White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters

by Robert Schlesinger

  The next day, James Cicconi sent Bush a memo detailing the public reaction: 339 calls, 280 of which were positive.* “Jim: Isn’t this a small response compared to other such speeches by RR etc etc.??” Bush scribbled on the memo. Cicconi responded the next day that the “bottom line is that it is probably consistent, especially when you consider that people stayed on the line longer due to the nature of this speech (thus allowing fewer total calls). Also, your speech began later (9 pm) than most of Reagan’s.”

  The Washington Post ran a front-page story on September 22 detailing the acquisition of the cocaine. “White House speech-writers thought it was the perfect visual for President Bush’s first prime-time address to the nation—a dramatic prop that would show how the drug trade had spread to the president’s own neighborhood,” Post reporter Michael Isikoff wrote. “But obtaining the crack was no easy feat. To match the words crafted by the speech-writers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents lured a suspected District drug dealer to Lafayette Park four days before the speech so they could make what appears to have been the agency’s first undercover crack buy in a park better known for its location across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House than for illegal drug activity, according to officials familiar with the case.”

  Confronted by reporters that day, Bush grew testy, finally asking them: “Has somebody got some advocates here for this drug guy?”

  “I keep hearing the critics saying we’re not doing enough on Eastern Europe,” Bush wrote in his diary on November 8. “Here the changes are dramatically coming our way and, if any one event—Poland, Hungary or East Germany—had taken place, people would say, ‘This is great.’ But it’s all moving fast—moving our way—and you’ve got a bunch of critics jumping around saying we ought to be doing more.”

  He was at his desk in the Oval Office the next afternoon when national security adviser Brent Scowcroft came in with news: There were reports that the Berlin Wall had been opened.* The two men went into the small office off the Oval, where Bush turned on the television and they watched the euphoric crowds swell around the symbol of oppression that was suddenly an artifact. Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater rushed in with a handful of wire service reports. He recommended that Bush make a statement to the press about the developments. “Why?” Bush asked. He had other audiences in mind than the domestic one. “Listen, Marlin,” he 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.”

  They settled on an informal press briefing in the Oval Office. Bush was cautious. “I don’t think any single event is the end of what you might call the Iron Curtain, but clearly this is a long way from the harshest Iron Curtain days—a long way from that,” he said. When CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl said that he did not seem “elated” about the news, he replied: “I am not an emotional kind of guy.”

  Across the street in the Old Executive Office Building, the speech-writers had other ideas. The next day, Friday, November 10, McNally sent Demarest a four-page memo suggesting a full presidential publicity blitz. “Set forth below is a five-point plan for you to become the architect of the most popular presidency in modern history,” McNally wrote. Bush should fly to Berlin the next day and go to the Wall. “‘Historic opportunity’ has been overused, and cheapened,” McNally wrote. “But this is different. This is the real thing. History has offered the President a chance to place his stamp on an era—not at the end of an era, after it’s proven itself out—but at the beginning, at the turning point. The hostage situation became a ‘CRISIS’ in part because Carter declared it one. What’s happening at the wall probably is a turning point for the Cold War. And if we declare that it is, we may help the prophecy become self-fulfilling.” Lech Walesa was to be awarded the Medal of Freedom in Washington, D.C., on Monday, November 13, and McNally suggested that the ceremony be moved to prime time and that Bush “declare Monday night that the Cold War is over.”

  Such theatrics would have given Bush an indelible Berlin Wall moment. But it would not have been Bush—not merely because he was trying to find a prudent path that would not spark a hard-line backlash, but also because placing his stamp on an historic moment was not the style of a president who disliked the word “I.”

  The speechwriters would keep on urging that Bush capitalize on the moment by making a decisive statement. But by the time Bush did lay claim to the end of the Cold War, the opportunity to link himself with it in the public mind had passed.

  At 3:29 pm on November 8, Bush spoke on the phone with West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had just returned from Berlin, which, he said, “has the atmosphere of a festival.” He told Bush, “Without the U.S. this day would not have been possible. Tell your people that.” But the president remained cautious, asking Kohl whether it would be okay if he told the U.S. press about their talk.

  Days passed with little presidential comment, and pundits and pols started criticizing Bush for not seizing the moment. House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt and Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell suggested that Bush show his emotions and dance on top of the Wall.

  Bush and Kohl spoke again on November 17. “In spite of the Congressional posturing, the U.S. will stay calm,” Bush told Kohl. “The euphoric excitement in the U.S. runs the risk of forcing unforseen action in the U.S.S.R. or [East Germany] that would be very bad. We will not be making exhortations about unification or setting timetables. We will not exacerbate the problem by having the President of the United States posturing on the Berlin Wall.”

