Jay Allison, my father’s personal aide at the time, remembers Dad coming out of the critical-care unit with a small American flag in his breast pocket. Jay could see that it had been an emotional visit; and for a long time, Dad simply couldn’t talk about it.
During that hospital visit, my father had met a severely wounded Army Ranger, nineteen years old, who had been in the first wave of troops landing in Panama. The Ranger handed Dad his flag and said that even if he’d known beforehand that he would lose an arm and a leg in combat—which he did—he still supported the president’s decision because it was the right thing to do. Dad kept that flag in the pencil cup on his desk in the Oval Office every day after that—and he promised the Ranger that it would serve as a daily reminder of the personal sacrifice our soldiers make. Later, according to Dad’s assistant Patty Presock, when visiting heads of state came to the Oval Office, Dad would ask that a miniature flag from the visitor’s country—like the ones guests at the arrival ceremonies were always given—also be placed in the pencil cup.
I noticed that something had changed within the walls of the White House that first week. Previously, if I walked down the hall with Dad, we’d navigate our way through the crowd, dodging staff members going to and from meetings. Now, however, people stepped aside for Dad and stood up a little straighter as he passed by. They were not doing this because Dad had changed—but rather out of respect for the office that he held.
Dad also did things a little differently as well. Two interesting observations about Dad’s behavior in the Oval Office come from two close colleagues.
Judge William Webster served as director of the CIA under Dad—and he recalled visiting with Dad one Saturday morning in one of the little cubbyhole offices off the Oval Office. Dad was dressed in a sport shirt and casual clothes, and the two were discussing a matter when Dad realized he had something on his Oval Office desk related to their conversation. The trouble was, he told Director Webster, “I don’t like to go into the Oval Office without wearing a coat and tie.” He’d have to send Judge Webster the document the next day, Dad decided.
“It reflected a deeply felt respect for the office,” the judge later said. “This was just the two of us. He wasn’t showing off for the press. He certainly was not trying to show off for me—I’d known him for a long, long time. It’s the way he felt, and it’s the way he has lived.”
Dick Darman, meanwhile, had spent four years in the White House as an assistant to President Reagan before Dad asked him to head the Office of Management and Budget. During the Reagan years, Dick had often been in the Oval Office just before the media were allowed in for one event or another. In such situations, Dick said he was always struck by how quickly and completely Ronald Reagan could focus on the TV cameras and play to them.
“President Bush was different,” Dick said. “The first time I was with him when the press entered the Oval Office, the reporters formed the usual semicircle around the president’s desk. The TV cameras were in the center facing the president directly. Helen Thomas happened to be at a far end of the semicircle. When she asked the first question, the president turned to her and stayed focused on her as he responded. In so doing, he turned his head three-quarters of the way away from the TV cameras. From a media-management perspective, that would ordinarily have been considered a mistake. But the president was less interested in the cameras than he was in showing his questioner proper courtesy and respect. He simply did not enjoy the contrivances of the larger media game.”
Every incoming president strives to hit the ground running, so to speak, and Dad’s White House team started to take shape the day after his victory in November 1988. That first morning after election night, in fact, he had a press conference to announce his opening round of appointments. He tapped his friend and fellow Houstonian James Baker as secretary of state; New Hampshire Governor John Sununu became White House chief of staff; Boyden Gray as White House counsel; and Dad’s longtime friend and former congressional aide Chase Untermeyer as assistant to the president for personnel. On the day before—Election Day—Dad asked Lee Atwater to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, Dad’s old job.
Craig Fuller, former chief of staff in the vice president’s office, and Bob Teeter, who had been the campaign pollster, were named cochairmen of the presidential transition. By January, Fuller and Teeter, in turn, helped Dad put in place the remainder of the cabinet appointments. Among others, Dad also asked his trusted friends Nick Brady and Bob Mosbacher to serve as secretaries of treasury and commerce, respectively; former New York congressman Jack Kemp became secretary of housing and urban development; and another former opponent, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, saw his wife, Elizabeth, become secretary of labor. Chicago lawyer Sam Skinner became the secretary of transportation. For the post of national security adviser, Dad turned to General Brent Scowcroft, who served in that same capacity in the Ford administration.
Many of these were people I had grown up knowing, and it was not a surprise to see them return to public service in Dad’s administration.
This was indeed a “friendly takeover” from the Reagan administration—one Republican president to another—and, perhaps as a result, many of the Reagan staffers thought they were going to stay for another eight years. Yet, no matter how people might agree philosophically, a president needs certain people in certain positions—people that have a feel for the nuances of his agenda and are personally loyal to the president.
“One of the hard things we had to do in the first few months was have a lot of the Reagan people leave,” John Sununu recalled, “so we could fill it with Bush loyalists instead of generic Republican loyalists or Reagan loyalists. And you know the president: that kind of thing is generally hard for him to do—he’s such a kind man. Besides, that’s the kind of job a chief of staff can and should handle for the president—so that’s where I developed the reputation for being direct.”
