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

  22 My baseball coach at Yale.

  23 A columnist from the Washington Post. She was always very tough on me, but apparently she hadn’t gotten tough yet, except about my clothes.

  24 There were rumors that President Ford might enter the race at this late date. He did not.

  25 Like all of the candidates, I had Secret Service protection.

  26 I won the Connecticut primary.

  27 Some friends were already encouraging me to try again in 1984!

  28 The site of the Republican convention.

  29 Hank Knoche, one of my top deputies at the CIA.

  30 I’m referring to President Carter. Lud was a Democrat.

  CHAPTER 9

  1 Ed, one of Reagan’s top aides, was instrumental in staffing the administration.

  2 President Reagan clearly overrode my advice and appointed William Casey. (Casey had been a member of the CIA’s forerunner, the OSS, during World War II.) Given that I was appointed DCI without prior intelligence experience, I could not say too much.

  3 President Reagan used to joke about all my “home” states. I had grown up in Connecticut, had a home in Maine, my father was from Ohio, I was born in Massachusetts, and I lived in Texas. I actually left one out: my mother was from Missouri.

  4 I almost always went hunting around Christmastime (usually between Christmas and New Year’s) near Beeville, Texas, with my good friend Will Farish.

  5 The vice president’s official residence, which is on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Washington.

  6 Bar and I had just bought Walker’s Point, which had been put up for sale after Uncle Herbie’s death. When it was about ready to be sold out of the family, we decided to step in and buy it, mainly so Mum could keep her house on the Point. It of course turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. We were in the middle of major renovations since little had been done to the house after it had been clobbered by a storm several years earlier.

  7 The remaining fifty-two American hostages still being held in Iran were released on January 20.

  8 Fred was a distinguished newspaper editor and perhaps one of the most respected citizens of New Hampshire’s North Country. He thought he resembled President Reagan and offered to stand in for the President at times if it would help improve his security. His offer was serious and sincere.

  9 It was eventually published as C. Fred’s Story and raised a lot of money for literacy. Barbara was Fred’s ghostwriter.

  10 George and Laura were expecting a baby. It turned out to be two babies—Jenna and Barbara, born November 25.

  11 Jim was Reagan’s chief of staff.

  12 Former Democratic senator from Maine, secretary of state, and presidential candidate.

  13 I had already attended one state funeral that year.

  14 There was tremendous concern about security at the funeral. President Reagan thought he should go, then decided neither of us should. Instead, Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter went.

  15 Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya.

  16 Airborne Warning and Control Systems, an electronic surveillance aircraft. Israel was strongly opposed to the sale.

  17 Katharine Hepburn had won best actress for On Golden Pond.

  18 Hugh Gregg, former governor of New Hampshire and chairman of my 1980 campaign in that state.

  19 Don has been my loyal assistant since I was elected to Congress in 1966 and is still with me.

  20 Howard Baker of Tennessee.

  21 Former quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and at this time a congressman from New York.

  22 The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, a liberal activist.

  23 A respected civic leader and perhaps the leading rabbi in Houston.

  24 Doro had gotten married earlier that month, to Billy LeBlond.

  25 George had replaced Al Haig as secretary of state.

  26 Andrei Gromyko was the Soviet foreign minister.

  27 My Cigarette boat that I kept in Maine.

  28 President Reagan and I had lunch every Thursday. It was just the two of us, no agenda, with the understanding that what we talked about would stay between us.

  29 One of Reagan’s many Hollywood friends.

  30 To visit the United States.

  31 The multinational force.

  32 Although Doro eventually named her first child Sam, we do now have a grandchild named Walker Bush, as fine a name as they come.

  33 His official title is His Highness Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. Barbara and I became great friends with Katie and Sadri while we were at the United Nations. Sadri was then the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. The son of the late Aga Khan, he was vitally interested in and well informed about international affairs.

