George H. W. Bush

by Curt Smith

  On the same day Bush grew ill, Skinner told the Washington Post that the campaign’s “obvious” problem was a failure to convey “a significant number of things the President has done” domestically. “Indeed, after three years of neglect,” wrote Schlesinger, incredulous, “the speechwriters suddenly were being told that they were the key to the presidential reelection.” The January 28 State of the Union address, said pollster and campaign chairman Bob Teeter—a technician, not strategist—would launch, in effect U-turn, the campaign. If it didn’t, the next major address would—ad infinitum. “Nineteen ninety-two,” said humor writer Doug Gamble, “was not a very funny year.”

  A mid-January Gallup poll for the first time showed more thumbs down than up for the president. The eighteen-month recession, costing 1.2 million jobs, was wide but shallow. Reagan’s 1981–83 black dog and Obama’s 2009–12 black hole were far more severe. Unlike Poppy, both presidents won a second term—but why? Each was a better politician. Reagan’s “Stay the Course” and Obama’s “Whatever’s Wrong, Blame W.” topped Bush 41’s changing message. The latter left office before recovery became clear—1992’s third and fourth quarters growing at 3.5 and 5.8 percent, respectively. After a while—say, early 1992—41 spoke to an outcome-based jury.

  First, Bush traveled to New Hampshire, where Buchanan, on the primary ballot, was already auguring much of the GOP 1988 convention platform: fair trade, faith in the public square, American unity vs. identity-group politics. The Granite State had saved the then veep in 1988. Sununu’s fresh firing didn’t help now. “For six decades, I’ve been your neighbor,” read Bush’s text, “playing here as a kid, speaking at your Rotary, attending the local school board. Our dreams spring from a common source: Family, school, church, community.” Horace Greeley, born not far from Amherst, said, “Go west . . . and grow up in the country.” Bush had come north again, he said, “to return to home country.”

  Each writer had prepared text tailored for a city on Bush’s January 15 schedule. When voters say they like unscripted candidates, they often commit what Churchill called a “terminological inexactitude”—an untruth. Rarely deviating from text, Reagan was among the great rhetoricians of our time. Disliking text, Bush would ad-lib whenever possible, as he did going “north.” In Portsmouth he told civic leaders that he didn’t want to sound like “Mrs. Rose Scenario” but thought the economy would soon revive. In Dover Bush told voters that his concern was for them—“Don’t cry for me, Argentina.” In Exeter a town-hall meeting heard him say what he had told aides for months: “Message: I care”—true but also sure to fuel cynicism.

  I found it endearing. Most had no idea what Bush meant or why he said what he did.

  For weeks the January 28, 1992, State of the Union address had been held aloft as the key to the Magic Kingdom, the event that would propel Poppy from the darkness of the recent past back to the sunlight of Desert Storm. All now depended upon the speech—a short, thematic address that would stir Bush emotionally, the economy psychologically, and the nation inspirationally.

  Such cosmic expectations were, of course, a mistake. So was limiting the text to Sam Skinner, Richard Darman, Bob Teeter, the president, and its author, Tony Snow—exclusivity narrows outlook. I found Tony kind and generous, loving to debate politics and college basketball, and an artist of the editorial page. Weaned on print, Tony found it hard to write for the ear, not eye, the former more rhythmic and lilting. Bush got his draft January 24 and rejected it. Called to Washington, Peggy Noonan registered at a DC hotel under the name of “Garbo,” craving anonymity, like the actress. All weekend she toiled on the address. Straightaway the folly bloomed of waiting ten weeks for a speech to substitute for a vision.

  About this time Reagan released a video in New Hampshire about his old running mate: “To those who question whether George Bush should be reelected, here is my two-word answer: Saddam Hussein.” Bush’s election-year disapproval rating soon approached another two-word answer: Jimmy Carter’s. Likeable and effective Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater became new communications director, succeeding Demarest, who became lead speechwriter, succeeding Snow, the new head of media affairs. Buchanan had intensity, a fervid style, and the middle-class belief that Bush had sold out jobs. The president had global insight, international cachet, Barbara, and the familiarity of a friend.

