property damage to 1,100 buildings, 2,383 reported injuries, and 13,212 arrests. That evening, television viewers watched in horror as Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and beaten by a mob. Many people blamed the President of the United States for not immediately stepping forward in a time of national crisis.
“Bush had nothing to say when it counted to address the searing pain, the anger in the soul, that follows a miscarriage of justice of this enormity,” wrote Thomas Oliphant in The Boston Globe.
The riots continued all day and all night through April 30, when federal troops and the National Guard were sent in to restore order. The President tried to redeem himself with an impassioned speech to the nation on May 1, again calling for calm.
“What you saw and what I saw on the TV video was revolting. I felt anger. I felt pain. I thought: How can I explain this to my grandchildren?”
Whatever ground Bush might have gained with his speech was lost three days later, when his press secretary blamed the riots on the welfare programs enacted by Democrats during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. “We believe that many of the root problems that have resulted in inner-city difficulties were started in the 60s and 70s,” said Marlin Fitzwater, “and that they have failed.”
The next day Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was walking the burned-out streets of South Los Angeles talking to Korean shop owners whose small businesses had been destroyed by looters. Even then the President and the First Lady did not veer from their separate schedules of fund-raising in Massachusetts and Ohio. Only after he saw his Democratic opponent on television meeting with community leaders in Los Angeles did the President realize that he, too, should make an appearance in the nation’s second-largest city. He flew to California on May 6, a week after the Rodney King verdict. He arrived on Air Force One and was driven like a potentate in his bulletproof presidential limousine. The crowds jeered, and so did the polls, which showed a drastic fall in his support since the rioting had begun.
“It’s hard to believe that the President of the United States was so politically obtuse, but he was,” said Professor Susan J. Tolchin of the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University. “His aides were frantic. I just happened to be included in an informal strategy session one night during the riots that included Bush’s campaign manager, Fred Malek, several communications specialists, a couple of journalists, me, and the host, Roy Goodman, a Republican state senator from New York City.
“‘How can we get George Bush reelected?’ Malek asked everyone.
“I certainly didn’t want to see the guy reelected, but the political scientist in me took over. I had just seen the network news that evening, showing clips of all the black and Korean shopkeepers in tears as they poured out of their blazing liquor stores and groceries. Everything they had worked for was engulfed in flames, every bit of it uninsured.
“I suggested that Malek ask the President to phone his friends in the corporate world and recruit CEOs to each adopt a store, give the owner twenty-five thousand dollars, and put each back in business. Twenty-five thousand dollars to the presidents of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler for bankrolling a Korean grocer is like twenty-five dollars to me. Republicans would be in the enviable position of rewarding hard work; the GOP could capitalize on its reputation for entrepreneurship; private business could be seen rewarding enterprise, not violence; and the President would position himself in the role of leading the city back to racial peace. It looked like a win-win for everyone. The companies would get great publicity for their good deeds; President Bush would get credit for leadership; and the taxpayer would be off the hook because ‘big government’ wouldn’t have to spend a dime.
“Everyone agreed it was a wonderful idea. A week later I happened to see Fred Malek in the airport. ‘What happened to my idea?’ I asked. Malek shook his head woefully. ‘I couldn’t sell it to Bush,’ he said. ‘I went in to see him the very next morning with your idea . . . He didn’t listen to us on anything.’
“I felt then that Bush had blown the domestic-leadership opportunity of his presidency. He missed the chance to reconcile the conflicting angers in South Los Angeles, where people were suffering physical, economic, and emotional damage.”
The Bush reelection campaign was in such disarry that Barbara sent up a flare for her firstborn. George W. took a leave of absence from Harken Energy in June 1992 and began commuting from Dallas to D.C. to ride herd again for his father. Months earlier Junior had warned the White House that Ross Perot was mounting a serious third-party assault on the presidency, but his father refused to take the Texas billionaire seriously. “He’s an idiot,” said the President. He told his campaign: “I’m not worried about him. You guys get paid to worry about him. If you want to worry about him, go ahead, but what are you going to do anyway?”
After announcing his candidacy in February, Perot bowed out in July but reentered the race in October. George W. told reporters he had named his golf cart “Perot,” saying you could just never tell if it was going to run or not.
Whether headhunter or head chopper, George W. made his influence felt throughout his father’s White House. Before the inaugural, Junior had chaired the “silent committee” that selected the names for the top federal jobs in the new administration. Ability and experience were irrelevant. Unswerving loyalty to his father was the son’s only criterion.
“Let’s make Roger Horchow the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts,” Junior said.
The choice of the Dallas catalog king struck one participant as inappropriate.
“Why Horchow?”
“Because he gave money to my father.”
A quick cross-check of financial records showed that Horchow also contributed to the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.
“It didn’t take any more than that,” said the participant. “George W. said, ‘That’s it.’ And Horchow ceased to be a candidate.”