  34 A reference to the two world wars.

  35 The national security adviser.

  36 Tensions were particularly high in the Gulf region because Iran—embroiled in the Iran-Iraq War—kept attacking neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf.

  37 Although he was strongly against tax increases, President Reagan did raise taxes in 1982, 1983, and 1987.

  38 Ferraro and her husband, John Zaccaro, had come under fire from the media on their personal finances and income tax questions. As a result, the media tried (unsuccessfully) to find something wrong with my tax returns.

  39 Much to her dismay, Barbara became famous that campaign when in a moment of extreme frustration (the Mondale campaign kept referring to me as a rich elitist), she called Ferraro that “four-million-dollar—I can’t say it but it rhymes with rich.” She felt horrible and called Geraldine to apologize. Gerry could not have been more gracious.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 Mike Deaver, a good friend of Reagan’s and a former White House staffer.

  2 Members of Congress.

  3 Some people called George P., “P,” just as they later would call George W., “W.”

  4 The Mets catcher.

  5 I took President Leon Febres-Cordero of Ecuador.

  6 Whitey Herzog managed the St. Louis Cardinals, whom the Mets were playing that day. Johnson was the Mets’ manager.

  7 My brother Pres and I paid her ten cents to run across the room naked. She did, then went home and tattled. I’m not sure we had ever seen our dad so angry, and he made us go apologize.

  8 Americans living in or traveling to Beirut were routinely taken hostage by Arab extremist groups during this time. It was a horrible situation that the government could do little about.

  9 My nickname for Neil was Whitney; it started out as Whitey, because of his blond hair, and somehow it evolved into Whitney.

  10 Neil and Sharon had just had their second child.

  11 Arthur was the longtime road secretary for the Mets and now works for the Yankees.

  12 Arthur had arranged for a number of players to call Marvin and cheer him up.

  13 Jonathan Pollard, the CIA employee who was given a life sentence for spying on the United States for Israel.

  14 Gulf Cooperation Council.

  15 Walt Harrington of the Washington Post had just written a cover story about me for their magazine. I thought he did a fair, balanced job, although he focused too much on the so-called class issue.

  16 Neil and Sharon were living in Denver where Neil had just started a business. Therefore, it was not possible for him to campaign full-time in New Hampshire, as he had in 1980.

  17 Marvin had married Margaret Molster from Richmond, Virginia. They had just adopted a beautiful little girl, Marshall Lloyd Bush.

  18 Henry and Jessica Catto were good friends from Texas. He had a long, distinguished diplomatic career, including representing the United States in the Organization of American States and serving as ambassador to El Salvador. I named Henry my first ambassador to Great Britain.

  19 Don Regan, former secretary of the treasury and now chief of staff. After the 1984 election, he and Jim Baker literally switched jobs.

  20 The arms sent to Iran were spare parts and defense weapons.

  21 Marine colone
l Oliver North, who was a member of the NSC staff, was in the middle of the Iran-contra controversy and ended up taking most of the blame, along with National Security Adviser John Poindexter. They had both resigned from the NSC in November, shortly after the news broke.

  22 C. Fred had suffered a stroke and died. The household was forlorn so I wasted no time in getting Barbara a new dog, an English springer spaniel who was destined to become even more famous than Fred.

  23 Baker had replaced Don Regan as chief of staff; Carlucci had replaced Poindexter as NSC adviser.

  24 Their son, Navy SEAL Robert Dean Stethem, had been killed in 1985 during the hijacking of the TWA plane to Beirut. Lebanese Mohammad Ali Hamadei had been arrested for the murder.

  25 About a year later, I would be asked in one of the presidential debates to name some of my personal heroes. I named Dr. Fauci because I was so impressed with his unselfish dedication to AIDS research.

  26 Doro and Billy’s baby girl.

  27 Colin Powell was deputy national security adviser at this time; in a few months, he would become the top man at the NSC, when Carlucci became secretary of defense.

