George H. W. Bush

by Curt Smith

  On October 23, 1983, American peacekeeping forces in Beirut, sent by Reagan during the Lebanese civil war, were attacked by a suicide truck bomber—241 U.S. Marines died; more than 60 were wounded. Bush led a White House team four days later to investigate. That week Reagan ordered U.S. forces to invade Grenada, where a 1979 coup d’etat had formed a nonaligned Marxist-Leninist government. The force helped protect several hundred American medical students at St. George’s University and stem an alleged Soviet Cuban military buildup in the Caribbean. Symbolically, on a trip abroad Reagan might sing “Amazing Grace” with troops, eat in their mess, and beam when a soldier said he was from California. More tangibly, he rebuilt the armed forces hollowed out under Carter.

  The different kind of president was helped by a different kind of vice president. For one thing, Bush knew the world—U.S. friends and enemies—better than any vice president since Nixon. “Here’s where the United Nations and CIA really helped,” said John Sununu, Bush’s future presidential chief of staff. “He just wasn’t socializing with countries’ leaders at personal events and meetings. He’d been getting to know them—their families, how they worked.” For another, the human element applied irrespective of rank. In the mid-1980s Bush’s mother chided him for reading while Reagan gave a State of the Union address. Bush explained that he was just following the text. No matter, she said; it still showed bad manners. Reagan, whose mother had grounded him in fundamentalist religion, had been taught how to treat other people too.

  The near assassination affirmed the Gipper’s faith. “God must have been sitting on my shoulder. Whatever time I’ve got left, it now belongs to someone else,” said Reagan, citing the phrase “I look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength.” After March 30 he and Bush met every Thursday for lunch and conversation—“wide-ranging, from affairs of state to small talk,” said Poppy, who, knowing Reagan’s humor, began each session with a joke or story, often at official Washington’s expense. The veep was judicious, increasingly synergistic with his boss, never divulging in eight years one syllable that he and Reagan said to one another. Incrementally, perhaps inevitably, Bush became a trusted member of the inner circle.

  “You don’t become president,” Reagan said, in prose that Bush would echo. “The presidency is an institution, and you have temporary custody of it.” Like every vice president, Bush was given special projects. Reagan asked him to chair a special task force on federal regulations—red tape as heinous to the GOP as a red cape to a bull. Bush studied hundreds of rules and admonitions, deciding specifically which to change and end. Reagan called “a Federal program the nearest thing on earth to eternal life.” The more Bush could discard, the more he helped the country—and himself, with conservatives if he chose someday to run for president. That was also true of coordinating a federal war on international drug smuggling into America. The Right, often suspicious of foreigners, had reason to be here.

  By early 1984 Bush seemed, if not someone who caused voter orgasm, at least a politician who seldom evoked a wrinkling of the nose. He was acceptable—to many, by fit and start much more. In particular, he was wooing the staff of the late William Loeb, publisher of the hard-right Manchester Union-Leader, and Jerry Falwell, founder of the conservative Moral Majority. Loeb’s paper bestrode New Hampshire, site of the nation’s first primary. Falwell’s movement could affect a dozen state caucuses and primaries—and the general election after that.

  Inexplicably, conservative columnist George F. Will recoiled: “The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny arf—the sound of a lap dog.” Perhaps he found them—huff—middle class. Most Republicans were reassured, thinking Bush a hunter who went where the ducks were. The sound they heard him emitting resembled a cash register—people giving to the presumptive next prez.

  In 1988 Time’s David Beckwith wrote, “As the public became better acquainted with his [Bush’s] personality and his sense of humor, they grew to like it, even viewing fondly his tendency toward malapropisms and scrambled syntax. In the end, despite talk of scripted events and control by handlers, the public got to know Bush and liked what it saw.” That had been true even by 1984, which, Bush would tell you, was not his favorite year.

