My Father, My President

by Doro Bush Koch

  Dad had promised to make fighting the drug problem one of his top priorities, and President Virgilio Barco in Colombia had defied the drug lords and become a courageous ally. On those grounds alone, Dad had to attend this summit, he felt, but he was fully aware of the dangers involved. Just the day before, in fact, the Secret Service had picked up twelve shoulder-fired Stinger missiles near the airport where Air Force One would land in Baranquilla.

  As dinner broke up, Dad put his arm around Ann Lee and told her not to worry about Burt. “He said he would make sure I was okay,” Burt recalled, “and I remember thinking, ‘Hey, I’m the one who is supposed to be worried about him!’” As they walked out of the restaurant, people from other tables expressed their support, saying things like, “Go safely” and “We’re praying for you.” By the time they got to the door, Dad was choked up by all the support he was receiving.

  They returned to the White House after dinner, and when he heard the helicopter landing on the South Lawn, he gave Mom a hug and she told him how worried she was. Then Dad boarded the helicopter which took him to Andrews Air Force Base, where Air Force One was waiting.

  The daylong conference on February 15 was held at the Colombian Naval Academy, which sat on a very exposed spit of land extending into Cartagena harbor. Hoping for the best but planning for the worst, Dr. Lee had worked with John Sununu to arrange for an aircraft carrier staffed with military and civilian trauma surgeons to be positioned offshore. At one point during the conference, all U.S. electronic communications went down for over an hour in the middle of the day due to a failure up in Atlanta—not due to some local problem in Colombia. The traveling party, however, never knew this was the cause—they only knew that the phones suddenly went down and never knew why.

  Otherwise, the summit went off without a hitch—and the participants issued their “Declaration of Cartagena,” a comprehensive strategy to address the drug trade as well as the underlying economic and cultural issues. The day was long and nerve-racking but ultimately successful. (It was a success despite the fact that the final press conference was delayed because one Latin American leader’s zipper was stuck!)

  “On return, when the F–16s peeled off from Air Force One as we entered U.S. airspace, I heaved one giant sigh of relief,” Dr. Lee remembered. “I believe I enjoyed a cocktail at that moment with Jimmy Baker. But did George Bush think about canceling that very important conference because of the danger? Never.”

  Later, Dad told me, “Just think what a horrible signal it would have sent to all of Latin America if we had canceled out of this meeting.”

  We were all worried, at various times, about the threats against Dad. Within months of taking office, in fact, the Secret Service had stopped a man who clearly intended to hurt Dad at a speech in Michigan. Such threats are without a doubt the most worrisome aspect of having a family member serving as president, yet it is part of the modern reality of the presidency.

  Dad has returned to the Peking Gourmet Inn many times since that night before the drug summit. You could say he and Mom are regulars there—when they’re in Washington—and the walls are covered with photos of my parents’ various meals there. Wagshal’s Deli, near their old house in the Spring Valley section of Washington, D.C., and not far from the vice president’s residence, has many photos of Dad as well. Early in 1989, Dad and Mom visited a new Tex-Mex restaurant in D.C., the Austin Grill, and thrilled the young owners with all the publicity the presidential visit generated.

  Dad’s ventures outside the White House bring me to a very special group of people not just in Dad’s life, but in the life of any president, as well as their family. Even to this day, Dad will sometimes jokingly refer to them as “the marshals,” but the rest of us know them as the United States Secret Service. Dad calls them marshals, incidentally, because back when he was vice president, they had a funny reporter on the plane who would get up and say, “Now all the marshals are going to do this, the marshals are going to do that.” No one can remember the reporter’s name, but everyone still remembers him calling the agents marshals.

  Guarding the president has been the job of the Secret Service since President William McKinley was assassinated at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901.

  For nearly a century after that, the Secret Service was a part of the Department of the Treasury. Since 9/11, however, the agents have reported to the Department of Homeland Security. Presidents have always received round-the-clock Secret Service protection, and recently, immediate members of the president’s family—including grandchildren—do as well.

  Guarding grandchildren has caused quite a few unusual situations, many seeming like they are right out of the movie Kindergarten Cop. When Neil’s son Pierce was three years old, he had a miniature motorized jeep, which he was allowed to drive around his neighborhood in Colorado. The Secret Service would follow him in their big Suburban SUV, creeping along behind Pierce in his little jeep. His sisters, Lauren and Ashley, remember purposely taking a detour through the woods while skiing. “Most of the agents were big guys, and they’d get tangled in the branches—while we were little and could squeeze through the trees better than they could. That was fun,” said Lauren.

