Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

  Many would later point to the bombing of the mosque as the tipping point in the war, triggering sectarian conflict that would ultimately claim thousands more lives. The bombing was undoubtedly a grim milestone, but it was also the culmination of tensions ready to burst forth. The elections of 2005, for all their purple-fingered exultation, had papered over fractures tearing apart Iraqi society. The Sunni boycott, the rise of militias, the paralyzing deadlock in forming a government, all set the stage for the tumult that followed the bombing. Zarqawi had merely lit the match. “He actually succeeded and he touched off the sectarian violence and nobody was there in force or in a strategy and was viewed as an honest enough broker to put it down,” Stephen Hadley later concluded. “From the bombing of the mosque in Samarra—it had really been building before that—but the real slide begins,” recalled his deputy, J. D. Crouch.

  Bush turned glum as a bloody winter turned into an even bloodier spring. “I don’t think anything disturbed him more than the sectarian violence that occurred in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing,” reflected John Negroponte, the former ambassador to Iraq who was now briefing Bush every morning as the first director of national intelligence. “I think he went through a period for several weeks—I don’t know if he went into a state of depression, but I think he was visibly discouraged by the situation in Iraq during this sectarian violence, almost to the point of despondence, because I think it looked to him like the whole game was going down the drain. He was really bothered by that.” At some briefings, “it was almost as if he was pleading with us not to give him any more bad news.”

  Bush’s consternation was mirrored by discontent on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers of both parties had concluded that Donald Rumsfeld should bear responsibility for the war. Andy Card tried to use that to convince Bush to finally push out the defense secretary. “Hey, up on the Hill, the drums are beating pretty loudly for change,” he told Bush. “I think they’re serious and you should think about it.”

  BUSH TURNED HIS attention briefly to the other war, the largely forgotten conflict in Afghanistan. On March 1, he and Laura made a secret trip to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, then flew by helicopter to the capital. Bush was struck by the breathtaking scenery, the snowcapped mountains behind brown plains.

  With all attention on Iraq, where the bloodshed was unremitting, Afghanistan had gone unnoticed for months, the assumption in Washington being that things were under control. For the moment, they appeared to be, but that misjudgment was fueled by a lack of intelligence, the assets having been moved to the other theater. In reality, Taliban elements were preparing to rally their forces again. “We don’t have more troops, and the fighting is getting worse as predicted,” Ambassador Ronald Neumann recalled.

  Neumann had asked for $600 million for reconstruction projects like roads, power, agricultural development, only to have it cut to $400 million, less than the cost of two days of war in Iraq. So he urged Bush to emphasize American commitment to the Afghans. Over a lunch of kabuli palau, Bush assured President Hamid Karzai that America would stay for the long run. Then he went to the embassy to dedicate a new chancery. He didn’t much care for the paint job.

  “Who picked that baby-shit yellow?” he asked.

  “Sir, Secretary Rice owns that building,” Neumann replied.

  For Laura, the trip was a rare chance to spend concentrated time with her husband on duty. She had watched as he absorbed one blow after another. She knew Bush needed a break from the bad news. “I am certain that all presidents have moments when they simply ask God, ‘Please do not let anything happen today,’ ” she later observed.

  Nothing all that bad happened that day. But a week later, the Dubai firm that had won the contract announced it would transfer its port operations to an American company. Bush’s opponents had scared it off. His veto threat had failed.

  ON THE NIGHT of March 11, Bush and Cheney attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner, a white-tie affair attended by presidents since 1885. If Cheney’s mishap had made him the butt of jokes behind his back in the White House, Bush now chose to poke fun to his face.

  The president at these dinners was expected to give a humorous talk, so Bush opened with a reference to the shooting incident, alluding to the last time a vice president shot someone, namely Aaron Burr’s duel with Alexander Hamilton.

  “Mr. Vice President,” Bush said, nodding toward Cheney as he greeted the dignitaries onstage. Then, toward Lynne Cheney, he added, “Mrs. Burr.”

  He went on: “There are all these conspiracy theories that Dick runs the country, or Karl runs the country. Why aren’t there any conspiracy theories that I run the country? Really ticks me off.”

  Bush noted Cheney’s middle initial. “B. stands for bull’s-eye,” he joked. He said the media blew the hunting incident out of proportion. “Good Lord, you’d thought he shot somebody or something.”

  He kept going: “I really chewed Dick out for the way he handled the whole thing. Dick, I’ve got an approval rating of 38 percent and you shoot the only trial lawyer in the country who likes me.” Bush added, “By the way, when Dick first heard my approval rating was 38 percent, he said, ‘What’s your secret?’ ”

  Cheney took it with good humor, laughing when he was supposed to. If serving his president meant being the straight man, it was one more service he would provide.