During the transition period in December, Dad’s chief of protocol, Joseph Verner Reed, also suggested that the president-elect invite the United Nations secretary-general, Javiar Pérez de Cuéllar, to dinner early in his administration as a gesture of friendship to the United Nations. Dad enthusiastically embraced this suggestion and replied, “I want to have Secretary-General de Cuéllar as my first dinner guest at the White House.”
On January 24, Dad and Mom hosted a dinner party for the secretary-general and more than thirty U.N. officials upstairs in the family quarters. “The gesture, I can assure you, was appreciated not only by the member states’ permanent representatives, but also the thousands of international civil servants across the globe who learned about it,” Ambassador Reed recalled. “It was a great triumph of international diplomacy for the most senior United Nations alumnus.”
Dad’s first week in office was a particularly busy one, filled with swearing-in ceremonies for cabinet officers and senior White House staff. When that first Thursday arrived, though, Dad was not so caught up in events that he didn’t notice something was missing—and he wasn’t alone.
“When we came home to California after George’s inauguration,” Nancy Reagan remembered, “Ronnie began work in his new office the next day. It was a busy and exciting first week for Ronnie, but when Thursday came around, it just didn’t seem to be the same. As Ronnie sat down at his desk to have a sandwich, the phone rang and the White House operator said President Bush was calling. When he picked up the phone, Ronnie heard George’s friendly voice saying that he, too, was about to eat lunch and it just wasn’t the same without him. Ronnie was so touched, and I’ll always remember how much that phone call meant to him.”
Meanwhile, Dad and Vice President Quayle kept the Thursday lunch tradition alive.
The vice president would discuss the different Washington personalities with Dad. “He’d like to know what was happening on the Hill, for example, in the House and the Senate,” Vice President Quayle related. “Behind the scenes, it would help him in his dealings with these
various members. He’d get some personal insights on what was really going on.”
When Vice President Quayle would return from foreign trips, he said Dad was very interested in what the various foreign leaders were doing—“other than the big topics that came through our communiqués that we’d always write afterwards. He knew all these people, and it would help him in his role as president to have a better appreciation and understanding of the people involved.”
“I always looked forward to that time with him,” Vice President Quayle added. “Beyond the substantive things, we’d talk about family and joke back and forth. There were always some light moments, but it was a way to kick back and reflect on what was going on.”
One of the central hallmarks of Dad’s presidency had to be the way he forged personal relationships with his fellow world leaders—and during the transition period, President Reagan and President-elect Bush held a historic joint meeting with the foreign leader who figured most prominently in Dad’s national security plans as he was preparing to take office: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Gorbachev had come into office in 1985 and taken the world by storm as a new breed of Soviet leader. He seemed more adept at populist, Western-style diplomacy; he had a sense of humor; and he was promising more openness through his glasnost and perestroika reforms of the Soviet political and economic systems.
Dad had first met President Gorbachev at President Chernenko’s funeral when Dad was vice president. The next time they spent time together came in December 1987, shortly after Dad declared his second candidacy for president, when President Gorbachev visited Washington to sign the INF Treaty with President Reagan. This treaty would eliminate intermediate and short-range missiles staged in the USSR and Europe—a globally significant development coming just two and a half years into President Gorbachev’s tenure.
At the conclusion of a successful three-day summit, Dad rode out to Andrews Air Force Base with Mr. Gorbachev, and their private conversation was indicative of how far our countries’ relations had progressed. “It was possible for us to have a conversation that was unprecedented in its candor and willingness,” President Gorbachev told me. “Vice President George Bush told me he wanted ‘to look over the horizon,’ and so we did.”
President Gorbachev recalled how the conversation went:
“In the months to come, I will be mostly working on the campaign,” Dad said to him. “If things continue to go well for me and I win big in the first primaries, my nomination will be assured . . . If I am elected, I will continue on the course we’ve set . . . Years ago, it took Richard Nixon to go to China. Now it takes Ronald Regan to sign the INF Treaty and have it ratified. This is a role for a conservative . . . With the Democrats, you would do well overall, but, as we say here, they don’t deliver. Although I’ll be very busy campaigning, I would be ready to help on some U.S.-Soviet issues, perhaps troubleshooting.”
President Gorbachev replied, “I appreciate what you’ve said, and I value the spirit in which it was said . . . If you become your country’s leader, I hope we’ll continue our interaction. It is good that you’ve made clear this intention.”
The two then discussed relations with China and agreed that they would be dealing with it without hidden agendas, without trying “to play a card.”
“Later, as president, George Bush adhered to that agreement,” President Gorbachev recalled.
A year later, on December 7, 1988, President Gorbachev and President Reagan met at Governors Island in New York Harbor—eight hundred yards off the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The event was a public opportunity for President Reagan to pass the baton of Cold War leadership to Dad, who was president-elect by then.
In his book, A World Transformed, Dad recalled being “a bit uncomfortable” about that meeting—in particular, about being placed in the “awkward position” of having to weigh [his] role as vice president against his future role as president. President Reagan had been “extraordinarily considerate and kind” to him for eight years, so he “tried to avoid anything that might give the appearance of undermining the president’s authority.” To the end, Dad was “determined to be a supportive vice president, one who had been—and would continue to be—loyal to his president.”
