Despite my excitement over the new job, I was nostalgic about leaving Congress. I wrote this letter to Jack Steel the day I closed my office.
Dear Jack—
We’ve cleaned out the desk . . . It’s been a sad day. All our projects up in smoke. The pictures gone, the little plaques . . . things without life—out of a happy past; but now just kind of there.
But there’s more than faded pictures of happy days—there really is—deep happy memories of unselfish people who shared with me some happy times—shared in helping people or trying at least—shared in my life with its excitement and its ups and downs. And now it’s kind of over—at least these 4 happy years are clearly gone . . .
I now move on to a near summit slot in a life full of new challenges; but I know full well that this fate would not be mine were it not for that sensitivity that for me you conveyed to all who called for help. I get credit for caring, and I do, but it was you and the others who implemented things, who conveyed the concern through action.
. . . I couldn’t walk out of this office where we lived and fought so hard without trying to tell you what’s in my heart Thanks, my dear friend—
George
January 11, 1971
I was with President Lyndon Johnson. I flew down on an Air Force Convair with a large group . . . going down to the Johnson Library.
. . . I visited with the President. The main reaction was there can only be one cook. He used the example you can put in the potatoes and know all about proteins but you won’t know all the rest of it. You have got to rely on the President. You cannot have two State Departments. You must have trust in the President. . . . He spoke with great reservation about U Thant.6 He was not very fond of him I think. He indicated that [Dean] Rusk7 clearly didn’t think much of him either. He pointed out that Goldberg always wanted his ear and so did [Adlai] Stevenson. They both tried to go around the Secretary of State. I had the feeling he felt they were wasting his time an awful lot of the time. . . .
If I had to draw a conclusion, perhaps President Johnson was preoccupied, but I don’t believe he really felt all that great about the U.N. His two analogies—you’re just a slice of the apple, an important slice but just one slice—you put the potato in and you know about the proteins, but you don’t know the final taste of the stew for only the President is the cook and he alone understands all that is happening . . .
The main thing I got from President Johnson was that you should entertain these people, be good to them, show them the best in America, let the President have some exposure to them which will be good for both the President and the ambassadors and that was about it. He did not seem to rely too heavily on the U.N. to solve the problems and he certainly had a reservation about the way Stevenson and Goldberg kept bugging him, calling him on matters that he felt were trivial. . . .
January 19, 1971
I have been invited to my first Cabinet meeting. Things are shaping up. It was a very interesting session. Rog Morton8 and I were the two new guys there. We sat at the front table and heard a presentation of the president’s message. I was surprised at a couple of little things. The President graciously worked me into the conversation a time or two—“Now, George, this will be of interest to you up at the U.N.” He seemed to be including me in the official family which is a very helpful thing. I didn’t get a chance to visit with him. I am determined this kind of meeting is going to be terribly important.
On Thursday night [National Security Adviser] Henry Kissinger came out to the House for dinner with his secret service man and incidentally instead of staying outside we invited the secret service man in and he was promptly defeated in Tiddley Winks. He won four games but lost a total of twenty-four. He was heard to remark as he got into the car, “Well, the boys told me I at least have a great long shot.” They indeed confirmed he had a long shot but the rest of his game was not too fantastic. This was the first time the guy ever played however, but I kind of like the concept of the secret service man down playing Tiddley Winks.9
I had a long talk with Kissinger. We talked about the right relationship between me and the President, and he told me I had the confidence of the President, that the President wanted to work through the U.N. That day the Secretary General had just made a statement criticizing the Government of Saigon and Kissinger remarked that the President wished George Bush were up there because at least he could respond and point out that compared to Hanoi, Saigon was a pretty good government. We set up lines of communication for me to get directly to him if there was any major problem. . . .
He said there are about four ambassadors that have this confidence of the President. I told him I am glad to know I have it, and I am determined to keep it. I also told him I did not want to “go around” Secretary Rogers, but I felt that we could keep a balance here. Kissinger has, I think, a rather low regard for the paperwork and bureaucratic foul-up at the State Department, but he was not critical or down on any particular individual here. I probed for the President’s true feeling on the U.N. . . . I am determined that to do this job right we have got to have the right relationships. I told Henry this. I told him that I wanted to be an advocate for the President’s positions with which I agree. If we differ I want to be in a position to tell him. . . . The conversation could not have been more productive from delineating the ground rules standpoint. Kissinger is a very interesting guy . . .
