All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings

by George H. W. Bush

  I gave up a good business and my private life to get involved in politics because I believe in certain ideals, and I won’t take second place to you in any way whatsoever in terms of who is the most offended about Watergate and all the ugly revelations attached thereto. Having said that, I’ll be damned if I’m going to convict a man without the facts.

  Nobody’s feeding you any bull. You go and do exactly what you want, write critical letters to me, which is part of our participatory process. I’m going to stay in here, do the best I can, speak out against Watergate, position our party in the forefront of meaningful reform, but I’m not going to convict the President without evidence.

  . . . Your letter was a good one because it made me think, and it was frank. I hope you don’t object to my writing back with equal frankness. I may have lost touch with my traditional constituency, as you suggest, but it’s not because I haven’t been out there where the people are. I have been doing nothing but travel so much so that I’m about to drop in my tracks, and I find many, many Republicans who disagree with your view. Most retain the conviction that a man is innocent until proved guilty, even though they hate Watergate and all there is about it.

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  In April, under court order, the White House released the edited transcripts of forty-six taped Oval Office conversations. Although there was still no evidence that the President had engaged in criminal activity, the tawdriness of Watergate continued to be revealed. The language used in the conversations was abusive and offensive, and it became evident that the White House was obsessed with the cover-up.

  May 24, 1974

  Mr. John Reagan McCrary10

  New York, New York

  Dear Tex:

  What a thoughtful guy. I, too, was sickened by the transcript. There is no point denying it. The whole amoral tone made me ill. I have tried to make this clear in public without quantifying my emotions because it is important that people know that their National Chairman and their Party faithful do not approve of the tone of those tapes. Having said that, fair play must set in terms of the ultimate fate of the President. I will do nothing to interfere with the free working of the system.

  Boy, these are rugged times. . . .

  Warmest regards,

  George Bush

  June 4, 1974

  To the Concerned Students

  East Valley High School

  Spokane, Washington 99216

  Dear Students:

  I was very much interested in the class poll that you sent me. I am not sure that it differs from the national averages, except for the fact that the impeachment and resignation figures are higher than the national samples I have seen. Perhaps it would be useful to you to have my own views.

  I was Ambassador at the United Nations for two years and there I had a chance to learn a great deal about 132 other countries. I became reimpressed with the fact that our system is stable and that our system is capable of working. In fact, there are not many other systems in the entire world that can investigate the overwhelmingly elected leader of the country.

  Having said that, I think resignation is a “non-answer.” It would inject instability into our system for a long, long time. It would not make sense politically since people would feel—rightly or wrongly—that the President had been hounded out of office without proof of guilt. It would not make sense from the system standpoint because it would undermine the basic stability of our constitutional system.

  As to impeachment, there is great confusion in the country as to what “should he be impeached” really means. My position is that the Judiciary Committee should do its thing fully and with maximum cooperation from the White House and from all concerned. It should not be a political inquiry—it should be an open, honest inquiry with decisions being made on the facts. I think it is wrong for Members of Congress to prejudge the matter. I think it is worse for people to say the President should be thrown out than to say we don’t think he should be thrown out. The reason I say that is that we do have a fundamental premise in this country of “innocent until proved guilty.”

  When you answer question 4—78% to 22%—that President Nixon should be brought to trial you obviously feel that the evidence means the House should impeach the President. I respectfully disagree with this, but I am no lawyer and I will abide by the decision of the House Committee.

  One last comment and if this sounds like a partisan comment, too bad. The President is taking a lot of heat of Watergate—some of it unfair. I would hope that as you raise questions of Watergate and express your moral indignation, which incidentally I share about Watergate and all its connotations, that you would give credit for the things that have gone right. Not one of you is being drafted. I think it’s fair to give the President credit for that. No Americans are getting shot at for the first time in a long, long time. I think it’s fair to give the President credit for that. The Middle East is a lot closer to peace now than when it was when I was battling those Middle East resolutions up there at the United Nations just two years ago. I think the President deserves credit for that. I have been troubled that people give the President grief over Watergate and seem unwilling to give him credit for accomplishments that are tremendously fundamental to your lives and to mine.

  Thank you for sharing that poll with me.

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  July 23, 1974

  Dear Lads,11

  We are living in “the best of times and the worst of times”.

  You can sort out our blessings as a family. We have a close family, we have a lot of love around. You guys come home (and this sure is a blessing for Mum and me). We’ve got enough things. If we get sick we can get well, probably, or at least we can afford to pay the doctor, and the schools.

  More blessings—you guys know no prejudice. You judge people on their worth. You give your grandmother and your parents a lot of happiness. You will do well in a world full of opportunity. Our country gives us a whale of a lot, and so we are privileged people in a privileged country. We are in the best of times.

  My Dad felt strongly the firm obligation to put something into the system. He felt compelled to give, to be involved and to lead—and that brings me to the worst of times. I mean the part about Watergate and the abysmal amorality it connotes. You must know my inner feelings on this. Because of my job and because of my past associations with the President, it might well be that you don’t know how I feel.