  Five days later, on Thanksgiving eve, Bush finally addressed the nation, his first full public response since the Wall had come down nearly two weeks earlier. “On other Thanksgivings, the world was haunted by the images of watchtowers, guard dogs, and machineguns,” he said. “In fact, many of you had not even been born when the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. But now the world has a new image, reflecting a new reality: that of Germans, East and West, pulling each other to the top of the wall, a human bridge between nations; entire peoples all across Eastern Europe bravely taking to the streets, demanding liberty, pursuing democracy. This is not the end of the book of history, but it’s a joyful end to one of history’s saddest chapters.” To “those who question our prudent pace,” he said, “they must understand that a time of historic change is no time for recklessness. The peace and the confidence and the security of our friends in Europe—it’s just too important.”

  Davis had drafted the speech and was particularly proud of the peroration, which touched on Bush’s early December summit meeting with President Gorbachev off the Mediterranean island of Malta.

  And when we meet, we will be on ships at anchor in a Mediterranean bay that has served as a sea-lane of commerce and conflict for more than 2,000 years. This ancient port has been conquered by Ceasar and sultan, crusader and king. Its forts and watchtowers survey a sea that entombs the scuttled ships of empires lost—slave galleys, galleons, dreadnoughts, destroyers. These ships, once meant to guard lasting empires, now litter the ocean floor and guard nothing more than reefs of coral. So, if the millennia offers [sic] us a lesson, perhaps it’s this: True security does not come from empire and domination. True security can only be found in the growing trust of free peoples.

  Davis watched the speech with his family and afterward awaited their approbation. Their reaction was flat. He talked to other people, and “they didn’t buy it for a minute: It didn’t sound like [Bush], it just wasn’t right for him,” Davis recalled. “That’s when I realized I’d done a terrible disservice by trying to make him somebody he wasn’t.”

  Bush was scheduled to address the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal off Malta when he arrived in the area on December 1. Curt Smith, the conservative Mayberry-loving speechwriter, had the assignment. He sent his fifth draft to Bush on November 29, and Bush returned it edited with a covering note that the president had typed himself. Bu
sh was a prolific note writer, sending forth a steady stream of “self-typed” notes, as he called them, small sheets of paper banged out on a typewriter in his office.* “Please re-do,” Bush wrote, typing poorly. “i don’t understand some of the humor. I’d prefer to leave out most of the references to my own Naval experience.”

  “An old Indian proverb says: ‘No one can really know a man until he’s walked in his moccasins,’” Smith had written. “Well, I was your age when Malta was under assault [in World War II]. I’m an old Navy man. Flew a plane—a torpedo bomber called the Avenger. One of 34 planes assigned to an aircraft carrier. I’ve walked in your moccasins. I know what the Navy means to you. And even more, what you mean to the United States of America.” In the margin next to this paragraph, Bush had written: “Too ego.”

  The speechwriters were scheduled to join the rest of the communications staff as well as reporters at a White House holiday party on December 19. Winston got a call in the middle of the afternoon: Might the speechwriters join the president for a drink before the party? Sure, she said. In the Oval Office? No, came the reply, in the residence. He does know that we’re coming to the Christmas party tonight, right? a befuddled Winston asked.

  The speechwriters and Bush sipped coffee, Heineken, or a buttery chardonnay, and chatted. He showed them around the residence, grandchildren running about, their toys scattered underfoot. Millie, his English springer spaniel, panted around, hoping, it seemed to Curt Smith, for some beer. She licked his hand but did not get one. Bush showed them the Lincoln Bedroom, noting that it was where Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He pointed out a painting of Lincoln and his generals—called The Peacemakers—on the wall. He drew deep inspiration from knowing what Lincoln had done there, Bush told his guests.

  They made small talk for an hour. A couple of times Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, summoned the president to the doorway, where they talked quietly. Bush seemed at ease, even jovial. At the end of the hour, they all rose and Smith heard the president mutter under his breath, “I feel a thousand years old.” They were all headed to a reporter-filled party—that would be enough to age any GOP president, Smith thought.

  Unable to sleep that night—too much coffee—Smith turned on his television at around two in the morning and saw White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater: The United States had invaded Panama, deposing dictator Manuel Noriega. Days earlier, Noriega had declared war on the United States and Panamanian soldiers had killed an unarmed U.S. marine. Bush ordered the invasion to restore Panamanian democracy and bring Noriega to justice on drug-related charges. Smith thought Bush must be the coolest customer in the world. The whole time that he had been entertaining the speechwriters, he had known that the troops were on their way in.

  Budget negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders continued through the spring and into the summer of 1990. On the morning of June 26, Bush, budget director Richard Darman, chief of staff John Sununu, and Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady met in the residence with the Democratic leaders—House speaker Tom Foley, House majority leader Richard Gephardt, and Senate majority leader George Mitchell. The meeting was intended to reestablish trust in order to move forward the broader negotiations, which included other members of Congress from both parties. Foley made Bush an offer: They should agree that a bipartisan solution was required that would include entitlement reform, defense and domestic discretionary spending cuts, budget reform, and—yes—tax increases. “Okay,” Bush replied, “if I can say you agreed.”

