My Father, My President

by Doro Bush Koch

  Meanwhile, Dad took an informal—relaxed, even—approach in contacting his fellow world leaders. From the beginning of his administration, he started working the phones, reaching around the globe to call his fellow leaders, many of whom he knew from his days at the United Nations, from China, and from his eight years as vice president. Dad called nearly two dozen world leaders within days of being sworn in as president, no doubt because he wanted to get to know as many of the new ones as possible on a first-name basis.

  “When I first came to work at the National Security Council in 1989, I couldn’t believe how often President Bush contacted his counterparts abroad,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told me. “He would call someone like German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for example, all the time—just to say that he was thinking about him after reading how Kohl had won some big vote in the Bundestag [the German parliament] or something like that.”

  “This had never been done before, and in fact some of the foreign leaders thought they were phony calls at first,” said Bob Gates, who served as Dad’s deputy national security adviser before being appointed director of Central Intelligence. “It was like somebody saying, ‘This is Queen Elizabeth calling.’ It took probably a year and a half before we had some procedures smoothed out with some of these other people. It went the fastest with the British and the Germans and the French, but it was really funny some of the time when he would reach out and try and talk to some of these leaders, because they just weren’t prepared for him.”

  For example, former Japanese prime minister Toshiki Kaifu told me that on New Year’s Day of 1990, at eight o’clock in the morning, the phone rang in his bedroom. It was Dad. “A Happy New Year to you, Toshiki! We have a custom in our country. We say Happy New Year to family members first and then to our friends and relatives. I wish you the best of luck this year, Toshiki. Barbara asks me to give her best regards to you and Sachiyo.” The prime minister recalled, “Wasn’t I surprised to receive an unexpected call in such friendly terms! I thanked him profusely.”

  Earlier, in August 1989, Dad had taken Prime Minister Kaifu to the horseshoe pit at the White House before their first meeting, after sensing that his guest was a little tense. “We had a lot of fun,” the prime minister remembers. Dad repeatedly called the prime minister by his first name, but given the Japanese custom of showing deference to elders, Prime Minister Kaifu called Dad “Mr. President.” But then Dad said with a smile, “Toshiki, my name is George. Say ‘George,’ won’t you?” He put his arm around Kaifu’s shoulder, and the prime minister told me he’d never forget that day.

  Dad also got to work on our relations with our European allies—some of which were in good shape, but some of which needed attention. For example, General Scowcroft explained the relationship Dad was heading into with the French: “President Reagan and President Mitterrand didn’t get along at all. They disliked each other, and used to play tricks with each other to see who would come in last at NATO meetings and be the poo-bah. It was really quite poisonous.”

  Early on, Dad told General Scowcroft, “I want to fix that.” Scowcroft enthusiastically agreed in principle, but was less certain when Dad proposed inviting President Mitterrand to Kennebunkport. General Scowcroft wasn’t sure someone as stiff and formal as the French president would enjoy the informality of Kennebunkport—but Dad pressed ahead with his invitation.

  Since I was living in Maine at the time, Dad asked me to meet the French and American advance teams several weeks ahead of the visit to show them around Walker’s Point and the cottage where President Mitterrand would be staying. On a cold, overcast spring day, I led an army of advance men—it seemed like hundreds of them—to my grandmother’s house, which was right next door to my parents’ house on Walker’s Point. My grandmother’s summer house, called the Bungalow, was where the president of France would stay.

  The Bungalow is a one-story house with ocean views on all sides, but it is also simple and modest. It was no Versailles, but it was filled with happy memories. It had very few amenities—and a furnace was not one of them. We walked into the house, and since it had been closed up for the winter, it was very cold and damp. The French took one look around and, with eyebrows raised, began talking among themselves in French, making tsk-tsk noises and starting sentences with Mon Dieu! Instead of Louis XIV armchairs, they encountered a living room full of well-worn summer furniture.