  It’s important not from the sense of my interpretation of the facts; but it’s important because as Dad helped inculcate into us a sense of public service I’d like you boys to save some time in your lives for cranking something back in. It occurred to me your own idealism might be diminished if you felt your Dad condoned the excesses of men you knew to have been his friends or associates.

  Where to begin—The President first. He is enormously complicated. He is capable of great kindness. When Dad was dying of cancer I was leaving the Oval Office one day, having conferred on some UN matter, and I lagged behind to mention this to the President. His response was full of kindness and caring. He tried then to phone and wish Dad well.

  Or again at the UN when a hand-written note arrived from the President telling me of a kind word spoken to him about me by the Foreign Minister of Turkey.

  I am not that close to him as a warm personal friend—for he holds people off some—but I’ve been around him enough to see some humor and to feel some kindness.

  He gets no credit for these or other nice things. Partly it’s because he doesn’t do them for public approbation—and it’s partly cause when he does do them in public it’s kind of stiff. He means it, but it doesn’t pour gracefully out.

  One Christmas the President entertained his Cabinet and others in the East Wing. That morning he had invited a Korean singing group that he encountered on a White House tour to come and sing. They were thrilled and they did a classy job—little Asian faces radiant in the joy of
Christmas and thrilled to be singing for the President. As the kids left the stage they thanked the President and one little one threw her arms around his neck.

  He responded properly, and I’m positive inside he felt all warm and pleased, but outside there was the appearance of discomfort. He wasn’t relaxed—and the moment just didn’t click.

  On the professional side he has strong deep convictions. Foreign affairs, as you read, is his abiding interest. His accomplishments are enormous and they are his.

  Some say it’s Kissinger’s magic soaring over the President—but not I.

  He calls the shots, he takes the heat, he faces up to the tough ones and he’s right an awful lot.

  The war brought him, as it did Johnson, enormous abuse but he realized that our credibility as a world power would have been rendered useless for the future if we took the easy path. He stayed in there, took the heat on the bombing, and the heat was enormous (butcher, tyrant, Hitler).

  The way in which the war ended guaranteed that our country could once more move on to help in other areas—the Middle East, the prime example.

  Kissinger, an extraordinarily able man, got the peace prize. Nixon took the heat.

  In the Middle East—“it was Nixon’s [way] to offset Watergate”—vicious reporting at its worst—but when the separation of forces was achieved between Israel and Egypt, then Israel and Syria, it wasn’t really the President that got the credit.

  This must have hurt him personally. Indeed from a conversation I had with him before a dinner Fred Dent12 and I gave for the Cabinet I could see that he was concerned on this, but he was not small or bitter about it.

  You should know that I continue to respect the President for his enormous accomplishments and for some personal things too.

  But you must know that I have been disappointed and disillusioned by much that has been revealed about the man from Watergate tapes and other sources.

  He has enormous hang-ups. He is unable to get close to people. It’s almost like he’s afraid he’ll be reamed in some way. People who respect him and want to be friends get only so close—and then it is clear—no more!

  He has enormous hang-ups in other things too. He refers often to the Ivy League with total contempt—derision—but with all kinds of unlovely hang-ups coming through; and yet at various times you look around the very Cabinet table where the remarks are made—and there sits a Rog Morton, and Elliot Richardson, a George Shultz, a Fred Dent, and me and more I expect in the Cabinet, in embassies, in Departments—all appointed by him.

  His comments are beneath his greatness but they possibly explain Watergate a little.

  The President’s hang-up on Ivy League is two-fold. The first relates to issues. He sees the Ivy League type as the Kennedy, liberal, Kingman Brewster13 on the war, arrogant, self-assured, soft professors moving the country left. Soft on Communism in the past—soft on socialistic programs at home—fighting him at every turn—close to the editors that hate him. In this issue context he equates Ivy League with anti-conservatism and certainly anti-Nixon.

  Secondly I believe there is a rather insecure social kind of hang-up. Ivy League connotes privilege and softness in a tea-sipping, martini drinking, tennis playing sense. There’s an enormous hang-up here that comes through an awful lot. I feel it personally. It stings but it doesn’t bleed because I know if I said, “Mr. President, do you mean me or Rog” he’d say “no”. But I must confess that I am convinced that deep in his heart he feels I’m soft, not tough enough, not willing to do the ‘gut job’ that his political instincts have taught him must be done.

  He is inclined to equate privilege with softness or stuffiness.

  I use the Ivy League hang-up simply as a point of departure to explain further on Watergate.