  28 The maximum amount of money an individual can contribute to a presidential campaign.

  29 Our friend Jack Steel, who ran my office in Houston, and all the wonderful volunteers who staffed it, many of whom still work in my office today. For years we’ve had many running jokes, including about “vulgarity.”

  30 Now ninety-one years old and still opening mail in my office.

  31 Jim McClure of Idaho.

  32 I had agreed to participate in a debate, moderated by Bill Buckley, with the other GOP candidates.

  33 In politics that means not attacking your opponent.

  34 General Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of Poland. Over the years I would get to know him well, and although he was a communist, he also was a patriot and a military hero.

  35 Dave Beckwith, who went on to work for Dan Quayle when he was Vice President.

  36 Now Senator Olympia Snowe and wife of the former governor Jock McKernan.

  37 Judd is the son of Hugh Gregg, the former governor who ran my campaign in New Hampshire. Judd was then a congressman, went on to be governor, and is now Senator Gregg.

  38 Then the governor of New Hampshire.

  39 Margaret Warner, pledging that the story would be a good one, was given full access to our family for a Newsweek cover story. Then we were tipped off that the cover headline was “Fighting the Wimp Factor.”

  40 Country-western singer whose Houston-based place, Gilley’s, was made famous in the movie Urban Cowboy.

  41 I am now on the Board of Visitors at M.D. Anderson and will be chairman in 2001.

  42 A good friend from Houston who is now a federal judge.

  43 Eduard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, for whom I have great respect.

  44 Anatoly Dobrynin was the Soviet ambassador to the United States for twenty years. At this time he was a special assistant to Gorbachev. Alexander Yakovlev was Central Committee secretary.

  45 This was in reference to the Gary Hart–Donna Rice controversy, which forced Hart to suspend his presidential race for a few months.

  46 President and Mrs. Reagan generously offered us the use of Camp David for the holidays.

  47 The fabulous Navy stewards who staff Camp David, the White House, and the Vice President’s house.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 I much prefer to do my interviews live or to tape them to length. That way you avoid your forty-minute interview being cut and pasted down to four minutes, the result being that sometimes your words can be taken out of context.

  2 Pete Teeley, who had been my press secretary but by now had gone back to the private sector. I still depended on him for advice—and still do today.

  3 This refers to an incident in 1987 when Dan Rather was upset by his network’s decision to finish airing a tennis match at the U.S. Open instead of starting the news as scheduled. He stormed off the set to call the president of CBS News, and when the tennis match ended earlier than expected and the network switched to the news, they had six minutes of dead air-time.

  4 I won the battle with Dan Rather that night, but he won the war. His coverage of my campaign and presidency was consistently negative.

  5 I am credited, or discredited, for coining the phrase “the Big Mo” when I beat Reagan in Iowa in 1980. Reagan proved then that the Big Mo can be terribly overrated. If I lost in Iowa, I was hoping to prove the same thing in 1988.

  6 Congressman Jack Kemp, former Delaware governor Pete DuPont, and former secretary of state General Alexander Haig.

  7 After the New Hampshire primary, the next big hurdle was Super Tuesday, when most of the Southern states would hold their primary on the same day.

  8 One of my Maine fishing buddies.

  9 Duberstein was then deputy chief of staff. In a few months he would take over the chief of staff’s position when Howard Baker decided to retire.

  10 A reporter from the Washington Post who covered my campaign.

  11 I swept all sixteen GOP primaries held on Super Tuesday, giving me more than half the delegates I needed for the nomination.

  12 President Reagan had just created the bipartisan National Economic Commission, something Cuomo had suggested.

  13 President Nixon had insisted I start calling him by his first name.

  14 By this time it had been determined that Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis would be my Democratic opponent.

  15 In February, a federal grand jury in Florida had indicted Manuel Noriega of Panama on drug-trafficking and other related charges. The Reagan administration was trying to work a deal with Noriega that if he would leave Panama until after democratic elections could be held, the charges would be dropped.

