The Family

by Kitty Kelley

  The biggest decision then facing the White House was how to feature the President claiming victory. His image makers considered putting him before a joint session of Congress or leading a ticker-tape parade through New York City. Finally they devised a dramatic scenario that would make him look more commanding than General George Patton. Their visual of Alamo macho far surpassed even Hollywood’s most extravagant Top Gun fantasy.

  In a snug-fitting olive green flight suit, the President was to take the controls of a Navy S-3B Viking jet on May 1, 2003, and make a tail-hook landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Pacific Ocean as the aircraft carrier steamed toward San Diego. According to the orchestrated plan, George W. bounded off the jet like a heroic sky jockey, his helmet tucked under his arm; he strutted along the flight deck, posing for pictures and shaking hands with the crew. He was led to a captain’s chair to watch a dazzling air show as thirty-six F-18s of the Naval Carrier Air Wing headed home from duty to their base near Fresno. Three squadrons of Hornets hurtled into the air with a deafening roar; twelve of the jets reappeared in a V formation to fly over the ship in a formal farewell. Then, like Superman, the President disappeared belowdecks to change clothes. He returned in a business suit with an American flag pinned to his lapel and mounted a podium that displayed the presidential seal. Standing under a great banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” he announced to five thousand cheering sailors the “end of major combat operations” in Iraq.

  With that virtuoso visual, the President of the United States began playing the political equivalent of Texas Hold ’Em poker, a high-stakes game in which the winner takes all. For the next six months, he would gamble his reelection and the continuation of the Bush dynasty on his war, which he saw as visionary and courageous, against those who saw it as reckless and tragic. He was betting on capturing Osama bin Laden and finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was wagering everything against the mounting death tolls and the scandals of horrific prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. He had calculated the odds that Americans would not desert a President during wartime, even a war that was going to cost at least $200 billion and throw the country into a deficit of more than half a trillion dollars by the end of 2004.

  It was a staggering gamble, but the President had no doubts that he would win. His ace in the hole was the House of Bush, which would do anything to ensure his victory and continue the family dynasty. George W. Bush acted like a man who had stacked the deck.

  He was so driven to win on Iraq that he would not tolerate dissent. When other heads of state expressed disagreement with his invasion, he treated them like miscreants who deserved to be punished.

  When German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was reelected by opposing the U.S.-led invasion, Bush was incensed, partially because Schröder’s Minister of Justice had compared his pressure tactics on Iraq to those of Adolf Hitler. The Justice Minister resigned the day after Schröder’s narrow reelection, but Bush refused to pick up the phone and make the customary call of presidential congratulations.

  When Mexican President Vicente Fox opposed the U.S. stand on Iraq in the UN Security Council, he, too, got the treatment. “There will be a certain sense of discipline,” Bush warned. It sounded like the Mexican President might end up sleeping with the fishes. W. wheeled on Fox, formerly a close friend who had spent time with the Bushes at their ranch in Crawford and had been honored with the first White House state dinner of the Bush presidency. But all of that was forgotten when Fox said that Mexico could not accept Bush’s resolution for regime change in Iraq because it would set a precedent that could justify U.S. invasions in any country in the world. Bush stopped speaking to his friend Vicente Fox and made him wait four days before he deigned to return his phone call. Bush’s discourtesy to Mexico, the second-largest U.S. trading partner, was personal, petulant, and diplomatically destructive.

  Bush canceled a state visit to Canada to show his displeasure with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s stand against the war, and he turned his back on France when French President Jacques Chirac had opposed him. There was no U.S. participation in the Paris Air Show. The Members’ Dining Room in the House of Representatives renamed French fries and started serving Freedom fries. On Air Force One, it was au revoir to French toast and good morning to Freedom toast. President Bush said it was not clear to him that France cared whether U.S. citizens lived in safety and security. With those words, he started an American boycott of all things French.