  To aggravate an already tense situation: As we walked down a hall to the master bedroom, I showed them the master bath. Sitting on the toilet seat was an “extender”—an elevated seat with handles that makes sitting easier for an older person. The French advance man in charge asked me what it was. I tried to explain, in the most delicate way possible, as the man’s previously quizzical face soon betrayed his great horror.

  Quickly, I moved the tour to the bedroom, where several Frenchmen inspected the bed the president would sleep in. They took one look at Ganny’s hospital-style bed—the kind that goes up and down with a remote control—and firmly announced it would not do. It was clear at that moment that I had lost them. They said they would have to arrange for a different bed for President Mitterrand.

  When the Mitterrands finally arrived, Mom and Mrs. Mitterrand spent a day in Portland, and I arranged a luncheon for them at the home of Betsy and Chris Hunt in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. After lunch, we took Mrs. Mitterrand out in a boat in Casco Bay—which has literally hundreds of islands, big and small—so she could experience the beautiful rugged coast of Maine. We also went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Portland, where there were many dolls the French had sent as a thank-you after World War II.

  Dad and Mom treated the Mitterrands like family. “It was a foreign policy coup,” said General Scowcroft. “From that time on, Mitterrand never disagreed fundamentally on anything the president really wanted. We could not have made a better move, because of all the things we had to do with the French in the last days of the Soviet Union—it just couldn’t have happened.”

  Also invited to Maine for this breakthrough visit was Walter Curley, who was set to leave in two weeks for his post as our ambassador in Paris. “It was a weekend of substantive discussions, plus some fun,” Ambassador Curly later recalled. “I must admit that if you want to get set up well when you get to Paris, have the president of the United States introduce you in his own house to the president of France with his arm around you. It indicated to the French president and to his senior colleagues my access to the Oval Office and to Secretary Baker. This awareness was extremely useful throughout my term in France.”

  In May 1989, while the administration’s strategic review was still under way, Dad sent Secretary Baker to Moscow to meet with President Gorbachev. It was the first time Secretary Baker had been to Moscow and the first time he would confront a Soviet leader one-on-one. Their agenda encompassed three main topics: Dad’s active interest in developing a constructive relationship between superpowers; his desire for a sensible, peaceful resolution to the conflict in Central America (Nicaragua); and the possible timing for a summit meeting between the two superpower leaders.

  “The diplomatic mission was crucial to the president because we wanted perestroika to succeed,” Secretary Baker explained. Dad was extremely anxious to hear from Baker immediately after the meeting; in fact, he wanted to hear from Secretary Baker even if the secure communications broke down.

  Just in case, he told Baker to call him and, if the meeting went very well, say, “It reminded me of a trip to Otto’s.” Otto’s is Dad’s favorite place for barbecue in Houston. If the meeting went all right, Dad continued, Baker should say, “It reminded me of a trip to Molina’s.” Molina’s serves excellent Tex-Mex.

  “And what if it goes poorly?” Secretary Baker asked.

  “Then tell me, ‘It reminded me of a tennis game with Bob Murray!’” Dad replied, referring to an old Houston tennis rival of theirs.

  Afterward, Baker reported to Dad that the trip had been like Molina’s—a good meeting, but we still had
some serious challenges to overcome. Given Gorbachev’s effective public relations blitz in Europe, Baker was primarily concerned with Dad being upstaged at a pivotal NATO meeting in Brussels three weeks later.

  The stakes were high, and not just for Dad.

  “Gorbachev may have been out in front of me in Europe,” Dad conceded, referring to the Soviet leader’s public relations blitz in Europe. “He was already talking about Europe as a ‘condominium’—as a house where people could freely move into other rooms, meaning other countries. We were doing our strategic review and getting ready to talk about a ‘Europe whole and free.’ So we were not ships passing in the night at that point. I think there was confidence that we can move forward together.”