  Bob Hope introduced him at a rally. Bush said, “He was telling me one result of Columbus’s voyage was trade that first introduced broccoli to the Europeans.” Drum beat. “They’ve been our friends all these years anyway.” Another stop evoked the Cold War. “The Evil Empire is not merely E-V-I-L. It’s D-E-A-D.” Everywhere Bush bashed Congress. “Last year we liberated a country in the desert sand. This year we must liberate our economic proposals from congressional quicksand.” And anti–free traders like Buchanan. “Protectionists believe in isolationism—in an America running scared. We believe in ourselves—in an America standing tall.”

  It sounded right but felt all wrong. How could a foreign policy wizard be in trouble, polls conveyed, against a mere protest candidate, said the White House, even a speaker as riveting as Buchanan? Moreover, what was there to protest, aside from an economy that, like a rubber band, contracted and expanded? Somehow a lot, the new year was about to say.

  In February I gave a number of speeches in several moderate Upstate New York districts, then summarized my thoughts for Demarest:

  There is little passion—little belief that he’s our guy—little desire to walk on glass for George Bush. R. W. Apple’s recent New York Times piece speaks eloquently to this point: “Pragmatists [i.e. Bush] have trouble building constituencies. Mr. Reagan had a band of die-hard supporters who could be counted upon no matter what. Mr. Bush’s fans come and go with the rapidly changing political weather. And he has never convinced conservatives that he is one of them.”

  This explains why Buchanan’s savaging of NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] pornography and racial quotas is scoring points among GOP loyalists otherwise disposed to back Bush. Our response, I believe, must not be intellectual but cultural. Buchanan is using Andover, Skull & Bones, and what he dubs “pampered preppies” as a metaphor for GB. We must react by focusing on Bush’s persona—e.g. his courage in trekking to west Texas. Although Bush’s background differs from most Republicans, we can say, he believes in their values and will act on their behalf.

  In Upstate speeches I said that when you elect a President you choose not just policies but a person. Look at George Bush: Which among his qualities would you not want your kids to emulate? I spoke of the President as a war hero—a moral person—“like Mrs. Bush, he knows all the hymns”—a family man with a loving wife. With the nuclear family under attack, what a remarkable defense—a man of honesty and modesty.

  I noted how as a child, GB’s moniker was “Have Half”—he gave half his lunch to other classmates—and how he refuses to brag about himself. I referred to his bravery and responsibility—what we call character. At the end of each speech, people approached me, saying, “I didn’t know he was like that.” More than capital gains, tax credits, or Democrat liabilities, it is Bush the person we must make the lynchpin of the 1992 campaign.

  We seldom did.

  One day I was at the computer when a White House colleague flew through my door. “You know Buchanan, right?” he said.

  “A little bit,” I said. I knew Nixon fairly well, Buchanan only faintly.

  “Well, tell him to get out,” he said. “This is all his fault.”

  “No,” I said. “This is our fault.” I am not sure he heard me, leaving as quickly as he came.

  On February 19 New Hampshire primary exit polls predicted a Buchanan upset. After CPR revived the West Wing, final results showed Bush winning, 53–38 percent. For once the conventional view was right: the scoreboard showed the president’s weakness more than the challenger’s strength.

  On February 8 Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times previewed Bush’s chief obstacle, aside
perhaps from his campaign—media bias. He wrote of how Bush, attending the National Grocers Association convention in Orlando, Florida, lingered at the mockup of a checkout lane. According to Rosenthal, who was not even at the convention, Bush signed his name on an electronic pad used to detect check forgeries, then said, “If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?”

  “Yes,” Bush was told, Rosenthal wrote, and the president shook his head in wonder.

  Rosenthal used the incident to make it seem that Bush had never encountered a supermarket barcode reader—ludicrous, we know now; preposterous even then to anyone who knew of Bush’s past shopping in Houston (and at Sam’s Club after leaving the presidency). Bush was merely being shown a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes. Rosenthal didn’t care about that; he wanted to make Bush seem “out of touch.”