  In 1981 James Baker had listed Reagan’s trifecta: “Economic recovery. Economic recovery. Economic recovery.” By 1984 the recovery was, if not complete, irrefutable to even Democrats. Like a fever, Reaganomics broke before reviving. “It’s funny how they [critics] don’t call it that anymore,” said the Gipper in 1987, “now that it’s working.” Unemployment peaked in December 1982, a highest-since-the-Depression 10.8 percent jobless rate. It dropped to 5.4 percent by the time Reagan left office. At the same time, inflation flew back inside the cage: 12.5 percent at the end of 1980 vs. 1988’s 4.4. “Look back at 1981 and ’82,” said 1984 campaign manager Ed Rollins. “We had to cut government back, and give private enterprise some help. The economy was sick because we’d lacked leaders with spine.” The correct prescription was liberty.

  “When people are free to choose, they choose freedom,” was a sure Gipper applause line. Under Reagan federal receipts grew at an annual 8.2 percent average. Even with 1981–82’s recession, gross domestic growth increased yearly at 3.85 percent, including 1984’s election year 8, a fortuitous patch of timing. Reagan’s TV campaign that year remains a classic. “It’s Morning in America,” the voice-over began. Film shows hard hats building homes, ships trolling, weddings underway, people working farms, the flag being raised, towheads respecting it. “Today more men and women will go to work than at any time in our nation’s history. With interest rates and inflation down, more people are buying new homes. And our families can take confidence in the new future. America today is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?” America had come home.

  More than sixteen million new jobs festooned 1983–89. The recovery lasted, with only a minor downturn or two, for almost a quarter century—the longest peacetime boom in U.S. history. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 dropped the top marginal tax rate to 28 percent, raised the bottom bracket to 15 percent, and cut the number of brackets to four. The prime interest rate fell by 60 percent, and the mortgage rate 6.4 percent from its peak. Meanwhile, the federal debt rose from $987 billion to $3.85 trillion under Reagan. “The president always told me that if it came down to a choice of somehow balancing our budget, or rebuilding our military which Carter had so decimated, he’d choose the latter,” said Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. It is true that a budget deficit was necessary to rebuild our defense. It also became the madam at the church cotillion.

  By mid-spring 1984 Reagan-Bush was walking in tall cotton. “Here Comes the Recovery!” bannered Time. Then, on July 12, about-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale made history and momentarily rattled the GOP, picking America’s first major-party woman vice president: Geraldine Ferraro, three-term U.S. representative, bright, liberal, and depending on your politics, barbed or snarky before the latter word was born. On one hand, she was smart and telegenic; would likely swell the gender gap, where Democrats led the GOP among women; and represented New York’s multiethnic Queens district of TV’s All in Family, its symbol malapropping Archie Bunker, who idolized “Richard E. Nixon.” On the other, she was married to ethically checkered realtor John Zaccaro and had yet to hit big-league pitching.

  In 2008, critiquing Barack Obama’s candidacy, Ferraro panned affirmative action’s double standard—which, ironically, she said, had profited her. “If you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, if my name was Gerald Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice president,” said the Fox News contributor. “It had nothing to do with my qualifications.” America agreed. In a summer 1984 poll of all voters, 60 percent thought “pressure from women’s groups” caused her nomination, whereas 22 percent thought her “the best candidate” availab
le. Mondale ignored the New Yorker’s thin résumé, low name recognition, and lack of foreign policy experience. Needing to act boldly, he did.

  Before Ferraro’s pick, Mondale trailed Reagan by sixteen points in the Gallup poll. A week later the same firm showed them tied. At the convention in San Francisco, Mondale vowed to raise taxes—“an act of courage,” he said—to cut the debt and that year’s $185 billion deficit. It “wasn’t courage,” Bush retorted. “It was just a [Democratic] habit.” As vice president, Poppy would visit most of the thirteen Latin American nations that, leaving Communism, held democratic elections in the 1980s. At August’s GOP Convention in Dallas, Bush acted not as Reagan’s attack dog—a veep’s historic niche—but as a would-be president, quoting Dwight Eisenhower: “May the light of freedom . . . flame brightly, until at last the darkness is no more.”