  When he was little, my son Sam actually hid from the agents at first, constantly trying to give them the slip until they explained to him that they were not there to tell on him to his mom, only to protect his life. Once he realized they were not going to report his every move back to me, he was fine with it. Then, after 9/11, when he was not so little—a senior in high school—Sam viewed the Secret Service as a serious crimp in his style. The agents reminded him that they were only there to protect him, not babysit him. Over time, they became friends. One day, when Sam had come home late the night before, I asked the agents what had gone on. A resounding silence followed. Sam was happy because they kept his confidence and the agents were happy because he allowed them to do their job. And Sam was lucky he had Secret Service, because I was contemplating murder!

  Having the Secret Service nearby gave me great peace of mind, but not everyone took solace from them. In fact, while Dad was president, a family in George P.’s class removed their child from the school because the presence of the Secret Service agents worried them.

  Speaking from personal experience, the Secret Service agents I have known—those assigned to Dad, or to our respective families over the years—have always been as courteous as they are professional. For this reason, many of them have come to be like family. After all, you spend a great deal of time with them. In one extreme case, our nanny when I first moved back to Washington, Eileen, was so taken with one agent assigned to my children that she ended up marrying him! Sam and Ellie were the ring bearer and the flower girl in their wedding.

  There is an undeniable glamour about the Secret Service Protective Division. It’s adventurous work; you are always around famous and powerful people; and you travel both extensively and frequently. But there is a harder, less glamorous side to the job that the public does not see: guarding an empty hotel hallway at 3:00 a.m., the endless planning, and the days and weeks spent away from home.

  That’s exactly what makes the job a considerable burden and sacrifice over time—and Mom and Dad have always been sensitive to that. When they have been in Maine for extended periods of time, for example, they will have the families of the Secret Service agents over to Walker’s Point for barbecues, swimming, and boating, as a gesture of thanks.

  Mom and Dad also took an extra step during the holiday season.

  “During the vice presidency, they would stay in Washington until Christmas Day before they would go to Houston—and that was such a big deal,” recalled Special Agent Rich Miller, who headed Dad’s detail during part of his presidency. “That way, most everybody could spend Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day with their families, and I know they did that because they didn’t want to take everybody away from their families during that time. Everybody appreciated that.”

&nb
sp; After Dad became president, they would go to Camp David instead of staying in the White House on Christmas Eve. Since Camp David was guarded by military personnel, almost all of the Secret Service agents on Dad’s detail could enjoy at least part of the holiday season with their families.

  “That’s unbelievable that the most powerful man in the world would think enough of other people to delay his vacation for twenty-four or forty-eight hours just so other people could be with their families,” Miller added. “That’s why people would do anything for the president and Mrs. Bush.”

  On March 2, RNC Chairman Lee Atwater was speaking at a Washington fund-raiser for Texas Senator Phil Gramm when Lee had a seizure and collapsed to the floor. He was rushed to George Washington Hospital, where Dad’s White House physician, Dr. Burt Lee (the oncology specialist), met them.

  After seeing Lee briefly, Dr. Lee immediately pulled Sally Atwater aside and told her he had a brain tumor—and had about a year to live. (Sadly, this initial diagnosis proved accurate.)

  The news shocked Washington. Lee wasn’t even forty years old yet, his wife had just become pregnant, and he was at the top of his profession.

  Part of his success, no doubt, was his charisma. For example, the event Lee had put together the day after Dad’s inauguration, the Celebration for Young Americans, featured the who’s who of rhythm and blues musicians—and had to be the most fun of all the inaugural events. Marvin had emceed that event, and when Dad arrived, he even strapped on a guitar and hammed it up with Lee onstage.

  “When he first had the seizure—it was classic Atwater—he had everybody spin it that he was perfectly fine,” Ede Holiday, who became cabinet secretary, remembers. “He told everybody in his close-knit circle that he didn’t want it known how bad it was. And so everybody spun it for a long time trying to give Lee what he wanted, until it just got to be too hard, of course.”

  Mary Matalin remembered filling in for Lee, representing the RNC at cabinet meetings: “At one of the first White House meetings I attended, your father sent a note across the cabinet table saying, ‘I know how hard this is for you and you’re doing a great job. Hang in there.’ Bear in mind: I wasn’t walking around moaning ‘woe is me.’ The fact that the president would even consider what my problems were shows how in sync he is with the real world.”

  Dad continued to stay in regular touch with Lee, even though the progression of the cancer made Lee increasingly inaccessible. It was not just that he was incapacitated, but at times Lee didn’t know who he was. He came to the White House for a visit at one point, and Ede Holiday remembers, “I went up and gave him a hug and I honestly think he was so self-conscious that he didn’t want anyone to see him like that. And yet he so wanted to show that he could still connect.” Through it all, Dad and Dr. Lee kept in contact with him, Sally, and Lee’s mother, Toddy.

