Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

  The extent of the vice president’s influence proved sensitive from the start. When his press secretary, Juleanna Glover, suggested he conduct weekly background briefings for reporters, even without being identified, the White House staff rejected it. “I think those guys are always just a little more insecure about a strong force in the White House,” observed Neil Patel, another Cheney aide. Cheney was fine keeping out of the spotlight, but he was not about to be locked into silos like Gore or Dan Quayle. When Joshua Bolten proposed that he take on three main subject areas—homeland security, energy, and the reinventing government project Gore had led—Cheney and Libby agreed to head a task force on the first but rejected the other two.

  Indeed, when Quayle visited shortly after the inauguration, he was surprised to hear Cheney’s description of the job. Quayle assumed he would be doing a lot of fund-raisers and funerals as he had.

  “We’ve all done it,” he said.

  “I have a different understanding with the president,” Cheney replied serenely.

  “Well, did you get that directly from Bush?” Quayle asked.

  “Yes.”

  THE DECISION NOT to move to the political center despite the close election was reinforced by a detailed study of the electorate. Matthew Dowd, the campaign strategist, compared the November results with those of five previous presidential elections and found that the long-sought-after “swing voters” were a vanishing breed in American politics.

  Dowd reclassified voters who called themselves independents but actually voted reliably as Democrats or Republicans and determined that the fraction of the electorate genuinely open to persuasion had shrunk since 1980 from 22 percent to 7 percent. Dowd charted his findings in a memo to Rove, a memo that would profoundly shape the thinking behind the Bush presidency for the next four years. If compassionate conservatism had been aimed at independents, Dowd’s numbers suggested they were not the decisive bloc. “You could lose the 6 or 7 percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, ‘Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters,’ ” Dowd said later. Just as important was motivating the Republican base and driving up turnout of those already inclined to support the candidate.

  Yet Bush’s instinct for unyielding principle, as he saw it, clashed with his self-image as a bridge builder. Among his first actions in office was to sign two executive orders pleasing conservatives, one limiting taxpayer money for organizations that promoted abortions overseas and the other creating a White House office of faith-based initiatives to help religious groups do charitable work. At the same time, on his second full workday as president, Bush invited Senator Ted Kennedy, the nation’s most prominent liberal, to the Oval Office to talk about education reform.

  Searching for his new Bob Bullock, Bush was in full courtship mode, showing Kennedy that he had chosen the Resolute desk that his brother had used as president. Bush “was eager and fervent and knowledgeable and caring,” observed Sandy Kress, the former Dallas School Board chief who had followed Bush from Texas to serve as an education adviser. Bush described a more aggressive federal involvement in the nation’s schools than ever before. The trade-off for more funding would be rigorous testing to hold schools accountable for results. But it was Bush’s animated discussion about closing the achievement gap between white and minority children that really sealed the partnership. When Bush used a term of art, “disaggregation of data,” to describe the importance of breaking out minority test scores so school districts could not hide their problems, Kennedy concluded this was a president who was serious.

  As Kennedy got up to leave, Bush noted the reporters outside. “You know, Senator, they are going to ask you when you walk out of here about vouchers and other things that might divide us,” Bush said, “and I just want you to know I want to do a deal with you, I want to work with you on this, I don’t want any issue to keep us from working together.”

  Kennedy agreed. “I hear you,” he said. “I won’t let that happen.” Speaking with reporters outside the building, Kennedy said there were areas of agreement and he was “interested in getting some action.”

  Bush, watching, concluded this was someone he could trust. “I don’t think the two expected to like each other,” Kress concluded, “but they did.”

  AS BUSH SOUGHT new allies at home, he made a series of introductory phone calls to American allies abroad. He was so unschooled in foreign policy that he was thrown off by the time differences of those with whom he spoke. He tried to cover for his lack of preparation with brashness.

  On January 25, he was on the line with President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, who explained his “Sunshine Policy” of reaching out to the hostile and volatile North Korea.

  Bush covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Who is this guy?” he asked aides. “I can’t believe how naive he is.”

  Charles Pritchard, a veteran diplomat listening to the call, couldn’t believe how naive Bush was.

  Kim, of course, understood the complexities of Korean politics a hundred times better than a rookie president five days on the job. Kim had spent four decades in Korean politics, mostly in opposition to authoritarian governments; he spent years in prison or under house arrest, survived several attempts on his life, and went into exile in the United States before helping to bring democratic reform to South Korea and winning the presidency in 1997 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Later that day, Pritchard was asked to write a paper for Bush about “who is this guy,” which he did overnight. “It did not change the president’s views,” Pritchard concluded.

