George H. W. Bush

by Curt Smith

  Born to Italian immigrants, Berra grew up on St. Louis’s “Dago Hill.” Once the squat, jug-eared teen and a friend saw a theater travelogue about India. The film included a yogi, likened to Berra by his pal. Like gold, the nickname stuck. Yogi learned a salute to the flag, catch in the throat, tear in the eye Americanism. Best friend and future broadcaster Joe Garagiola lived “a pickoff away.” One day Berra took ill. “You look terrible,” said Garagiola. “Why don’t you go home?” Yogi shrugged: “If a guy can’t get sick on a cold, miserable day like this, he ain’t healthy.”

  Such logic endeared him to America, where by the early twenty-first century Yogi passed Shakespeare as the figure most quoted by U.S. public speakers. Yet Baseball Hall of Fame Class of ’72 was more than “Yogi thinking funny,” said Garagiola, “and speaking what he thinks.” Like Bush, Berra braved World War II as a teenager. Back home he became what the ex-Yale captain termed “baseball’s greatest catcher”—three-time Most Valuable Player, 358 homers, and the position’s most runs batted in—showing that “baseball is 90 percent mental,” said Berra. “The other half is physical.”

  “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him,” Yogi said, as Bush said of Reagan. No one could copy baseball’s most lethal bad-ball hitter. Number 8 also rolled seven behind the plate. Once Berra fielded a bunt and tagged the hitter and runner coming toward the plate, saying, “I just tagged everybody, including the ump.” Yogi leads in all-time World Series games (75), hits (71), played (14), and won (10). If Berra were a movie, it would be The Quiet Man meets Mr. Lucky.

  Yogi and wife Carmen were wed from 1949 till her death in 2014. The bowling alley Berra and ex-Yankee Phil Rizzuto opened rolled a financial 300; Yogi’s Yoo-hoo drink became a hit; Aflac ads remain a classic—Berra, in barber chair; barber and duck, agape. In 2008 Yogi helped close the original Yankee Stadium. About this time, he said, “Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise they won’t come to yours.” Mercifully, baseball’s extraordinary Ordinary Man’s funeral seemed more than a short pop fly away.

  Ultimately, I found that Bush knew more Berraisms than I did. “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It’s too crowded.” A woman cooed, “Yogi, you look cool in that suit.” Berra smiled: “Thanks. You don’t look so hot yourself.” In 2009 Bush intern–turned–counselor Julie Harry Heiden invited me to keynote the Fairfax County, Virginia, Bar Association. Speech like “It’s déjà vu all over again” dotted my address. Part-time college waiters left the kitchen to hear Berraisms they’d never heard. This is not uncommon. When it came to quotation, George Bush was far ahead of the curve.

  For his first few months, finding my way around, I wrote about the environment, law enforcement, the growing savings and loan crisis, and the role of government. At American University Bush quoted Bernard Baruch to define his philosophy of pragmatism: “Government is not a substitute for people, but simply the instrument through which they act.” At Ford Aerospace in Palo Alto, Bush said, “The genius of America has forged the greatness of America.” In New York he defined justice at the United Negro College Fund dinner, recalling how at Yale Bush helped its drive while trying to captain the varsity and steady his grades. “I observed what Churchill said, ‘Personally, I am always ready to learn, though I do not always enjoy being taught.’”

  For a long time, Bush could boast of prosperity without inflation and prosperity without war. One-line phrases reflected his, as it had been Reagan’s, forte. “A strong economy is the surest guarantee of lasting social justice.” Abroad, from his first full month Bush renewed acquaintances and alliances from his globe-hopping time as veep in Canada, China, and South Korea. In Japan for Emperor Hirohito’s state funeral, he met French president François Mitterrand, recalling Lafayette’s “What impresses me is that in America all of the citizens are brethren.” Bush swore in, among others, James Baker at State, Dick Cheney at Defense, William Bennett at Education, Elizabeth Dole at Transportation, and John Sununu as chief of staff. When possible, writers watched and listened, tried to measure Bush’s voice and cadence, and adjusted ourselves to him, and he perhaps to us.