Documents in the Bush Presidential Library indicate the influence the son wielded in his father’s administration. Whether it was a job, an autographed picture, or a personal meeting with the President, the requests George W. forwarded to the White House were honored with dispatch. His memos to C. Boyden Gray resulted in several judgeships. For Rhesa H. Barksdale to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, W. wrote: “Boyden—This guy [is] up for federal judgeship. He is a very good man—Any help would be appreciated. Geo W.”
George W.’s memo recommending Ellen Segal Huvelle got her seated as an associate judge for the D.C. Superior Court, and his memo forwarding the recommendation of a fraternity brother, Don Ensenat (Yale 1968), got Edith Brown “Joy” Clement placed on the federal bench for the Eastern District of Louisiana: “Boyden—Don Ensenat is a very good man and good friend of all Bushes—Please give Joy any consideration you can—Warmly, George.”
In December 1991, the President called on his son to fire White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Sununu had been using government planes for private travel, and young George dutifully delivered the chop. Later W. told D magazine in D
allas: “It’s just not that often you can do something really meaningful to help the President of the United States.”
Unfortunately, the President, who gave full rein to his sense of self-entitlement, did not do much to help himself. Ignoring Ross Perot as a threat, Bush also dismissed Bill Clinton as an “unworthy” opponent. During an Oval Office meeting in 1992, President Bush pointed to his chair and asked, “Can you see Bill Clinton sitting here?” Uproarious laughter all around. Despite polls that showed Clinton beating him, the President told his family and friends that the Arkansas governor did not stand a chance. He could not see a “draft dodger” beating a decorated war hero. Neither could his wife, who went on television to say: “Bill Clinton and I have something in common. Neither of us served in the military. Ha. Ha.”
“There were other things as well,” said Osborne Day, a Bush family friend. “I’m afraid George was encouraged by what all the Secret Service guys with Clinton told him . . . George told his sister, Nan Ellis, about all the Clintons’ rows and Hillary throwing ashtrays at Bill and how they hurled profanities at each other, and fought all the time. ‘A guy like that just can’t win,’ George said. ‘A guy like that doesn’t deserve to be President.’”
To George H.W. Bush, someone who was not from a family like the Bushes or the Walkers—a “good” family—simply should not be President of the United States. Bush had met the Clintons in September 1989 in Charlottesville, Virginia, at a bipartisan summit of governors that he had convened to write national education goals for the country. The President and Mrs. Clinton got into a heated discussion over education spending and infant-mortality rates. Hillary told friends she was shocked that the President of the United States was so wrong on basic issues affecting America’s children and so ill informed. Those friends report she told her husband: “We can take this guy. No question. He knows nothing . . . We have to take him. There’s no way the country can survive in his hands.”
Having spent 1988 getting his own private tutorial from a Bush strategist on how to run for President, Bill Clinton was more than ready. “I had worked for Bush in 1988 and was very involved with Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes in the anti-Dukakis campaign,” said the political consultant Dick Morris. “I had run the campaign that defeated Dukakis for governor of Massachusetts in 1978, so I was kind of the house expert on how to run against the guy . . . Clinton and I talked every day, and I kept him very, very closely informed of what the thinking in the Bush campaign was . . . It was like going to school for Clinton in learning how a presidential campaign worked, how negatives were thrown in, how you retaliate, how you reply . . . We spent a lot of time talking about all of the attacks that Bush was throwing: Willie Horton, the Pledge of Allegiance, ACLU, all that stuff, and Dukakis’s failure to respond.
“Clinton had tremendous admiration for Bush’s 1988 campaign, an admiration that was more related to Jim Baker as campaign manager, Lee Atwater as political strategist, and Roger Ailes, who did the media. It was an admiration for the operatives, not the candidate. From them Clinton learned a basic lesson: you never let an accusation sleep under the same roof with you. Answer it immediately. He adopted the war-room mentality of rapid response and used it against Bush in 1992 at every turn.”
Both sides claimed to have a hands-off policy on using sexual indiscretions against each other during the campaign. “Our guy was more susceptible on that issue,” admitted a Clinton aide. “After I went to Arkansas and saw what we were dealing with—lists longer than the phone book—I started doing a little research on the other side and found that Bush also had other women in his life . . . I took my list of Bush women, including one whom he had made an Ambassador, to his campaign operatives. I said I knew we were vulnerable on women, but I wanted to make damn sure they knew they were vulnerable too.”
The Clintons had appeared on 60 Minutes in January 1992 to respond to Gennifer Flowers’s story of her twelve-year affair with the governor. With his wife at his side, Clinton acknowledged causing pain in his marriage, and although he did not give a full-throated admission of infidelity, the issue of his womanizing seemed to subside in the polls.