  Others were trying to get Bush’s attention in those early days. Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism coordinator held over from Clinton, gave Condoleezza Rice a memo on the same day as the Kim phone call saying “we urgently need” a cabinet-level review of the fight with al-Qaeda. Using a different spelling, he wrote that “al Qida is not some narrow, little terrorist issue that needs to be included in broader regional policy,” adding, “We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses.” The CIA had put together what it called a “Blue Sky” plan for additional authorities to go after Osama bin Laden and his cohorts more aggressively, and Clarke wanted the new president to sign off on aid to the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban rebel group in Afghanistan, and to neighboring Uzbekistan. Rice authorized him to develop a strategy, but no such meeting would be held for months. And the new administration did no more than its predecessor to retaliate for al-Qaeda’s bombing of the USS Cole the previous fall, deciding it would wait for its review rather than lob more cruise missiles ineffectually as Clinton had done during his presidency.

  Bush convened the first meeting of his National Security Council at 3:35 p.m. on January 30 and made clear he was not letting Cheney chair such sessions in his absence. “Condi Rice will run these meetings,” Bush announced. “I’ll be seeing all of you regularly, but I want you to debate things out here and then Condi will report to me.”

  With that settled, the discussion turned to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict that had consumed Clinton in his final days in office. On the way out of office, Clinton had called Powell to vent angrily about Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader he said could not be trusted. Bush had watched as a deal eluded Clinton and had no interest in heading into that snake pit.

  “We’re going to correct the imbalances of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict,” Bush declared. “We’re going to tilt it back toward Israel. And we’re going to be consistent. Clinton overreached and it all fell apart. That’s why we’re in trouble. If the two sides don’t want peace, there’s no way we can force them.”

  Powell was alarmed. He agreed Clinton had overreached, but pulling back too far could be dangerous. It could give Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, a green light to send the Israeli army into Palestinian territories and escalate the situation. Cheney countered that Bush was right and should not waste his time.
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br />   The conversation turned to Iraq, where a decade after the end of the Gulf War, American forces still enforced two no-fly zones and the United Nations program of sanctions had been terribly corrupted. As Rice put it later, “Almost from the very beginning, Iraq was a preoccupation of the national security team.” Official U.S. policy, set by Congress and signed by Clinton, called for regime change, but there was no obvious route to achieve that, and no one at this point was advocating war.

  Powell suggested it was time to revamp sanctions to make them more effective.

  “Why are we even bothering with sanctions?” retorted Rumsfeld. What mattered was finding and destroying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

  George Tenet, the CIA director, unrolled oversized surveillance photographs on the table showing antiaircraft batteries around Baghdad and what he called chemical weapons factories.

  Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill studied the photographs but was unconvinced. “Factories all over the world look like this,” he said. “Tell me how you can tell this is a factory that creates weapons of mass destruction?”

  Tenet cited what he considered telltale signs, and few others in the room seemed to doubt they were what he said they were.

  Bush ended the meeting by instructing Powell to work on a better sanctions regime and Rumsfeld to review existing military options.

  BUSH DECIDED TO make Mexico his first foreign destination, a sign of commitment to America’s southern neighbor and a trip he could take without worry since his experience in Texas had left him with a working understanding of the place. He arrived on February 16 and greeted President Vicente Fox like an old friend, certain that a fresh era in Mexican-American relations would be a cornerstone of his foreign policy. But the reality of what his presidency would become intruded. About an hour into the meeting with Fox, Bush noticed that Rice had been called away from the table, then Powell and finally Karen Hughes. “What’s going on?” Bush asked, clearly irritated. Rice whispered in his ear that something was happening in Iraq.

  American and British warplanes were bombing radar and command-and-control facilities around Baghdad in response to what the military considered an escalated threat to aircraft patrolling no-fly zones. Bush was stunned. How had this happened without his knowing in advance? Heading to a news conference with Fox, Bush knew the questions would now be about Iraq. Aides advised him not to let on that he did not know about it and to use the word “routine” to describe it. Bush followed the advice, informing the world that “a routine mission was conducted to enforce the no-fly zone.”

  From there, the president flew to his Texas ranch. On television were scenes of bombing in Baghdad.

  “I’m going to call Dick,” the restless president said.

  Cheney came on the line and told the president that this was a good action that would reinforce American resolve against Saddam Hussein.

  Rice was struck that in a moment of uncertainty the first person Bush thought to consult was Cheney. “That said something to me, that he was sort of looking for reassurance,” she said later.

  The main partners in the strike were the British, and Bush was determined to make common cause with Prime Minister Tony Blair. A center-left Labour politician and fast friend of Clinton’s, Blair was hardly the most natural partner for a conservative Republican from Texas. But Bush invited him to Washington so the two could take each other’s measure.

  It was an awkward opening. Before meeting with Bush, Blair was first asked to sit down with Cheney in the White House on February 23. Cheney struck the British as “relaxed while at the same time emanating tension,” as Blair’s adviser Alastair Campbell put it. The meeting “had a certain Soviet woodenness to it,” thought Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador, and Blair’s team was chagrined that Cheney “did not seem to have been instantly felled by the prime minister’s fabled charm.” By the time Blair and his entourage flew to Camp David, they were wary enough that Blair’s wife, Cherie, looked out the helicopter window to spot the Bushes waiting for them and muttered, “I don’t expect that they are looking forward to this any more than we are.”