  The laughter was a brief interlude in the cascade of bad news. As Bush alluded to, his poll numbers had plummeted to the lowest of any second-term president other than Richard Nixon in the past half century, and Cheney’s were worse. Some friends believed Bush needed to shake things up. After all, most of his inner circle had been there since the beginning, more than five years, not counting the campaign. Andy Card got up every day at 4:20 a.m., arrived at the White House an hour later, and did not return home until 9:00 p.m., with phone calls often coming in until 11:00. Then he would get up the next day and do it all over again. No other president’s top aide had stayed as long since Sherman Adams under Dwight Eisenhower. Certainly, many of the problems were beyond Card’s control, and he enjoyed deep respect inside the White House. But there were some who felt his low-key, self-effacing approach was no longer effective, that he was too weak, that fatigue had led to unforced errors. “We’re all burned out,” one aide confided at the time. “People are just tired.”

  Over lunch one day in that period, Bush heard from Clay Johnson, his longtime friend and deputy budget director, that the White House structure was a “clusterfuck,” a jumble of crossed lines that he scratched out on a napkin for demonstration purposes. Rather than a commanding figure like other chiefs of staff, Card had been more like the ultimate body man, sticking close to the president through the day and serving as an alter ego; Cheney, in effect, had played the role of chief of staff, dominating the White House operation set up to feed decisions to the president. Card had at times been a punching bag for Rumsfeld, who called to berate him. “You don’t know how to be chief of staff,” Rumsfeld would tell him, as Card recalled to colleagues. “You’re failing the president in your job.”

  Card at least understood, as Rumsfeld did not, that his time had come; he had been urging Bush to accept his resignation for more than a year, arguing that there were only a handful of people who had enough stature to make a difference in public perceptions by leaving: Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove, and himself. Bush had resisted, but now it was time. In March, he summoned Joshua Bolten, now the budget director, and asked if he would be willing to take over.

  To break the news, Bush invited Card and his wife, Kathleene, to Camp David on the last weekend of March. When the president stopped by the bowling alley to talk with Card one evening, he did not even have to say the words. “My face must have betrayed my anguish,” Bush recalled. He began telling Card how grateful he was for his service, but Card cut him off and said he understood.

  Bush announced the decision at 8:30 a.m. on March 28, praising Card for “his calm in crisis, his absolute integrity and his t
ireless commitment to public service.” Bush realized how much he had come to lean on Card. At a later farewell party at Blair House, Bush choked up and could not even get through his remarks.

  Bolten had been with Bush even longer than Card and was just as hard a worker, but he arrived at his new assignment determined to “refresh and reenergize” the White House. He was a self-described “policy geek,” serious, bright, well liked, “the smartest person in the room,” as Nicolle Wallace put it. And yet he was also an avid Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle rider, a member of a rock band he named Deficit Attention Disorder, and a bachelor once linked to Bo Derek. He brought a dry wit to staff meetings; when someone strayed off course, he would throw a yellow penalty flag onto the conference table like a football referee.

  While Cheney respected him, Bolten’s selection was another ominous sign for the vice president. For one thing, Bolten intended to be more hands-on than Card, and he planned to make a series of personnel changes. For another, he was not as conservative as Cheney and was more interested in Bush’s pet issues like fighting climate change and AIDS in Africa. Most significantly, he had Rumsfeld, Cheney’s best friend, in his crosshairs and, unlike Card, would not be deterred for long.

  As Bolten looked ahead, Iraq was at the top of the agenda. “Josh viewed his job as getting Bush to understand that Iraq was going to hell in a handbasket and some really big decisions had to be made,” observed Michael Gerson. Just days after Bolten’s selection, Rumsfeld got into a public spat with Condoleezza Rice that left the impression that he was out of touch with public discontent over Iraq. Rice in London had said that the United States had probably made “thousands” of “tactical errors” in Iraq but had gotten the broader strategy right. Rumsfeld fired back, saying publicly that such a comment betrayed a “lack of understanding” about the war.

  Bush still saw the problem as perception as much as reality. He told a visitor that the situation was manageable but exacerbated by a press corps that emphasized failure and gave no credit to success. “The American people are watching—do I have the will to do what I’m doing or will I lose my nerve?” he said. “I will not lose my nerve.”

  BOLTEN TOOK OVER on April 14, but any ideas of easing out the controversial defense chief were undermined on his first day. Prominent retired army and marine generals had begun speaking out harshly about Rumsfeld and urging that he be fired. Among them were General Anthony C. Zinni, former head of Central Command overseeing operations in the Middle East; Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, former operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Major Generals Paul D. Eaton, who had overseen training of Iraqi troops, and John Batiste, who had commanded a division in Iraq.

  But their criticism backfired. Rather than convincing Bush, it got his back up. Although he too had concerns about Rumsfeld, Bush bristled at the idea of military officers, even retired ones, effectively pushing out civilian leadership. Bolten realized any effort to replace Rumsfeld would have to wait.

  “We need to step up and give a strong endorsement to Rumsfeld,” Bolten told Bush.

  Bush agreed and released a statement from Camp David, where he had retreated for Easter: “Secretary Rumsfeld’s energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation.”