  Aware of the Gipper’s popularity—liberal congresswoman Pat Schroeder called him the “Teflon President,” as in no criticism stuck—Ferraro assaulted his number two, becoming Bush’s most elusive foe since Bentsen. Barbara Bush said, “Her name rhymes with rich”—a middle-class poseur. Liberal, Ferraro called herself a small c conservative. Catholic, she opposed the Church on abortion. Protecting her, the press ignored the dissonance. Virtually every survey shows most national journalists leaning left. What startles is the media’s recent brazenness, unafraid to bare prejudice.

  On October 7 the press fairly reported GOP self-inflicted injury. In the first presidential debate in Louisville, Reagan referred to going to church “here in Washington,” called military uniforms “costumes,” and confused military salaries and pensions, among other things. “Where was the Gipper?” Nancy Reagan, Rollins, and tens of millions must have asked. The likely answer: Reagan, seventy-three, America’s oldest president, was showing age. His debate staff had showered him with facts and statistics—broadcaster Dizzy Dean termed them “statics.” Reagan hated them, knew how they numbed. The next debate, he vowed, would be different. As conservatives said about policy, Let Reagan be Reagan.

  In the interim Bush had to stop Mondale’s momentum—1980’s Big Mo now hung ironically—in the October 11 vice presidential debate. He was—choose your analogy—at High Noon, in the OK Corral, the Dutch Boy at the Dike. Surely Poppy would know more about foreign and domestic policy than Ferraro. So, however, had Nixon vs. Kennedy, or Ford vs. Carter. Substance—sheer knowledge—would matter less than style, and style less than wearability—the viewer saying over time, “Yes, that’s my kind of guy. I trust him/her to act for me.” Retrieving the debate, Bush island-hopped in a quicksand sea. Many reporters in the press room, hoping that he would stumble, could be heard cheering loudly for Ferraro. Bush must be aggressive, but not menacing; courtly, not condescending; conservative, not chauvinistic; kind, not “Have Half” of Greenwich Country Day School. One mistake could, if not lose the election, fuel Mondale’s Mo.

  In 1945 Chicago writer Warren Brown had been asked about the wartime Tigers-Cubs World Series. “Frankly,” he said, “I don’t think either team can win.” Ironically, both candidates won the vice presidential debate. Thrice panelists asked how Ferraro’s experience equaled Bush’s. She changed the subject, then used a preplanned zinger: “Let me just say, first of all, that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy.” Bush’s mastery of the subject was so plain he didn’t need—couldn’t afford—to zing her. Instead, he mixed detail and praise of Reagan. A poll soon showed that men and women felt that Bush and Ferraro, respectively, had won.

  Next day Poppy suggested he had “tried to kick a little ass last night”—for him, harsh profanity out of character, reflecting frustration in his attack-dog role. Bush did it loyally but joylessly, knowing that extreme makeovers rarely work. As we have seen, what did was Reagan campaign TV. In 1984 the United States and Soviet Union still grappled in the post–World War II Cold War. Reagan’s policy toward Communism—the Bear—was Peace through Strength: rebuild, then negotiate. Liberalism refused to concede Communism was a threat. “The Bear” ad artfully split the difference. “There’s a bear in the woods,” the voice-over begins, the animal on the screen. “For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don’t see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it is vicious, and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who is right, isn’t it smart to be as strong as the bear, if there is a bear?”

  On October 21 Reagan and Mondale again met in Kansas City. The president’s age had owned the past two weeks, policy advisers, speechwriters, and humor writers deluging Reagan with one-liners and memoranda, how-tos to defuse fear that he had gone around the bend. Reagan gently reassured them that he would neutralize the issue—not to worry. Most of the White House did.

  Panelist Hank Trewhitt of the Wall Street Journal gave Reagan his opening. First, he noted that President Kennedy had “very little sleep” during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. He then asked if Reagan, given his poor first debate, had any doubt that he could endure the demands of the presidency, especially in a crisis.