January 25, 1971
. . . Little things—My office10 has no pictures of the President or Secretary of State. I am taking care of that. I am also going to get some White House Pictures up in the New York mission. There seems to be an avoidance of President Nixon around here. Some of it may be that the people here are Democrats or maybe it’s the apolitical nature of the place. I don’t know which but certainly there doesn’t seem to be any great enthusiasm or advocacy for the President and yet many of his positions seem to have good loyal support which I think is probably the main thing. I am beginning to see how important it is to keep the lines of communication open on personnel . . . SHW11 is a case of a political appointee who is so bad that you can see why the pros would be upset. He stays loaded. He calls Negroes niggers and all in all he is apparently bad news. I am determined to ease him out of here just as soon as possible. He made the mistake of telling me in the one conversation I have had with him that he is willing to resign. He shall be given the opportunity. . . .
I think the best policy around here is to demonstrate your willingness to “go to others,” to ask advice, to be grateful, to get here earlier and leave later than the rest of the people. This will be the way I plan to do it at the Mission. Set the pace. I think we need to lower the median age up there. It needs to be revitalized. . . .
February 2, 1971
On the first of February I had a call from Ambassador Yost talking about whether the March 1 take over date was firm. I assured him it was as far as I knew and sure enough the Secretary confirmed it later on that day. He did ask that he be permitted to stay on in the apartment for another 10 days.12 I had offered this earlier when I thought we were going to take this up the first of February. I assured him it would not be a problem. He said he would be out in a week or ten days afterwards. He said they were having a lot of farewell parties and it would make it easier for them. Barbara Bush was not overly excited about this. She said I wouldn’t permit her to do this, to be there 5 minutes over the time. That may be true but it is better to bend over backwards on this kind of small thing. What’s a week over a span of what might be several years.
February 5, 1971
I had a long briefing on the Senate hearings. Everyone says that the Senate committee gives very perfunctory questions and that the hearings should be over fast—30 or 45 minutes at the most. The questions are pretty general. I must confess I feel a certain uneasiness although the pros all say you’re a Member of Congress, don’t worry, etc. . . . it all ought to go well, but even at 46 years old, one gets a little nervous about encounters of this sort. . . .
/> February 8, 1971
. . . Hearings were held today. They went well. Senator [William] Fulbright was very courteous . . . [Stuart] Symington dug in on the relationship between Kissinger and Rogers. . . . There were several questions on peace-keeping but for the most part the hearings went well indeed.
March 11, 1971
Dear Congressman:13
This is just a note to have you know that the welcome mat is out for you here at the United States Mission to the United Nations.
I know from my own experience in the House that I never really took a good look at the operation here in New York, and I want to be sure you realize that I would like to have you stop in at any time. If we can ever help with answering questions from constituents please call on us.
The Mission is located just across the street from United Nations Headquarters. Several people from Washington days are with me and along with a first-class staff which I inherited, we are looking forward to showing you around and visiting with you whenever business, or pleasure, brings you to town.
Sincerely,
George Bush
Ambassador
March 28, 1971
. . . I had a meeting last week at which the financial people from the United Nations came over and they were talking about having to take out of trust funds in order to pay the salaries. This is depressing, and it certainly reflects terrible management. I don’t know what the answer is going to be, but we must take a real hard look at it.
. . . After the Four Power Meetings Malik14 was talking about whom we wanted for Secretary General. It was a very general conversation, both of us fencing back and forth, neither of us saying anything. It will be interesting to see how this one works out, but the more I look at the financial management problems facing the United Nations, the more I realize the importance of having some kind of forceful administrator at the top of all this. I like U Thant personally very much, but I don’t think he is strong or tough enough in this administrative field. . . .
Social whirl—I am going to have to sort out some priorities. The long deadly luncheons given for people by the Secretary General and the others are too much. They are having a series of going away luncheons for Ambassador Farra of Jordan. The cocktails, the wine, the heavy meal, the whole thing consumes a couple of hours and they are a total waste of time. It is going to be difficult drawing the line between being polite and courteous and yet not wasting time. On the other hand, the U.N. dinners can be productive. At the dinner given by [British Ambassador] Colin Crowe I had a chance to visit intimately with two or three of the ambassadors in a rather relaxed surrounding. This week we took the Ambassador of Madagascar to a hockey game with one of his boys and then Ambassador Ogbu of Nigeria brought his boy to go to a basketball game. I think this kind of thing will be important to do, and I think it demonstrates a certain friendliness that the U.N. ambassadors should show to other people. . . .
Prisoners of War—I hope we can do more to emphasize the plight of the prisoners here. . . . Ross Perot was here by chance. He is a difficult fellow to figure out. He has always been very friendly to me, and he and his wife Margo are great, but he is a very complicated man. I think he now pictures himself as totally non-partisan.