  That spring, presenting Volunteer Awards, Bush spurned “what I can do for myself” for “what I can do by myself for others.” The greatest gift, he said during Captive Nations Week, was freedom: “The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.” In 1942 Gen. James A. Doolittle led a squadron of planes off a U.S. aircraft carrier to bomb Japan—“Thirty Seconds over Tokyo”—pivoting World War II morale. In June 1989 Bush gave the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award, to Doolittle for having “shown that ours would not be the land of the free if it were not also the home of the brave.” By contrast, that month he addressed members of the Memorial Advisory Board about the Korean War Memorial—a postcard summer day. As noted, Ted Williams was a close friend. Bush knew his nickname—Teddy Ballgame—yet called him Ballgame Teddy, having not read the speech to know it—or know how the words would sound.

  “He [Bush] just didn’t buy into that,” Demarest told Robert Schlesinger of a belief that success demanded eloquence. “It wasn’t in his DNA.” He rarely practiced reading speeches out loud, the exception a major address: a UN, prime-time, or Oval Office message. Noonan sent me a note, saying, “Bush, as you know, is skeptical of sweeping rhetoric. He likes it low-key. But that means you guys can’t show what you’ve got and soar! And then you get knocked for not soaring!” Some higher-ups added insult by “de-Reaganizing” our staff—the Gipper’s, they felt, too big for their britches—revoking White House mess privileges and curbing West Wing access. We largely ignored or outmaneuvered such barbs. What hurt was the lack of more dialogue, even disagreement, among writers and between us and higher members of the White House staff through memoranda designed to make all of us, as Lincoln said, “think anew.”

  Such memoranda were invaluable to the 1980 Connally campaign, fall 1988 Bush Fifteenth Street ad hoc effort, and virtually every presidential speech outreach since FDR’s. They spur contention, yes. They can be untidy. They can also adjust the political game plan when the original plan dissolves, as Bush’s did in late 1991 and early 1992. I traded memos with Sununu, policy expert Jim Pinkerton, and then– Dan Quayle chief of staff Bill Kristol, now the Weekly Standard publisher. Other writers doubtless conversed with policy sources of their own. Missing was the spirit of invitation whereby we were urged to contribute cerebrally and emotionally to the larger picture of reelecting George Bush.

  Eddie Gomez, who played bass with pianist Billy Evans, termed the jazz musician’s aim “to make music that balanced passion and intellect.” That should be a speechwriter’s aim, exactly. Any administration needs to recall who elected it; address its constituents’ priorities; and galvanize its base. Bush had been taught to hide his good Episcopalian soul. Without doing damage or an extreme makeover, our office tried to show it.

  Totalitarianism was passing, Bush had predicted in early 1989. The Polish government agreed to hold free elections, Mikhail Gorbachev refusing to intervene. As Reagan prophesied, the rest of Europe fell. Hungary began dismantling the fences along its Austrian border. The Soviet Union held its first multicandidate election. In late May Mark Davis wrote a fine speech on Germany that detailed America’s emerging Eastern European strategy: the Cold War would end “only when Europe is whole, and free.” Freedom was in the air, Bush said, again prescient. In early July he revisited Europe, a rousing speech by Ed McNally scoring at the Polish shipyard in Gdansk.

  Bush then flew to Budapest, where several hundreds of thousands gathered in Kossuth Square, his text reading “liberty can light the globe.” It recalled Lajos Kossuth, a patriot who arrived in America in 1852 to salute “the principle of self-government” after Hungary’s Revolution of 1848 had temporarily been lost. In New York Harbor, an armada of ships sounded horns to hail his arrival. “Perhaps no visitor since Lafayette had been greeted so emotionally.”

  My assist
ant, Stephanie Blessey, found a fact with which Bush’s text ended. More than five centuries earlier, Hungary’s János Hunyadi had stopped a would-be Turkish invasion. In his honor the pope ordered each Catholic church to ring a bell at the time of day the battle had ended. Since then Catholic and other Christian church bells all over the world have rung precisely at midday. “Together,” Bush was to conclude, “let us raise what Kossuth called ‘the morning star of liberty.’”

  His audience might have, except that Budapest had been pelted all day by torrential rain—a fact of which we were unaware in Washington in that pre–cell phone, iPod, and even largely cable-TV age. We were in the speech office, listening by squawk box—an intercom link with the speech site—no picture, explanation, or above all, context. Hungarian president Bruno Straub gave a stolid fifteen-minute introduction. Bush then began to speak, saying, “I’m going to take this speech and I’m going to tear it up. You’ve been out here long enough.”