  (Let me say right here there is an arrogance about some Ivy League connections that is bad. I remember Yale during the [Vietnam] war—its unwillingness to preserve a climate on campus where diversity could flourish. My hang-up with Brewster was not his own honestly held views on the war but his unwillingness to insist that other views could be expressed. He did not lead—he followed the mob. In fairness so did many, many others. Thank God, George, you got the best from Yale but you retained a fundamental conviction that a lot of good happens for America south and west of Woolsey Hall.14)

  But back to RN. He surrounded himself on his personal staff with people unwilling to question the unlovely instincts we all have—and that he has in spades.

  I had great respect for Haldeman. We liked his family and I saw him as loyal—simply implementing the President’s will.

  But now, in retrospect and in personal sorrow, I see him as unwilling to say, “This is wrong”—unable to exercise political judgment—condoning things he should have condemned—arrogant to a fault.

  I see Ehrlichman with the mean gut memos—ordering the O’Brien tax investigations15—enemy lists, filth gathering, gut-fighting, taping—appealing to the dark side of the Nixon moon.

  Colson—no judgment, a mean and vicious streak—so insidious and ugly that it would never seem to him that forging a cable to hurt arch enemy Kennedy was wrong.

  Dean—a small, slimy guy—unprincipled—groveling for power.

  I could go on and on in my indignation.

  Little soft men like [Jeb] Magruder—unwilling to say, “Hell, no, I get off here”. Enraptured by the power of his station but so unawed by the political process that he felt “any means to achieve an end”.

  It galls me now to see him on Today, his book a best seller—his criticism of Nixon bringing him fame and fortune—his morality so sincerely conveyed; but for heaven sakes where was what Dad always called ‘conscience’—where was that morality when he walked all over the decency that really does exist in politics.

  I remember Magruder when employed at Commerce long after Watergate—still arrogantly driving a RNC car—or sitting next to your Mother at the Japanese embassy, drawing her even at that late date into the enormity of his lie.16

  I hate to sound bitter about these men and others, but I am.

  In this job I have seen a common web of arrogance towards the Republican Party by these people.

  Haldeman never showed it to me personally nor did the others for that matter, but as soon as I came to the RNC it was clear.

  “Have the Chairman sign this and send it out”—arrogant, insensitive orders not requesting any judgment—simply viewing the Party as one more tool to be used. It was apparently unbelievable in 1972.

  As 1973 developed, a change took place—but it was less a change of heart than a change forced by circumstance and by my unwillingness to surrender my judgment. . . .

  A basic problem is that the President has little regard for the Party as such. There is much to reinforce his position, but what is lacking is any respect for party at all.

  This must have been conveyed to these subordinates, and they simply went out and downgraded and insulted party in every way possible.

  The relations between the arrogant staffer and elected politicians was more complex.

  The President has served in the Congress. He knows practical Hill politics but this was no inhibiting factor on staff arrogance toward elected officials.

  I didn’t taste the lash of arrogance for as a Congressman the President was always helpful and friendly and the staffers may have sensed this. But when I came to RNC I’d hear junior staffers talking about “rolling” Members of Congress. Arrogant little squirts using the President’s name to big shot those outside the White House fence.

  Once in my early days a staff guy working for Colson told me the President wanted me to do something. I said, “How do you know?” (I knew he never saw the President.) He told me the President had marked the news summary with instructions. I insisted on seeing the instructions. What was shown was some comment with Haldeman’s initials. Not good enough.

  To sum up—The President was ill-served. He’d say in frustration—“Damn it, do this” and the word would go down�
��‘the boss wants this done’ and echelon upon echelon of people would lay aside their own judgment and do tough or dirty things. The evidence is overwhelming. The staff played to the more unlovely side of the President. They didn’t understand politics or politicians and they ill-served the man they wanted desperately to please.

  Others did it—it is said. I am sure they did. The press never had the incentive to dig in on others though clearly others did it. The antagonistic relationship between press and White House has made it all uncivil in D.C.

  Ron Ziegler is thoroughly discredited but he lacks the stature to see that and to leave. At a time when the President desperately needs Hill support Ziegler antagonizes every single member on the Hill.

  I can understand the President’s hostility towards press for they despise him. Long before any evidence was on the table many in the press had concluded that RN was evil and no good.

  Rowly Evans17 told me once “to get out before he drags you into the mud like everyone else he touches”. (He later in the same conversation apologized for this—because he is decent—and he saw the comment had upset me.)

  But now the Congress will decide. The President’s position has eroded, not because of an impeachable offense but because of an accumulation of crud, a pattern of abuse. In my view that’s not fair or right, but it appears to be what’s happening. After the ugly transcripts the President’s support eroded precipitously—then it came back as the evidence appeared flimsy, unfirm—not as sensational as the predictions relating to the locked briefcase would have us believe—and then another shift—the Judiciary transcripts hurt, Ehrlichman’s conviction hurt—the constant accumulation of a wide series of unhelpful disclosures weighted people down and good men on our side had increasing doubts.

  The White House is now embattled.

  The people there have one constituent—the President. As chairman of this Party my constituency, if you can call it that, is broader. Normally a President and Party are not only compatible but quite inseparable—but these are not normal times.