April 5, 1971
. . . I got into a big fight with Malik at the Four Powers Meeting today. He accused the U.S. of being tools of the Zionist conspiracy which is nothing new. . . . I climbed on Malik very firmly and told him that I felt he was smearing names of good men and that there was no excuse for this and that he could not possibly justify it. I really gave my strongest smash at him and he did not come back quite as strongly. Afterwards I went up and shook hands with him and he was fairly jovial. His text during the first round of the Four Talks was a long political harangue harassing the United States, harassing Israel . . . I am amazed at this “obvious” propaganda that he resorts to, but he does it over and over again. I just wish those who think the Russians have completely changed could listen to these outlandish claims and comments. It would do the world good to have all of this on TV. It would bore them to death, but this propaganda that seems so overt and obvious and base is resorted to at every meeting. I simply can’t get over it. . . .
The most difficult issue I had to deal with as U.N. ambassador concerned China’s representation in the United Nations, especially who would sit in China’s seat on the smaller, powerful U.N. Security Council. For years Taiwan had held China’s seat as the Republic of China while the People’s Republic of China (the mainland) was not represented. As each year went by, it became increasingly clear that it was unrealistic to have the PRC excluded from the United Nations. Rather than expelling Taiwan, the United States adopted a policy of “dual representation”—a One China policy but with both sides being represented. I wrote the following letter to Henry Kissinger outlining the challenges ahead. (I apologize for the acronyms; that is how we talked.)
April 17th, 1971
Dear Henry,
The Security Council (SC) question is fundamental. It will be impossible to consider Peking’s (PRC) coming into the General Assembly (GA) without considering the SC question.
I have not talked to a single person around the U.N. who feels that a Dual Representation (DR) would have a chance unless the SC went to PRC. As we ask the official of GRC [Taiwan] to consider a policy shift on our part they must face this basic fact.
A DR resolution could in fact include a paragraph recommending that PRC hold the China seat on the SC; but at a minimum there would be an unwritten understanding. Any effort to obscure the SC seat question will be viewed as an effort to keep the PRC out of the U.N. Alas, I wish it weren’t so. . . .
My recommendations:
1. Any emissary discussing U.N. representation with GRC must not avoid facing up to the SC question. It is a regrettable fact of life.
2. Pres. Nixon would be ill served by any policy that appears to be “selling out” the GRC. It is argued by the elite—“PRC is a reality”—It is but so is GRC and we must not appear to “sell out” a little reality in order to face up to a big reality. It may happen, but we must not be its advocate.
3. Time is important. As soon as things shape up, we should be able to get you a lot more dope as to how viable a DR plan is, but we will have to be able to hustle up some votes, and we will need some insight into the GRC final position.
[copy unsigned]
Self-typed—apologies . . . GB
April 19, 1971
. . . The social whirl is too much. We are going to have to cut down on some of these useless evenings. Tonight it was the Stuttgart ballet. Actually it was great fun, but it didn’t help the job any, it didn’t help the President any, and it didn’t help my ulcers any. I am very tired. I have never seen a job where there is such constant activity. There are so many things to do. There is one appointment after the other and very little time to do any reading.
The Host Country problems are beginning to bug me. It’s a shame to have to spend any time at all at these crazy things, but they must be done . . . Malik raised hell with me about “throwing away frogs” in the Amtorg15 office. The crazy JDL16 let loose a bunch of frogs and mice which terrified the people in the building. Today the South African Consulate was bombed by black extremists. New York is a miserable place to have the U.N. This is heretical to say in the Mission, but it is. . . .
I am very much concerned about the attack on the institutions in this country. One gets a tremendously distorted view of America from New York. I am convinced of this. The drumbeat of attacks on Hoover17 are in the news right now. My own personal view is that Hoover should have gotten out a long time ago, but to degrade him and to give him a “bum rap” is not correct . . .
I have never seen such a distorted impression of America, and I am afraid it is not good for the U.N. to see all of this. Continually at the Four Meetings Malik quotes back to me things that are wrong with our country, things that he has read in the paper. The Times is quoted all the time. . . .
At this point in time I would have to think twice about whether I’d rather have this job or be in the Senate. Two months ago or three it wouldn’t have been any choice at all, but now I find this work so fascinating that it is hard to tell. I worry sometimes about the lack of accomplishment on the political or diplomatic side. It seems to me a lot of times we are simply following out orders in the Four Power meeting, although I feel the talks with Kissinger on China and the Middle East have been more substantive than that. In time I hope to move more into the policy end of things. In the meantime it is better to do my homework, not bother the President or Secretary, and learn the business cold.
May 2, 1971
I am continually impressed by how unrealistic a place New York is. I find it very difficult to be polite when people ask me how I like New York. It is an unrepresentative city. There are tremendous host country problems. There are tremendous intensified urban problems that are not “the real America.” . . . I am continually amazed at the arrogance of the intellectual elite in New York. They are so darn sure they are right on everything. It’s unbelievable. Having lived in Texas for 23 years I had forgotten how concentrated this problem is, but it’s sure there . . .
All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings Page 15