  At that first NATO meeting, incidentally, Dad was further indoctrinated into the ways of international diplomacy as president. Once all of the leaders were in place for the meeting, they went around the table, and the various leaders made remarks. Chancellor Kohl of Germany started, followed by Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, France’s François Mitterrand, and Canada’s Brian Mulroney. Since Dad was the president of the United States at his first NATO meeting, everyone was looking at him, and he took notes during these remarks.

  Most leaders kept their remarks short and to the point, and then the prime minister of Iceland was recognized for his comments. Iceland has no navy, no air force, and no soldiers in NATO. It is a member of NATO because of its strategic location in the North Atlantic. Once the prime minister started to speak, Dad politely resumed his note-taking.

  “The prime minister went on and on and on and on, and President Bush looked absolutely exhausted trying to keep up with this guy,” Prime Minister Mulroney recalled. “Finally, the secretary-general of NATO banged his gavel calling for a coffee break, and the president came staggering over to see me because we were sitting just opposite. He said, ‘Brian, what the hell happened?’ I said, ‘Well, George, you just learned your first rule of modern diplomacy as president of the United States. The smaller the country, the longer the speech!’”

  One of the very first public announcements Dad made as president, this one on January 21, was that two of my brothers, Marvin and Neil, were going to make up a tennis match with tennis champions Chris Evert and Pam Shriver that had been rained out in 1988.

  “These women, confident of their own ability, have suggested that the Bush boys will not get over two games a set,” Dad said on the White House South Lawn to members of the news media. “And yesterday, Chris Evert renewed the challenge. I am absolutely confident that the Bush boys will get over two games a set . . . And there’s going to be a tremendous match right here on this tennis court [at the White House] as soon as spring is here.”

  The day of the renewed match, May 16, Neil couldn’t make it, so Jeb was brought in as a wild card. It also rained that day, so they couldn’t play at the White House. Dad, ever the great organizer, called up to the Senate and moved the match to the indoor courts on Capitol Hill, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Once word of the match spread, a handful of senators—including John Breaux, John Heinz, Thad Cochran, and John Warner—joined the small crowd of spectators.

  “What your dad didn’t care to admit was that Pam had a shoulder injury and she hadn’t played in two months, and I had just come off a layoff of five weeks and I hadn’t played,” Chris Evert told me. “Pam and I rolled our eyes, and we were thinking maybe that was the price we had to pay to stay at the White House,” after a recent weekend visit with Mom and Dad. “We had to play with the boys, who we thought were not going to be good players at all. We thought we would have to be nice to them. Because I said to Pam, should we really try our hardest? She said, ‘Let’s just see how it goes.’ ”

  Once the match began, the boys quickly took the lead, much to the delight of the crowd. “I didn’t realize Marvin had that big of a serve, and I didn’t realize that Jeb was that good,” said Chrissie. “They beat us two sets. We left the building with our tail between our legs because, honestly, before the match we were thinking about giving them games. Pam and I were red-faced when we left . . . and your dad never lets us forget it.”

  “After we beat them, Marvin and I vowed not to talk about it in public until after their tennis careers were over, for fear of diminishing women’s tennis,” Jeb teasingly told me. “Fortunately, we played indoors because the court was a lot faster and it made it possible for us to stay in the game,” Jeb remembered. “In fact, we won the first set, lost the second, won the third. The court was very slick, very fast. If we were playing on the court at the White House outdoors, we would have lost because they could have killed my serve—they’re great players. They almost won anyway. But the point was: it’s not about me or Marvin or Chris Evert or about Pam Shriver; it’s about Dad, and how excited he got. It was a great moment for Dad, and the thing that gave him more joy in sports than anything else I can remember.”

  Starting in April 1989 and escalating throughout May, Chinese students began to gather in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Peking (by this time more commonly known in English as Beijing)—not unlike our National Mall in Washington. The students were mourning the death of Hu Yaobang, who had been regarded as perhaps the most liberal or progressive among the Chinese leaders—a sympathetic figure open to the popular desire for political reform.