  16 Negotiate with a terrorist, a hostage holder, or a criminal.

  17 Rumors were flying that Noriega had a fifty-two-page document, dating back to my days at the CIA, that would connect me to his drug-dealing. I knew it was nonsense and ignored his threats, although they continued after I was President.

  18 In the end Noriega called our bluff and turned down the deal, staying in power illegally. Unfortunately, it made the United States look rather foolish.

  19 Jack Allin, at one time the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, was one of the pastors at our summer church, St. Ann’s in Kennebunkport. He became a close friend and spiritual adviser, and we felt a great loss when he died in 1998.

  20 Writer Gail Sheehy had written one of those touchy-feely “get inside my head” profiles of me for Vanity Fair. I hated it.

  21 Dukakis had picked Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate.

  22 Roger had joined the campaign as a media consultant. He is now head of Fox News.

  23 I had picked Indiana senator Dan Quayle as my running mate. The press were hard on him from the beginning, first by unfairly accusing him of avoiding the draft by joining the National Guard. He kept his head high and was loyal to me, and I never regretted my choice.

  24 Murphy was a young sergeant on the Prince George’s police force in Maryland. Married just three weeks, he had been killed in a drug raid.

  25 That I was a wimp.

  26 Owner of the Washington Post, which owned Newsweek.

  27 Texas A&M University, Tom’s alma mater and a school that I loved. Eventually I would decide to locate my presidential library on the A&M campus.

  28 James Baker.

  29 The final debate was in Los Angeles.

  30 A great friend and senator from Wyoming.

  31 Debbie was my first cousin. She had married Craig Stapleton and they had two children, Walker and Wendy.

  32 This would be Uncle Lou Walker’s dog Caper. Lou was Debbie’s father.

  33 House minority leader.

  34 Speaker of the House.

  35 Jimmy Carter’s NSC adviser.

  36 Carlos Salinas had just been elected president of Mexico.

  37 She had sent me a wonder
ful note of congratulations, taking credit for teaching me everything I knew about debates. Another note: I first used the term a thousand points of light in my convention speech, referring to the importance of volunteerism.

  38 One of their sons had been in some legal trouble.

  39 Elsie is a great friend and one of my strongest supporters.

  40 Martha and Fred Zeder.

  41 Famous Mississippi author whose works include North Toward Home. Although he was a liberal, we were friends.

  42 The founder of the very liberal Texas Observer newspaper.

  CHAPTER 12

  1 After years of abuse, the savings and loan industry was reeling from bad debt and bankruptcy. My goal was to protect the depositors—not the owners—and to put into place tough new rules to get the industry back on track and protect Americans’ investments. It was an expensive and ugly task but an accomplishment I am proud of.

  2 Dan Rostenkowski, Democratic congressman from Illinois.

  3 Republican senator from North Carolina.

  4 Sonny, a Democrat from Mississippi, and one of my best friends. We entered Congress together in 1967.

  5 I was suffering from laryngitis.

  6 Tower lost in the Senate, a terrible blow to a man who had served his country with distinction. I quickly nominated Dick Cheney, then minority whip in the House. I hated to steal from our congressional ranks, but I knew Dick would be accepted on the Hill and would do a great job. I was right on both counts.

  7 At this point Gorbachev was beating us at the public relations game through high-profile visits in Europe calling for peace and change.

  8 Lee was sort of the “chief operating officer” of my 1988 presidential campaign. He was young, aggressive (some people would say ruthless), and brilliant at politics. After the election, I appointed him chairman of the RNC. I wrote this note before he was to be roasted at a charity event.

  9 I had asked the foreign policy team to do a thorough reevaluation of our foreign policy and where we should go from here. The press was accusing me of dragging my heels, especially since it was a tumultuous time in Eastern Europe where the cries for democracy were growing louder. However, I felt strongly it was important to know where we wanted to go before we started going there.