  But they were struck by the contrast with Cheney. Bush laughed easily and treated them as long-lost friends. “He was a curious mix of cocky and self-deprecating, relaxed and hyper,” Campbell observed. “He liked to see everything in very simple terms, let others set out complicated arguments and then he would try to distill them in shorter phrases.” Blair found him “self-effacing and self-deprecatory” with “a great sense of humor.” Still, it was not a deep discussion; one American official noticed the president stuck closely to his note cards lest he wander outside his comfort zone.

  After the meetings, the leaders met with reporters focused on the transatlantic odd couple. One journalist asked if they had anything in common.

  “Well,” Bush said, “we both use Colgate toothpaste.”

  As everyone laughed, Blair interjected with a smile: “They’re going to wonder how you know that, George.”

  Then the two and their spouses and aides enjoyed a relaxed dinner. “Why don’t we all watch a movie?” Bush suggested. He picked Meet the Parents, the decidedly lowbrow Ben Stiller–Robert De Niro comedy. Bush roared with laughter, particularly when it turned out Stiller’s character was named Gay Focker, while Rice nodded off in her chair.

  Not every early effort to make acquaintances went according to plan. After seeing the Blairs off, Bush returned to the White House, where he planned to host an overnight stay for Republican governors in town for the annual National Governors Association meeting. But as the evening wore on, no one showed up.

  “Well, what did they say when you invited them?” Bush finally asked Laura.

  “When I invited them?” she said. “I thought you did.”

  WHILE THE BUSHES got used to their new home, Cheney and his wife were finally moving into theirs. With the new floors finished at the vice president’s official residence, the last of a hundred boxes of books and other belongings arrived on March 2, and the Cheneys spent their first night in the house after dinner with Liz, her husband, Phil Perry, and their three children. While the books included all the predictable volumes on history and national security, the ones Cheney would keep most accessible were on fly-fishing. A visitor later in his tenure would count thirty-seven fishing books on the shelves and forty-three more in the stacks.

  Amid the unpacking, Cheney began to feel uncomfortable. The next day, March 3, he was getting off the treadmill when he felt a twinge in his chest. It did not last, and he did not respond to it. In fact, on the CNN show Late Edition the next day, he offered a good report on his health. “Well, I feel great,” he said. “I am well-behaved. They’ve taken control of my food supply. So I’m trying to do all those things you need to do to be a responsible individual with a history of coronary artery disease and somebody who’s sixty years old. So far, so good.”

  That afternoon, he felt another twinge, but went to a birthday party for Alan Greenspan and did not call his doctor until the next morning, when the pain returned more sharply while he was dressing. Even then, he headed to the White House for meetings without mentioning the pain to anyone. By afternoon, it had worsened, and he was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where doctors operated and found his artery clogged again. They cleared it out and allowed Cheney to go home the next morning.

  Cheney planned to join the president the next day, March 7, for a meeting with Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean president Bush had scorned while on the phone in January. With Cheney’s backing, Bush took a more jaded view of North Korea than Clinton, who negotiated a deal called the Agreed Framework to compensate Pyongyang for halting its nuclear program. But when Bush woke up that morning, he found a headline in the Washington Post that declared, “Bush to Pick Up Clinton Talks on N. Korean Missiles.” It was based on a news conference by Colin Powell. No way, Bush thought. That was the opposite of his approach.

  Bush picked up the phone and dialed Rice’s tem
porary apartment, not bothering to go through the White House operator. It was 5:15 a.m., and she was still asleep.

  “Have you seen the Washington Post?” he demanded.

  “No, Mr. President, I haven’t,” the groggy adviser said.

  “Go outside and get it,” Bush ordered tersely.

  Rice put on a robe and retrieved the paper.

  “Go to page A20,” Bush instructed.

  She did and quickly read the headline and beginning of the article.

  “Do you want me to take care of this, or do you want to?” Bush asked.

  It was hardly a question. “I’ll take care of it, Mr. President,” Rice answered.

  She called Powell at home and told him to fix it before the meeting with Kim. Powell did not think it was such a problem. All he meant was they were reviewing the North Korea situation and would not automatically toss aside everything Clinton had done. He concluded the real problem was what he later called “the fatal word: ‘Clinton.’ ” Later that morning, Powell fell on his sword. “There was some suggestion that imminent negotiations are about to begin,” he told reporters. “That is not the case.”

  A few weeks later, Powell explained away the confusion by saying, “Sometimes you get a little too far forward on your skis.” But the episode proved an early warning sign of Bush’s relationship with his secretary of state. “That spooked the president and confirmed Cheney’s view that a leash was in order,” Powell concluded.

  BY THE TIME Bush and Cheney took office, California was in the throes of a full-fledged energy crisis. Years of deregulation combined with a growing economy and market manipulation had caused prices to shoot up as demand increased. So in the first few months of the new administration, California utilities were forced to resort to rolling blackouts, turning out the lights in the nation’s largest and most important state.