  Meanwhile, a sizable international press corps had started assembling in Peking near Tiananmen Square for a historic meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and the Chinese leadership in mid-May. Gradually, however, the media’s attention was diverted from the summit, focusing instead on the students’ demands for reform and their open criticisms of the Chinese government.

  The early restraint of the Chinese military in the face of the student protests gave hope that there might be a peaceful resolution between the students and the communist leaders. Anyone who was alive at the time will never forget the sight of the lone, brave student stopping a column of tanks. In the end, however, the Chinese leaders had lost face and deemed the situation no longer tolerable. Appeals for restraint on all sides sadly gave way to violence. On the night of June 3, Chinese troops moved upon the temporary “Democracy Plaza,” opening fire and clearing the square.

  Dad was as horrified as anyone at this brutality, and needed little prompting to respond. In fact, he led the world in imposing sanctions on the Chinese government—suspending military sales and halting all military contacts. However, while many of the talking heads on TV wanted him to take more drastic action—such as declaring embargoes and cutting off diplomatic relations altogether—Dad felt such actions would only hurt the people of China and set back bilateral relations immeasurably.

  “Of course, that was a very traumatic experience in China’s history,” Dad recalled to Sir David Frost. “It put an understandable strain on the relations between China and the United States . . . Yes, we had some critics . . . Let the critics say what they want, but I think history is going to say we did it all right . . . You don’t always look back. You’ve also got to look ahead. But if we go back to slapping them publicly all the time and confronting them, and accusing them of seeking hegemony—we could put world peace at jeopardy. It’s that big.”

  To avoid aggravating the tragedy, Dad appealed to his seventeen-year friendship with Deng Xiaoping, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. My father wrote Deng a private, personal letter outside of the normal diplomatic channels, keeping only one copy for his private file.

  The letter reminded Deng of his previous statements to Dad about the need for good relations with the West and his desire to keep China “moving forward.” Dad also said he was writing as a genuine lao pengyou—or “old friend,” as Deng had called Dad years earlier. Finally, Dad told Deng he was thinking of sending a personal emissary, in confidence, to “speak in total candor to you,” and asked for a reply outside of bureaucratic channels. He signed off “with a heavy heart.”

  Within twenty-four hours, Deng had agreed in a personal reply to Dad, and Brent
Scowcroft was sent immediately to China.

  “The trip was completely secret, because we didn’t want at this point anybody to know we were talking with the Chinese,” General Scowcroft said, explaining the sensitivities involved. “That would have caused a big public relations brouhaha. So I went over on a military aircraft, a C–141, with aerial refueling so I didn’t have to land anywhere and nobody would spot me.”

  As the U.S. military airplane neared China, however, somebody had neglected to warn the Chinese defense forces that a special emissary was approaching. Spotting this unannounced plane, the forces sent a message into Peking asking permission to shoot it down. That’s when the Chinese leadership intervened to save the secret travel party—or at least that’s what the Chinese leaders told General Scowcroft and Dad.

  “What that trip did was, I think, very important to the future in China,” Scowcroft added. “It demonstrated to the Chinese the value we put on the relationship. While we had this crisis between us to which we had reacted fairly sharply, we thought that the relationship was extremely important—and I think it was an extremely important move for the president to make.”

  Deng died in 1997, and his successor, Jiang Zemin, looked back on that time, telling me: “Even when our bilateral ties suffered certain difficulties, President George Bush could still put the relationship in a strategic perspective and put the overall interests of the two countries above other considerations. Hence, he made important contributions to the maintenance and development of China-U.S. relations.”

  The disturbing, tragic images of the Chinese pro-democracy demonstrators being violently put down were fresh in Dad’s mind as he and Mom set off for a nine-day trip to Europe a month later. In Central and Eastern Europe, similar hopes for reform—and the risk of a crackdown—were also in the wind. For Dad, the centerpiece of this trip would be his visit to Poland and Hungary, two nations loosening the Soviet grip on their societies.