“We knew the Democrats were saying we were negative campaigners and had branded us trash-talkers,” said Mary Matalin, political director of the Republican National Committee. “We did not need to reinforce their negative image of us, particularly on an issue like philandering, so we kept out of it. The word went out: nobody will say anything about Clinton’s personal life. When the press calls for comment: No comment.”
Surprisingly, it was the Bush camp that got walloped next by the issue of philandering. On August 11, 1992, the New York Post published a front-page story headlined “The Bush Affair,” complete with photos of George Bush and Jennifer Fitzgerald, who some people thought bore an eerie resemblance to Barbara Bush. The story was based on a newly released book by Susan Trento called The Power House, which described a Washington lobbyist who had participated in an early effort to cover up “Bush’s sexual indiscretions . . . if he ever hoped to be president.” A footnote in the book suggested that the late Louis Fields, an ambassador to the nuclear-disarmament talks in Geneva, had arranged for Bush and Ms. Fitzgerald to share a guesthouse in Switzerland when they were together in 1984. A Post sidebar with a screeching headline, “New Book: Bush Had Swiss Tryst,” carried the details, which quoted Fields as saying, “It became clear to me that the vice-president and Ms. Fitzgerald were romantically involved . . . It made me very uncomfortable.”
The morning the story broke, the President was vacationing in Kennebunkport with his family and meeting with Yitzhak Rabin, the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel. After their discussion, the two heads of state planned to hold a press conference.
Reporters were bused from their hotels to the Bush compound and told to queue up behind ropes. As they waited for the press conference to begin, a female aide in the White House press office went up and down the rope line asking which reporter would be asking the President about the New York Post story. It seemed to some reporters as if the aide was urging the question to be asked. No one said anything, although all had been discussing the story. On the bus, Brit Hume of ABC-TV said he would not ask the question because it was “intrusive and too personal.” Susan Spencer of CBS-TV said she did not want to ask the question, but if no one else did, she would because it was a legitimate inquiry. Mary Tillotson of CNN said the same thing.
Usually, the President of the United States does not have his entire family present at a press conference, but on this particular morning the White House made sure that his white-haired wife of forty-seven years, his children, their spouses, their pets, and all of the grandchildren buttressed Bush. In addition, they even wheeled out the President’s mother, who was ninety-one. The most reasonable explanation is that Bush surrounded himself with family as a response to the Post story—and in preparation for the inevitable question.
“No reporter really wanted to ask the question in that setting,” said Julia Malone of Cox Newspapers, “but it was a major story in that morning’s papers and it couldn’t be ignored.”
From the beginning the press conference was tense and strained. The President called on several people, who side-stepped the question that hung like a cloud. Then he pointed to Mary Tillotson, who had wanted to ask him about Bosnia. But she had told her producer she would ask the infidelity question if she was called on and no one else had asked.
“Mr. Bush, uncomfortable as the subject is, I would think it’s one to which you feel the necessity to respond because you’ve said that family values, character, are likely to be important in the presidential campaign. There is an extensive series of reports in today’s New York Post alleging that a former U.S. Ambassador, a man now deceased, had told several persons that he arranged for a sexual tryst involving you and one of your female staffers in Geneva in 1984.”
The President’s face hardened. Grim and thin-lipped with anger, he spat out his response. “I’m not going to take any
sleazy questions like that from CNN,” snapped the President. “I am very disappointed you would ask such a question of me. I will not respond to it. I haven’t responded in the past. I am outraged, but nevertheless in this kind of screwy climate we’re in I expect it. But I don’t like it and I’m not going to respond other than to say it is a lie.”
Sensing her grandfather’s fury, one of his granddaughters burst into tears and was led away by her mother.
“It was probably the worst professional day of my life,” Tillotson said later. “I so wish someone else had asked the question, but no one did.”
Few in the press corps came to her defense. Some felt the question was inappropriate in front of the Israeli Prime Minister. Men seemed to feel it was totally off-limits, because it involved sex; many women saw the sex issue as a matter of hypocrisy and very much within limits. Political science professor Larry J. Sabato of the University of Virginia said that reporters should have a legitimate reason for asking the question. “Politicians who use their family to project a wholesome image are asking for a rude press disclosure if they are not living up to those implied ideals,” said Sabato. “A candidate who invites the press into his living room shouldn’t be surprised when a skeptical press finds its way to his bedroom. At the same time, in order to convince the public of the truth of any allegation, some proof or evidence ought to be presented with any public accusation of infidelity. Otherwise, there is no end to the published and aired rumors, some true and some false, and there is no way for a good citizen to distinguish among the various allegations. I have a civic-oriented view of press coverage. It should be done not as a game between the pols and the press, but as a means for vital civic education so that informed voters can make wise choices.”
The editor and publisher of The Galveston Daily News defended the question and praised the questioner. “I’ve always been proud of my tough, smart sister Mary,” wrote Dolph Tillotson in an opinion piece. “But never more so than right now.”