  Ultimately, Bush trudged slowly through the primaries, winning 73 percent of the vote to Buchanan’s 25, balance divided. At this point, he easily beat Clinton in a two-way Market Opinion Research matchup, 50–38 percent. The same poll cautioned that Clinton had a 43–25 favorable/unfavorable rating. The Arkansas governor, a self-styled centrist, or New Democrat, lost the Iowa caucus but finished a surprising second in New Hampshire, terming himself “the Comeback Kid”—a pliant press promptly slobbering over his candidacy. On one hand, he became the first baby boomer presidential nominee, embodying its toxic mid-to-late 1960s culture. On the other, his first national exposure was a woman, Gennifer Flowers, revealing reports of an affair.

  Clinton denied it, appearing on television’s 60 Minutes with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said that she was not like singer Tammy Wynette, twanging “Stand by Your Man,” even as she did. The joker was a man appearing previously in this narrative: wealthy Texas businessman Ross Perot, who had ears like Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, a visceral dislike of Bush, and twitting Clinton, said, “I’m a Rhodes scholar, too. R-O-A-D-S.” His theme song was “Crazy,” by country music’s Patsy Cline—art as life. Even many Republicans liked him—until grasping that Clinton could not have asked for greater providence than Perot.

  Bush and Clinton both endorsed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but the president had signed it—thus, got the blame or credit. Perot called NAFTA “a giant sucking sound,” killing American jobs or outsourcing them abroad. In addition, he sensed voters’ fear that internal and external debt was eroding the maxim of “pay as you go,” embodied best and most recently among all presidents by Ike. Our children would unfairly get the bill, said Perot, vowing a plague on both political parties, and each’s voters complied. In 1992 his name appeared on all fifty state ballots, Perot winning 19,741,065 votes and 18.9 percent of the electorate—most successful third-party presidential nominee since TR in 1912.

  Ironic were the deserter’s principles—sane tax, spend, and size of government. The Perotistas were overwhelmingly white, traditional, and moderate to conservative, their DNA Republican. By 1992 three in four Americans felt the economy was fairly or very bad (distant). Six in ten said their own finances were better or unchanged since 1988 (up close). They were buying a blame-Bush narrative a year and a half after economists had told him the economy would boom. Worse, after a 1988 campaign in which Willie Horton had been named so often you might think he was Bush’s running mate, the cultural affronts to decent people galvanizing the GOP since 1968 as an issue had been cavalierly thrown away. In June 1992 Perot’s 39 percent led Gallup’s trial vs. Bush’s 31 and Clinton’s 25 percent. Another colleague of mine said, “This is Perot’s fault.” “No, it’s not,” I said—first Buchanan, now Perot—“It’s ours.” Shakespeare said, “The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”

  In Time’s 1988 election issue, historian Garry Wills noted protest candidates Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson, whose “power populism” Bush enlarged to become that year’s “candidate of grievance.” After their withdrawal, the president “tapped a yearning for moral rebirth that Ronald Reagan was supposed to have brought to America already. Yet Reagan’s rhetoric, unable to re-create the America he invoked, made that and America’s absence more haunting for those who saw a Sodom around them instead of the Eden they had been promised.” In 1988 Bush upheld “Robertson’s agenda of prayer in school, harsh penalties for drug dealers, a return to patriotism, opposition to abortion, and a full frontal attack on liberalism.” As president, though, Wills said, Bush did little to assist that agenda. Indeed, “the loss of family values, the irresponsible sexuality of the young—what Jackson called ‘babies making babies,’” was more pronounced by 1992. Poppy had not kept Sodom from the gates.

  Needing a new script, Bush looked for one with a fervent fraction of the old. In Cleveland he announced health-care legislation, saying, “As long as I am President, we will not go down the road of national health care.” In Miami he backed legal tort reform: “I don’t want to get into trouble with the Bar Association, but I once quoted to someone that line, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ He said, ‘What works for lawyers?’” In Wisconsin Bush noted how “America has helped win the peace abroad. The Cold War is over—and America won.” Bush wanted now “to discuss winning the peace at home by changing the child support system.” None packed the punch of pulverizing the ACLU.