Sadly, President Gorbachev’s visit to the United States was cut short the next day by the news of a terrible earthquake that devastated Armenia and killed at least fifty thousand people.
Into this void stepped AmeriCares, a wonderful relief organization started by Dad’s grade school classmate Bob McCauley. McCauley planned to send a plane loaded with medical supplies to Yerevan and called to see if any member of the Bush family would like to make the flight. He felt that such a gesture would mean a great deal to the Russian people. So my brother Jeb and his twelve-year-old son, George P., volunteered to go.
“It was really like being in a different world,” my nephew George P. told me. “In terms of the total devastation, I’m not sure I can really describe the amount of pain and suffering that we witnessed. Just about every structure was off of its foundation. There were people literally walking through the street with very little clothes on and starving and it was just—I mean, at age twelve, it was the most graphic thing I’d ever seen in my life.”
“With tears in his eyes, the son of President-elect George Bush presented candy and gifts today to brighten the Christmas of children injured in Armenia’s earthquake,” read the lead paragraph in the Washington Post article that Christmas Day. “This is probably the greatest Christmas gift I could give myself or my son,” Jeb was quoted as saying, referring to their visit with more than six hundred boys and girls in Children’s Hospital No. 3 in Yerevan.
“The best thing about that was Gorbachev telling me afterwards that when Jeb went to church in Armenia and shed a tear there, it did more for the U.S.-Russia relationship than anything I could possibly imagine,” Dad recalled. “To me, it just seemed like the compassionate thing to do, and Jeb wanted to do it, as did George P.”
Upon their arrival home, Dad wrote a letter to George P.:
. . . Men are not supposed to cry, says convention; but we do and we should and we should not worry when we do.
When Ganny dies I will cry—my Mom—she’s 87 now. She has hurt a lot in the last few years and her bones are very brittle and so in a sense it will be a blessing when she goes to God; but I will cry because I love her a lot and I will miss her. I cried when my Dad died. He was a big guy—bigger than your Dad even. He was strong and principled—and, you know, when we were very little we were a little scared of him though we knew he loved us. When he was sick in the hospital I ran my hand through his hair and it felt different than I thought it would. Isn’t it odd?—I cried about that.
I cry when I am happy and I cry when I am sad. But when I saw you and your wonderful Dad in that church in Armenia on Christmas Day I cried because I was both happy and sad. I was very proud of you. Don’t ever forget what you saw there. Don’t ever forget what you participated in. In less than two weeks I will be President of the United States. I know I will not forget what that little trip of yours meant to people all over the world.
You’re a good man Charlie Brown and I miss you a lot . . . Tell your Mom and Dad I love ’em. Devotedly,
Gampy
As the weeks went by in the new administration, our family began to adapt to life as the First Family. My brother George was thinking about trying to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team; Neil was looking to get out of the oil business and perhaps go into cable television; Jeb was serving on a few boards; Marvin was doing well in the investment business; and I had just taken a new job with the state of Maine tourism office.
Early in 1989, Mom was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a condition where antibodies attack the thyroid gland and cause the eye muscles to tighten, giving the appearance that the eyes are bulging. Graves’ disease is not curable, but it is treatable with either radiation or surgery followed by thyroid hormone replacement pills.
It was
bad enough that Mom had to cope with this condition, but Dad was also diagnosed with Graves’ disease shortly thereafter—and their dog, Millie, came down with lupus, another autoimmune disease. Neither is contagious.
Given the profound improbability of this happening, experts checked the vice president’s residence in case there was something in the water or air there—but nothing was ever found. In fact, the most helpful analysis Mom and Dad got came from my brother George, who called Mom and Dad to suggest that “if they would quit drinking out of Millie’s water bowl, it never would have happened in the first place.”
During the spring of 1989, Millie also had her first and only litter of puppies—thus fulfilling one of Mom’s wishes. On a whim, back during the campaign, my mother had made a list of things she wanted to do someday if Dad lost the election. Along with things like touring the French wine country and going on ocean cruises, Mom listed that she wanted their dog to have puppies. Once Dad won the 1988 election, however, Mom realized that the only thing doable on the list was the puppies, so Millie got “married” to Tug, another springer spaniel, who belonged to their good friends Sarah and Will Farish. Next thing you knew, a slew of six puppies was frolicking around in the Rose Garden—and it seemed as if the entire White House staff was helping to look after them.
Mom and Dad used shredded newspapers for Millie’s bed, but the newspaper ink rubbed off onto the puppies and Mom jokingly complained to the newspaper executives about it. The executives responded by sending over reams of clean, unprinted paper!
Another member of our family who was also adjusting to life with Dad in the White House was our Uncle Lou Walker, my grandmother’s brother. Uncle Lou was impressed with Dad’s new station in life, and was quite pleased when my godfather, Spike Heminway, had business cards printed up for Uncle Lou announcing him as “The Uncle of the President of the United States.”
My Father, My President Page 29