  Hungarians roared as Bush ripped the speech cards—my cards—and held them above his head. Blessey’s head hit the table. I tried to mask surprise, wondering what we’d done to deserve such a public flogging. Next day, word filtered back about Bush’s ad-libbing, then waving the crowd home. Translated, the text would have lasted forty minutes in the rain; Bush was being kind. Later he sent me a Reuters photo that graced papers around the world: 41, in trench coat, smiling gleefully, holding half of each card in one hand and half in the other. “It’s raining in Budapest,” he wrote. “I’ll wing it.” Bush winged little about foreign policy, as his administration showed.

  In his inaugural Bush had referenced the need to move beyond Vietnam: “That war cleaves us still.” In November 1989 he dedicated the Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Dallas. In White House Ghosts, Schlesinger wrote that I “specialized in speeches that appealed to the conservative base of the GOP—rallying-type addresses that touched on values issues and conservative philosophy.” Actually, the speeches that meant most to me were those that touched Bush viscerally, because they showed an extraordinary human being. In Dallas Bush related a mother who had four children, each of whom had a dream. Two of her sons were killed in Vietnam. The daughter’s dream had been to shake an American president’s hand. Said Bush, voice breaking, “It is I who am honored to shake your hands.”

  That week Communist guards allowed passage through the Berlin Wall, ending twenty-eight years of a divided city. At Bush’s 1942 prep school graduation, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had said the U.S. soldier should be “self-confident without boasting.” The president now struck that balance. Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater wanted him to make a statement to the press. “Listen, Marlin,” Bush said. “I’m not going to dance on the Berlin Wall. The last thing I want to do is brag about winning the Cold War, or bringing the wall down. It won’t help us in Eastern Europe to be bragging about this.” That day a reporter said, “Why don’t you show the emotion we feel?” Unsaid: You don’t insult potential colleagues. “I wanted the Soviets’ help,” Bush said. He never said “The Cold War is over” until Germany reunited on October 3, 1990.

  In late November 1989 Bush added authenticity to humility as he traveled to the historic Mediterranean island of Malta for his first meeting as president with Gorbachev. My office, like many in the EOB, had a sofa, which I used awaiting the response of “staffing” to late-night speech drafts. After reconciling their changes, I sent Bush his draft. He then began his handiwork, writing “self-typed” notes. The president’s sole speech of the summit was to the five thousand sailors on USS Forrestal. My draft included allusions to current entertainment. “Please re-do,” typed Bush, who unlike most pols refused to say anything he felt even slightly phony. “I don’t understand some of the humor. I’d [also] prefer to leave out most of the references to my own Naval experience.” Bush’s view was hard to miss. In the margin next to that paragraph, he wrote, “Too [much] ego.”

  My first draft to reach Bush ended with a prayer Franklin Roosevelt spoke, on D-day, over a nationwide radio network. Instead, Bush asked for his presidential frame of reference—and his December 1 remarks concluded so:

  Let me close with a moment you’re too young to remember—but which wrote a glorious page in American history. It occurred on D-day as Dwight Eisenhower addressed the sailors, soldiers, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

  “You are about to embark,” he told them, “upon a great crusade. . . . The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” Then Ike spoke this moving prayer: “Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God, upon this great and noble undertaking.”

  Like the men of D-day, you, too, are the hope of “liberty-loving people everywhere.” As the Navy has been in wartime—and in peacetime—keeping our hearts alight—and our faith unyielding. Sacrificing time away from your homes so that other Americans can sleep safely in theirs.

  Voice wavering, the president observed, “Thank you for writing still-new pages in the history of America and her Navy. God bless you and our ‘great and noble undertaking.’ And God bless the United States of America.”

  Listening, I thought of my parents, who rejoiced when Ike was elected, and my grandparents, who cried when he died, and my hometown, which supported him, and Ike’s hometown, which molded him—and of how only FDR, I believe, eclipses him as a pillar of Henry Luce’s American Century. Later Bush marveled, “It’s amazing what occurred in a blink of history’s eye.” He meant 1989–91 but could have meant World War I or II or Korea or Vietnam—all wars Ike either served in or observed.