  The bullyboy who played pig ball at Andover had learned to reward his friends and punish his enemies. If you cannot win on merit, you win on might and muscle, but you win—at any price. “Victory,” in the words of his hero Winston Churchill, “at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

  George Herbert Walker (1874–1953), known as Bert, was the father of Dorothy Walker, the grandfather of George Herbert Walker Bush, forty-first President, and the great-grandfather of George Walker Bush, forty-third President. In 1900, Bert Walker founded G. H. Walker and Company, the source of the family’s wealth.

  Lucretia “Loulie” Wear Walker (1874–1961) in Palm Beach, Florida, early 1900s. When the devoutly religious Presbyterian married Bert Walker in 1899, his Roman Catholic father, D. D. Walker, refused to attend the wedding. Loulie, who did not like the name Lucretia, was the mother of Dorothy Walker Bush.

  Samuel Prescott Bush (1863–1948), a year before he died. He graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1884, with a degree in engineering. Later he moved to Columbus, Ohio and became president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Company (1905–27). He married Flora Sheldon and had five children: Prescott, Robert, Mary, Margaret, and James.

  Dorothy Walker Bush and Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895–1972). They married on August 6, 1921, four years after Prescott graduated from Yale. They had five children, Prescott Sheldon junior, George Herbert Walker, Nancy, Jonathan James, and William Henry Trotter, and lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Prescott became moderator of the Representative Town Meeting in 1935. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1950, was elected in 1952, and served until January 1963, when he retired.

  James S. Bush (1901–78) and his new bride, Janet Rhinelander Stewart (he was her third husband; she was his second wife), leaving Christ Methodist Church in New York City after their wedding in 1948. The marriage lasted four years. Janet, listed among the ten best-dressed women in the world, was the daughter of Fleming Newbold, president of the Washington Star. Jim Bush left his first wife, Caroline Patterson of the National Cash Register family, to marry Stewart. His older brother, Prescott, did not speak to him for several years. Jim Bush, the family black sheep, would marry twice again before his mysterious death in the Philippines.

  Pauline Robinson Pierce (1896–1949), mother of Barbara Bush, married Marvin Pierce following their graduation from Miami University in Ohio. A great beauty, she lived above her means, which forced her husband to go into debt to support her lifestyle. She died in a car accident. Her husband remarried. Barbara Bush, who did not attend her mother’s funeral, named her first daughter Robin, after Pauline Robinson.

  Marvin Pierce and family in Rye, New York, circa World War II. Left to right: Scott (b. 1930); Marvin; Jim (1922–93); Martha Pierce Rafferty (1920–99) with her daughter, Sharon Rafferty; and Barbara Pierce (b. 1925). Marvin (1893–1969) was born in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania. He was a star athlete in college and received graduate degrees from MIT in civil engineering and from Harvard in architectural engineering. He was president of McCall Corporation from 1946 to 1958.

  The wedding of George Herbert Walker “Poppy” Bush and Barbara “Bar” Pierce in Rye, New York, on January 6, 1945. From left: Jonathan Bush, Nancy Bush, George (home from the Navy), Barbara, Prescott, Dorothy, Prescott junior, and his wife, Elizabeth, and William Henry Trotter Bush, known as Bucky. Barbara, who said she married the first man who kissed her, became closer to his family than she was to
her own.

  Nancy Bush Ellis, George H.W. Bush’s only sister, born in 1926. She graduated from Vassar, class of 1946, and married Alexander “Sandy” Ellis Jr. (Yale 1944). She was a liberal Democrat and had an affair with the Kennedy historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Ellis was active in raising money for the NAACP. When her brother ran for President in 1988, she became a Republican to vote for him.

  Prescott S. Bush (class of 1917), known as Pres or Doc, prepped at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island. At six feet four, he was figuratively and literally a big man on campus at Yale. He played sports, lettering in golf and baseball, sang with the Whiffenpoofs, and joined Skull and Bones, leaving an illustrious record that paved the way for his sons. He served on the Yale Corporation and remained involved with Yale throughout his life.