  Four days later, addressing reporters in the Rose Garden, Bush went further. “I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation,” he said. “But I’m the decider and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”

  That ended the public discussion for a while, but it did not put an end to it behind closed doors. As the Decider tried to reboot his presidency, Bush invited his closest advisers to the residence one evening in April. Sitting in the Yellow Oval Room, he solicited ideas for how to regain momentum. Ken Mehlman did not hesitate to recommend that Rumsfeld be fired. It was important to show that they understood things were not going well, he said. At the end of the day, it was not about pleasing elites in Washington but about recognizing that the reason a company like Walmart was successful was that every day it adjusted to changing circumstances. Gerson agreed, reprising the argument he made after the 2004 election when he first suggested replacing Rumsfeld.

  Bush took that in, then asked for a show of hands. Who thought Rumsfeld should go? Most hands went up, including those of Bolten, Mehlman, Gerson, Rice, Card, Karen Hughes, Ed Gillespie, and Margaret Spellings.

  When Joel Kaplan, Bolten’s incoming deputy chief of staff, raised his, Bush looked surprised.

  “You too?” Bush asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  But others were skeptical, including Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Dan Bartlett. After the generals’ revolt, especially, it just seemed that changing horses at this point would be a mistake. Cheney had been making the same point to Bush in private. Bush agreed.

  Bolten might have failed at first to take out Rumsfeld, but he had better luck imposing his will on the West Wing. His first act was to strip Rove of the policy portfolio he had won in the second term, giving it instead to Kaplan. Bolten wanted clearer lines of authority and thought Rove was ill-matched to the role. The new chief also eased out Scott McClellan as the press secretary and public face of the White House. As much as he liked McClellan, Bolten concluded that he was not a natural at the podium and would never be able to change the narrative. Neither move went over well; Rove simmered over the demotion, while McClellan left bruised and bitter. When Bush heard that McClellan’s wife felt it was a betrayal, the president called her, but it did little to salve the hard feelings.

  AFTER SOME DISCUSSION, Bush was also coming around to Rice’s thinking about Ibrahim al-Jaafari. “The president had not liked Jaafari and found him to be weak and just talking too much but not doing the right thing,” recalled one administration official. With Bush’s permission, Rice flew to Baghdad to tell Jaafari to drop his bid to remain prime minister. “It is time for you to go,” she told him bluntly. “You have no support from any other Iraqi leader besides Sadr, and for that reason you have lost the support of the United States.” It was as overt an intervention in the management of a supposedly democratic country as Bush had attempted, but with the war getting worse, there seemed no choice. On April 20, four months after the elections, Jaafari abandoned his candidacy for prime minister.

  The same day, much to Cheney’s chagrin and against his better judgment, Bush and Rice opened yet another diplomatic front that might have been unthinkable in the first term, a possible grand bargain with North Korea. They decided to broach the idea with China’s president, Hu Jintao, during a meeting at the White House. Hu’s visit was the first by a Chinese leader in nine years and had been the subject of intense, edgy discussions between the two sides. Beijing wanted a full state visit, including state dinner, seeing it as confirmation of China’s international stature. Bush resisted. He was not a fan of state dinners to begin with, and the notion of giving one to the Chinese, who were neither allies nor even reliable partners, would send the wrong message on human rights. Instead, he agreed to most of the trappings of a state visit, including an elaborate welcome ceremony on the South Lawn complete with twenty-one-gun salute and a review of troops, but opted to host Hu at a luncheon rather than a formal dinner. That was good enough for the Chinese. It was too much for Cheney, who swallowed his misgivings while attending the opening ceremony wearing sunglasses.

  Bush’s carefully laid plans, though, were undercut by two unexpected gaffes. After Hu was welcomed on the South Lawn by a drumroll and trumpet serenade on a sun-splashed morning, the White House announcer told the crowd that the military band would play the national anthem from “the Republic of China”—the formal name for the breakaway republic of Taiwan. Whether Hu noticed was unclear since he did not flinch. Then, moments into Hu’s welcome speech, a woman standing on a press riser across the lawn unfurled a yellow protest banner and began screaming.

 
“President Hu! Your days are numbered,” she yelled in English. “President Bush! Stop him from killing!”

  The woman had gotten into the White House with a press pass issued to the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Falun Gong, a religious sect outlawed in China. Hu froze until Bush encouraged him to continue.

  “You’re okay,” he assured the Chinese leader.

  For two and a half minutes, the woman shouted until uniformed Secret Service officers finally made their way through the crowd to take her away.

  The flubbed welcome was deeply offensive to the Chinese, who were unaccustomed to the sort of dissent that American leaders experience regularly. Even before the visit, Chinese officials touring the East Room tried to close the curtains so that Hu would not have to see demonstrators outside the White House gates; White House officials had to stop them and explain that was not done. After the heckler, several Chinese officials refused to attend the ceremonial lunch, forcing the White House social secretary, Lea Berman, to scramble to remove empty chairs. Bush was chagrined. When he sat down with Hu in the Oval Office, Bush apologized. “This was unfortunate,” he said, “and I’m sorry this happened.” He hoped to move past the embarrassment to his North Korea plan, but Hu stuck to his Taiwan-focused talking points.