  On December 19, three weeks later, Bush asked his speechwriters to the residence for drinks, where his breeding masked a pokerfaced heart. His grandkids were all over him. The family’s English springer spaniel, Millie, licked my hand. Bush showed us the Lincoln Bedroom, noting that there Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He observed a painting of Lincoln and his generals—The Peacemakers—on the wall, saying that he constantly drew strength from Lincoln’s example. I thought again that at heart Bush was a deeply religious man. We spoke for an hour, Bush several times drawn to the doorway to speak with aides—even so, a president at seeming ease with the world. At 7 p.m. we rose, Bush leaving to host a media Christmas party. Seated to his left, I was the only one close enough to hear him say, “I feel a thousand years old”—understandable, I thought, for any Republican president having to mingle with the press.

  At about 2 a.m., unable to sleep, I turned on the television to see Marlin Fitzwater reveal America’s invasion of Panama to snare drug kingpin Manuel Noriega. Earlier that week Noriega had declared war on America, Panamanian soldiers killing unarmed U.S. marines. Bush ordered the invasion—Operation Just Cause—to restore democracy and jail Noriega on drug-related charges. Meeting, we had no idea that Bush had already approved the gravest decision of his presidency. As Robert Schlesinger wrote in his book, “Smith thought that Bush must be the coolest customer in the world. The whole time that he had been entertaining the speechwriters, he had known that the [24,000] troops were on their way in.” You would want him on your side playing blind-man’s bluff.

  Bush: the sunshine of his smile. As 1989 ended, the president addressed the Catholic University of America annual dinner for the second time in three years. “Tonight I’m back again,” he told the audience. “Even though I know this isn’t what you have in mind when you preach about the Second Coming.” More than a thousand people had packed Washington’s Pension Building. “For those of you in the back of the room, I’ll try to speak up,” Bush said. “Cardinal Hickey warned me that the agnostics in this room are very bad.” Bush touted religious belief, service, devotion to higher learning, and fidelity to freedom, concluding, “God can live without man, but man cannot live without God.” The crowd popped a cork. Later that week Chriss Winston said that the president wanted to see me. I went to the small anteroom off the Oval Office where he crafted his “self-typed” letters. Bush
thanked me for the Catholic University speech—“the kind of speech I like,” he said. “Anecdotes, humor, structure.” I paused. “It’s funny. You’re Episcopalian, I’m Presbyterian, and the audience was Catholic.” Bush laughed. “Well, we’re all on the same side,” he said.

  Bush: stormy weather. Early that year I wrote an eyes-only—for mine—memo for the express purpose of blowing off steam. Its title: “Who Won the Election, Anyway?” Shortly after Bush’s inaugural, his defense secretary nominee, former Texas senator John Tower, began being pilloried for private impropriety—namely, that he liked to drink, not unlike other politicians, including his late fellow Texan and president Lyndon Johnson. Washington hypocrisy made only Tower a risk to national security. Instead of bashing Tower’s opposition, Bush praised the Senate for “looking at the allegations very carefully,” adding, “If somebody comes up with [new anti-Tower] facts, I hope I’m not narrow-minded enough that I wouldn’t take a look.” In my view, the perception that Bush wouldn’t fight led Democrats to believe that they could outface the GOP in the Budget Crisis of 1990, to which we will shortly turn.

  Bush had been elected in 1988 on a conservative little guy vs. big guy plank. He felt it more real, I think, than sham. To him, Willie Horton was entirely legitimate—a metaphor for Democrats favoring criminal rights vs. victim rights. Disturbingly, some in our administration felt the issue bogus. Not quislings, exactly, they simply liked a me-too creed that hadn’t—couldn’t—elect a GOP president in our lifetime, before or since. Liking to win, Bush in 1988 showed with whom he stood. In 1989 he unveiled Reagan’s official portrait, saying, “For years our opponents were hoping to see President Reagan’s back against the wall here in the White House. But I don’t think that this is what they had in mind.” Bush also presented the National Academy of Engineering Awards, quoting Einstein: “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by individuals who labor in freedom.” He promised brevity to the National Religious Broadcasters: “I know there’s a mention in the Bible about the Burning Bush, but I also know I’m not that hot a speaker.” Bush was stroking his 1988 base: creators, homeschoolers, small-business people, retirees.