  George Herbert Walker Bush (class of 1948) finished Yale in three years on the accelerated program for returning veterans of World War II. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in economics. An outstanding first baseman for the Yale team, he joined Skull and Bones and was president of his fraternity, DKE.

  The Skull and Bones roster from the class of 1948. The secret society, founded in 1832, became the most important part of Yale for George Herbert Walker Bush, whose best friends and financial backers in his political races were Bonesmen.

  Edward Williamson Andrews Jr., Thomas William Ludlow Ashley, Lucius Horatio Biglow Jr., George Herbert Walker Bush, John Erwin Caulkins, William Judkins Clark, William James Connelly Jr., George Cook III, Endicott Peabody Davison, David Charles Grimes, Richard Elwood Jenkins, Donald Loyal Leavenworth, Richard Gerstle Mack, Thomas Wilder Moseley, Frank O’Brien Jr., Philip O’Brien Jr., George Harold Pfau Jr., Samuel Sloane Walker Jr., Howard Sayre Weaver, Valleau Wilkie Jr.

  Babe Ruth, two months before he died in 1948, presents his book The Babe Ruth Story to Yale’s baseball captain, George Herbert Walker Bush, for the Yale library. Like his father, George played first base on the Yale team, where he was known as “All Glove, No Hit.”

  George Walker Bush (class of 1968) was born in New Haven during his father’s first year and was admitted as a Yale “legacy” in 1964. He did not achieve the distinctions of his father or grandfather, but he became president of his fraternity, DKE, and joined Skull and Bones. Unlike his grandfather, George wanted nothing to do with Yale upon his graduation.

  George W. Bush’s transcript from Yale, where he graduated near the bottom of his class. When he received an honorary degree from the university in 2001, he said, “And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.”

  President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Prescott Bush in 1956. Prescott ran this photo in his reelection campaign against Democratic Representative Thomas Dodd under the heading “President Eisenhower Signs a Senator Bush Bill.”

  Senator Prescott Bush, representing Connecticut, known then as the Hat State, adjusts a straw Panama he gave to Vice President Richard Nixon on May 6, 1953, after a weekly lunch of freshman Republicans in the U.S. Senate. Bush, who favored jaunty brown-and-white spectator shoes and plaid double-breasted blazers, was known as one of the best-dressed men in the Senate.

  Planned Parenthood fund-raising letter of January 8, 1947, lists Prescott S. Bush as treasurer of Margaret Sanger’s first national fund-raising drive. At that time, contraception was against the law in Connecticut, and the state had a large Catholic constituency. In 1950, during Prescott’s first race for the U.S. Senate, the syndicated columnist Drew Pearson accused Bush of being a member of Planned Parenthood. Bush lost and accused Pearson of spreading the lie that cost him elected office. This fund-raising letter proved Pearson right.

  The New England Conference of Senators, June 26, 1958. Seated left to right: Henry S. Bridges (R-NH), John O. Pastore (D-RI), Prescott S. Bush (R-CT), and Theodore F. Green (D-RI). Standing left to right: Norris H. Cotton (R-NH), Ralph E. Flanders (R-VT), George D. Aiken (R-VT), Leverett Saltonstall (R-MA), and John F. Kennedy (D-MA). The day after this photo, Kennedy made a speech criticizing the administration’s handling of a crisis in Lebanon: “The fact remains that the American people have no clear and consistent understanding of why we are there, what we are going to do, or what we hope to accomplish . . . We are confronted once again with armed conflict in the Middle East because we have developed no alternative to armed conflict.”

  The gravestones of Prescott S. Bush and his wife, Dorothy Walker Bush, in Putnam Cemetery, Greenwich, Connecticut. Dorothy selected the never-tarnish bronze marker for the senator: “Leader, Athlete, Singer, Soldier, Banker, Statesman, Churchman, Companion, Friend, Father, Husband Extraordinary.” Her stone, laid twenty years later, identifies her simply as “His Adoring Wife.”