  As quickly as that, “Read my lips: no new taxes” was finished. Darman wrote a two-sentence statement which Sununu edited, changing “tax increases” to “tax revenue increases” in the hope that they could argue the deal did not violate Bush’s pledge. Fitzwater was given the statement and told to simply post it on a bulletin board—no spinning, explaining, or contextualizing. Demarest was in the West Wing when business community liaison Bobbie Kilberg approached him, frantic. Sununu who was formerly governor of New Hampshire, happened by. Governor, the business groups are going crazy, Kilberg said, what am I supposed to tell them? Sununu huffed: Don’t tell them anything. He turned and walked away.

  “I wish I had never said, ‘Read my lips, no new taxes,’” Bush told an interviewer years later, “because had I not made it so pronounced, people would say, ‘Well, you know, he has to do this.’ President Reagan raised taxes several times, but he just kept saying, ‘I’m against a tax increase.’ And he was very convincing about it, and for some reason, the right wing of our party that still criticizes me for a tax increase has nothing to say about the Reagan tax increase, which is good. I’m not trying to undermine his legacy. I just wish I’d been that good.”

  It was a case of not giving a speech that damned Bush. Reagan used communications—speeches especially—to set a context in which it was clear that any tax increases must have been enacted over his objections. “I was appalled that no one thought about how to bring the public along, to position us in a way,” Demarest said. “Ronald Reagan raised taxes a bunch of times—nobody thought he was the great tax raiser. Well, he positioned himself properly. Dragged, kicking and screaming, you know. We did none of it. We posted it on a bulletin board. It was horrible.”

  As if to underscore his continuing lack of understanding about presidential communications, at a press conference on July 17, Bush said: “I’ll make you a slight confession. I still am trying to find the appropriate way to discuss, using the bully pulpit of the White House, these matters you talk about—talking about religious values, family values or whatever….”

  Bush hit a bucket of golf balls during the day on Wednesday, August 1, leaving his shoulders sore—enough so that at eight twenty that evening he was wearing a T-shirt, sitting on the edge of an examination table in the White House Medical Office getting deep heat treatment. Scowcroft and NSC Middle East expert Richard Haass appeared with disquieting news. “Mr. President, it looks very bad,” Scowcroft said. “Iraq may be about to invade Kuwait.”

  Bush and his team reacted quickly, condemning the invasion and gathering worldwide support for action to roll the Iraqis back. Some time after 8 pm on the evening of August 7, Mark Lange, the motorcycle-riding speechwriter, got a call summoning him to Demarest’s office in the West Wing. The rest of the night he shuttled between there, a conference room, and his own office, furiously pounding at his word processor.

  “In the life of a nation, we’re called upon to define who we are and what we believe,” Bush said at 9 am on August 8. “Sometimes these choices are not easy. But today as President, I ask for your support in a decision I’ve made to stand up for what’s right and condemn what’s wrong, all in the cause of peace. At my direction, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division as well as key units of the United States Air Force are arriving today to take up defensive positions in Saudi Arabia.” Operation Desert Shield had begun.

  Bush continued to speak about the situation throughout August, with his rhetoric heating up. The speechwriters wanted to compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler, but the National Security Council excised the language—and then Bush ad-libbed it himself. Even then, the NSC refused to let the speechwriters put it in a speech. We don’t want to compound it, they told Winston. Bush kept on ad-libbing it.

  A speech to a joint session of Congress was scheduled for September 11. Richard Darman, the budget director who had run the Reagan speechwriting operation for a couple of years, wrote a detailed eight-page outline, sending it to Bush at the end of August. The “guidance for speechwriter” was that the “speech should be about 25 minutes long excluding applause. It should be designed to produce at least 25 interruptions for applause—i.e., an average of one applause line per minute.”

  Bush edited the outline before it was passed on to Mark Davis, the speechwriter. To the objectives listed, he added: “A new world order under which the world can no longer be blackmailed by Saddam H by threatened use of chemical weapons, nuclear weapons.” Bush
had first used the phrase “new world order” in February, at a political fund-raiser in San Francisco, referring to the collapse of the Soviet Union. He used it again at a press conference: “As I look at the countries that are chipping in here now, I think we do have a chance at a new world order, and I’d like to think that out of this dreary performance by Saddam Hussein there could be now an opportunity for peace all through the Middle East.” The day before, he had received the outline and written the insert.

  William Safire traces the origin of the phrase to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem Morte d’Arthur, where the dying King Arthur says: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” FDR used the phrase once (an unflattering reference to Nazi dreams of world conquest), as did each of Bush’s predecessors since Nixon, but only with Bush did it gain lasting fame. Whether he had Tennyson or any of his predecessors in mind is unclear. The phrase was “kicking around at the time,” Davis later recalled. The NSC, for example, was “bandying it about in memos.” He added: “I think it is one of those phrases whose true father is the zeitgeist.”

  Davis wrote the speech. Bush was “very focused,” he recalled, and sent many of his little typed notes.* Davis was still stung by having failed to write properly for Bush at Malta. “If he’s not Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan or JFK, who is he?” the speechwriter wondered. “What’s the best George Bush out there? And the best I could think of was Gary Cooper…. You know: short, clipped declarative sentences, plain-speak, kind of humble but in a menacing way.”