  “Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” the Gipper said, “and I want you to know also that I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

  The crowd erupted. Even Mondale couldn’t help himself. “If TV can tell the truth, you’ll see that I was smiling,” he told PBS in 2012. “But I think if you come in close, you’ll see some tears coming down because I knew he had gotten me there. That was really the end of my campaign that night, I think.” Reagan’s reaction shot is even more telling, like the eighth take on the back lot at Warner Brothers. He is smiling, not boastfully, but contentedly, tongue faintly in cheek, the canary in fatal trouble.

  The rest was for history: Reagan, on the train from one small town through another, reliving his childhood with an itinerant father; Bush, touting “my friend and America’s greatest president” and calling Mondale “the all-time tax raiser”; Mondale, knowing that defeat lay ahead, yet refusing to abandon the flag of liberalism; Ferraro, saying Reagan would outlaw abortion, ignore the poor, and raise taxes too—losing, yet proud of making history.

  At every campaign stop, Reagan used Al Jolson’s line “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” On election night he told the crowd, “You’ll forgive me. I’m going to say it one more time!”—and did. Except for Nixon’s in 1972, Reagan’s statistics were nonpareil: 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13 and 49 states to the Democrat’s one (Minnesota, Mondale’s home state, plus Washington DC). Reagan got 58.8 percent of the vote, 60 percent in 30 states, and 70 percent in Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho. He lost Minnesota by 3,761 votes.

  Ferraro hurt, or at least didn’t help. Reagan won 55 percent of the Catholic and women’s vote, first and second to Nixon in 1972, respectively, among GOP presidential candidates. “She was supposed to be a boon with each group,” said Ed Rollins, “and wasn’t.” Bush likely helped, and clearly didn’t hurt, especially in the moderate to liberal Northeast. Including 2012, 1984 is the last presidential election the GOP has won any of these states: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. Bush campaigned in each.

  In December 1984 President Reagan was asked what he wanted for Christmas. He reportedly joked, “Well, Minnesota would have been nice.”

  SEVEN

  To the Brink—and Back

  A battering ram for Reagan in 1984, Bush himself emerged battered, asking if he could run for president from the vice presidency in 1988. No veep since Martin Van Buren in 1836 had won election on his own immediately after the term of the president with whom he had served—then, Andrew Jackson. Fellow Ivies Nicholas Brady and Jim Baker, future and about-to-be secretary of the treasury, respectively, told Bush that if Van Buren could transition, so could a war hero, business whiz, statesman, and as we shall see, husband of a wife becoming as popular as her spouse. Van Buren became a frame of reference,
someone to poke fun at. “Ask me who I’m going to put pictures of . . . on the walls of the White House,” Poppy told a journalist. “Martin Van Buren.” When it comes to role models, some would-be presidents get all the luck.

  Baker’s and Brady’s case for running, Bush said in his twinkly, self-conscious way, was “unassailable.” By Christmas 1984 they were charting strategy: Craig Fuller as vice presidential chief of staff; Baker and Brady, counselors; above all, Lee Atwater, as populist base-inhis-bones campaign strategist. A year later Atwater’s political action committee, the Fund for America, had raised more than $2 million—far more than any other Democrat or Republican candidate. In their thinking, Bush would mind the jibs as Reagan’s second term steered the ship toward 1988.

  For one thing, Bush inflated the sails by swelling his already huge speech schedule. For another he made history July 13, 1985, becoming the first vice president to serve as acting president, Reagan having surgery to remove polyps from his colon. “I think the president was coming to trust George on about everything,” said Barbara Bush. “They had that relationship.” For her part, Mrs. Bush found the vice presidency a perfect place to divulge her opinions, of which she had many.

  Even as a newlywed, she had found it hard not to express herself, once sitting in her in-laws’ living room in Connecticut, smoking a cigarette.