  In March 1991 black motorist Rodney King was beaten by four white Los Angeles police officers. On April 29, 1992, an all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty in the case. Almost immediately, riots began that lasted nearly a week. Bush asked David Demarest to draft a strong law-and-order speech. On his own Tony Snow wrote “a deep-think piece on racial relations in the United States,” as it was described to the New York Times, conceding racism and the need to end it and, some thought, using it as an excuse to break the law. Bush chose Demarest’s no-nonsense draft, addressing the nation next night from the Oval Office. “What we saw last night and the night before in Los Angeles is not about civil rights,” Bush said. “It is not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. It’s not a message of protest. It’s been the brutality of a mob, pure and simple. And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order. What is going on in LA must and will stop. As your president I guarantee you this violence will end.”

  Such martial rhetoric was sadly unusual for post-1988 Bush at home—no give, gloves off. More sternness might have reminded many why once they supported him. That week I wrote a speech for a format Bush used too rarely: the radio address. The president said that he was troubled by the court decision—but that rioting rose from “a simple lack of respect for human life. The first civil right of all Americans is the right to be free of violence.” Bush traveled five times in the next month to California. Few thought he could win the state—Clinton routed him by 1.5 million votes—but his job description included being the nation’s captain/chaplain.

  On May 8, saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Bush hailed LA police and fire fighters who had fought six thousand fires and made twelve thousand arrests. He was governing like a president, strong and fair. Such conduct might eventually have marginalized Perot. Instead, political antennae weak, the new Bush White House campaign team borrowed its leitmotif from the 1960s television show Get Smart—KAOS, not CONTROL.

  In 1988 CBS debuted the television show Murphy Brown, starring actress Candice Bergen as an investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional CBS TV newsmagazine. In 1992 Brown, an unmarried character, became pregnant, decided to have the child alone, and joined the pendulum toward illegitimacy that abetted post-1960s poverty, dysfunction, crime, inferior education, and lack of parental authority, among other defects. Vice President Dan Quayle was appalled by the show’s approval of having children sans wedlock, which not long ago would have earned opprobrium. In a May 19, 1992, speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, he was courageous enough to say so in a seminal speech citing the collapse of family values as
a leading cause of that month’s LA violence.

  “It doesn’t help matters,” Quayle said, “when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown . . . mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.” A day later Marlin Fitzwater was asked—assaulted—by the media whether his boss agreed. The right response loyally (Quayle was veep) and politically (let the Dems own illegitimacy) would have been to defend the vice president and attack TV as uncivilizing—what polls showed America thought then, and now. Instead, to quote Thatcher, precincts of the White House went “wobbly.” Unaware of Quayle’s speech, it was caught between two “family values”—opposing abortion but wanting two parents for a child. Fitzwater told the press, “Murphy’s demonstrating pro-life values, which we think is good. She is having the baby, so we’re not very comfortable getting involved in criticism of the show.” Marlin had unintentionally deserted Quayle by not saying marriage should precede a child—KAOS.

  In 2002 Bergen said in an interview that she supported much of Quayle’s speech, saying, “Nobody agreed with what he said more than I did.” A decade earlier the White House too late got its act together. In a May 17, 1992, speech at Notre Dame, Bush said the Census Bureau showed that relative to other countries the United States had the “highest divorce rate, the highest number of children involved in divorce, the highest teenage pregnancy rates, the highest abortion rates, the highest percentage of children living in a single-parent household, and the highest percentage of violent deaths among the young.” Broken families—Quayle’s point—were breaking America. In May a fifth grader in Marietta, Georgia, asked what he as a student could do. “I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy,” Bush said. “I think it’s good when the people are patriotic and salute the flag and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and say we are One Nation under God.” It was an answer impossible to conceive of Clinton giving—an answer out of 1988—if only Bush had given it more often.