  George H.W. Bush and Eisenhower. Bush had been chairman of the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in Midland, Texas, in 1952 and 1956. Calling on his father’s friendship with the President, Bush sought Eisenhower’s endorsement for his failed Senate race in 1964 and for his successful congressional race in 1966.

  President Richard Nixon shaking hands with George Herbert Walker Bush. As a one-term congressman, Bush angled to become Nixon’s running mate in 1968. After Bush gave up his House seat to fight a second losing campaign for the Senate in Texas in 1970, Nixon launched him on his career as a presidential appointee. Bush said about his first political mentor: “[H]e appointed me to the United Nations and he saw me as a man with prospects in the Republican Party.”

  Secretary of State Henry Kissinger discussed policy with George H.W. Bush, U.S. liaison to China, 1975. Bush recorded his dislike of Kissinger in his diaries, citing his imperious manner and arrogance.

  George Herbert Walker Bush became UN Ambassador on February 26, 1971, and served for twenty-three months. This appointment resurrected his public career after he lost the 1970 Senate race in Texas, his second attempt at winning a statewide office.

  Appointed by President Nixon to put out the fire of Watergate, George Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee from January 1973 to September 1974. At the RNC, he hired Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and began building the political network that would carry him and his son to the White House.

  As director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January 30, 1976, to January 20, 1977, George signed his personal letters “Head Spook.” He said this appointment was his favorite job in government. He was the only President who had been director of the CIA, and the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was named in his honor on April 26, 1999.

  President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan with Vice President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush at the Republican National Convention in Dallas on August 23, 1984. The relationship between the two couples was strained; Nancy Reagan called George Bush “whiney” and never forgave him for charging Reagan with “voodoo economics.”

  President-elect George Bush and Barbara with Marilyn and Dan Quayle on January 19, 1989, after Bush had confided in his diary (August 21, 1988) he had made a big mistake in choosing the Indiana senator to be his running mate. “It was my decision, and I blew it, but I’m not about to say that I blew it.”

  George W. Bush, seven years old, with his father and his sister, Robin, in Greenwich, Connecticut, during the summer of 1953. Robin had been diagnosed with leukemia in February of that year and died on October 11, 1953.

  The Bush family in Houston, Texas, in 1959. Seated left to right: Neil, George a.k.a. “Poppy” Bush, holding baby Doro, Marvin, and Barbara. Standing: George W. and Jeb. The family moved from Midland to Houston when Bush’s Zapata Offshore and the Liedtke brothers’ Zapata Petroleum went their separate ways.

  The Bush family on Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981, in the Vice President’s mansion, Washington, D.C. From left: Doro, Marvin, George H.W., Barbara, Jeb, George W., and Neil.

  The family at the patriarch’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration, June 10, 1999, shortly after the elder Bush had parachuted onto the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station. Seated from left: Neil, Governor George W. Bush, Pr
esident Bush (41), Governor Jeb Bush, Marvin, and Doro. Standing: Sharon, Laura, Barbara, Columba, Margaret, and Bobby Koch.

  The small fraternity of former presidents and their first ladies who gathered on April 16, 1997, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the rededication of the Ford Museum. Seated: Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Bush, Betty Ford, and Rosalynn Carter. Standing: President Bush (1989–93) making rabbit ears behind his wife’s head, President Ford (1974–77), and President Carter (1977–81).

  George Bush meets in his private office at the White House with Jennifer Fitzgerald on May 8, 1989. Fitzgerald became deputy chief of protocol when Bush became President, and remained with him until the end of his public career in 1992.

  Jennifer Fitzgerald at the White House on November 30, 1974, before leaving for China to become George Bush’s close personal aide. Known as “the other woman” in Bush’s life, Fitzgerald was his personal assistant for fourteen years.

  Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush, January 27, 1981, a week after the inaugural. Their relationship was publicly cordial but privately corrosive. During their eight years in the White House, Mrs. Reagan never invited the Bushes to the family quarters. Reagan’s biographer Edmund Morris said, “Barbara never forgave Nancy for treating them like the help.”