  “What an impact it had on Lee’s mother and Lee’s wife, who was pregnant at the time, and Lee didn’t know,” Mary said. To those of us who were there outside the family support system, the president’s involvement was the kind of thing we’ll never forget.” Near the very end of Lee’s life, Dad and George went to the hospital together, to say farewell. Dad kissed him good-bye and choked back tears.

  As he got sicker, Lee had apologized publicly to his former political opponents, including Michael Dukakis, in a Life magazine article. On the day Lee died, reporters asked Dad about Lee’s deathbed apology, and he said, “As he took stock of his life, he wanted to make things right, heal some wounds, and that was a very noble thing. And I salute him in death as I did in life.”

  When I recently asked Dad about Lee’s death, now almost fifteen years ago, he replied, “I think his mortality brought it home to him. He knew he was going to die, and he changed and found the Lord. He was a changed man. He saw the light. He was an emotional fellow, but he calmed down at the end and I think he died a happy, contented man.”

  On March 22, Dad was nearing the end of his forty-first news conference—mostly dealing with assistance for emerging democracies in Central America and Poland—when the media asked him for a statement on the subject of broccoli. Dad had recently instituted a total ban on broccoli on White House and Air Force One menus, prompting a series of humorous protests from growers across the country.

  As long as I can remember, Dad has hated broccoli. I am not sure if he hates the smell or the taste more. I think it is just a total, complete aversion.

  So the media had hit a nerve, and Dad could not contain himself:

  This is the last statement I’m going to have on broccoli. There are truckloads of broccoli at this very minute descending on Washington. My family is divided. I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid, and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States, and I am not going to eat any more broccoli.

  “This was one I felt strongly about, and I had to speak out,” Dad later told British journalist Sir David Frost. “In the process, I liberated many four-, five-, six-year-old kids all across this country who shared my hate for broccoli. The good news was the broccoli sales went up. Two huge broccoli trucks appeared on the South Lawn of the White House, along with the second largest concentration of press for any event when I was president. And Barbara dramatically went out because I refused. I thought it would be hypocritical to go out and greet these trucks, you couldn’t expect that. And so they said, ‘What are you going to do with all this broccoli?’ Barbara said, ‘We are going to give this to the homeless.’”

  Dad’s public declaration generated a great deal of interest not only from growers but from other well-intended broccoli supporters as well. One such supporter, a Carlo Cacioppio of Chicago, even went so far as to send Mom a recipe for cream of broccoli that he created. Carlo assured Mom that “if you make broccoli this way, your husband will love it. Even if he doesn’t, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

  Sadly, Carlo was wrong. Dad is still decidedly, virulently anti-broccoli; but like Mom, I am very much pro-broccoli and thought you might want to try Carlo’s recipe:

  Carlo’s Cream of Broccoli

  2 cups pre-cooked broccoli

  3 cloves garlic, finely minced

  1/4 cup olive oil

  1/4 cup chopped black olives

  1 pound spaghetti

  1/4 cup shredded provolone cheese

  1/2 cup grated Romano or Parmesan cheese

  1 cup cream

  2 tablespoons chopped parsley

  Cut broccoli and sauté with garlic in olive oil. Cook and drain spaghetti, and toss with broccoli. Melt the cheeses with the cream and add parsley. Simmer until smooth and creamy. Combine all ingredients and serve.

  In April 1989, my brother George had assembled a team of investors and bought the Texas Rangers from Fort Worth oilman Eddie Chiles. George became the general manager of the club and quickly became the public face of the team.

  Early in 1990, shortly after visiting the troops that had been wounded in Panama, Dad called George and suggested he get one of the wounded soldiers from the Dallas area to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Rangers’ home opener. George thought this was a great idea and invited a Navy SEAL named Al Moreno, who had been wounded in the head and was still somewhat paralyzed.

  In a note to Secretary Cheney and General Powell, Dad recounted how this moving moment unfolded: “Moreno strides the hill amidst cheers and plenty of tears and opens the game. George said he thanked the Rangers for letting him have the honor. Janie Fricke, country singer, was dissolved in tears and George said he had to choke ’em back too. The crowd gave a long standing ovation to this young hero. Patriotism was alive and well there at the ballpark.”

  Just as our military’s actions in Panama and Kuwait helped to restore faith and confidence in America’s fighting men and women, so, too, did Dad want to strengthen the office of the president itself—the institution. He felt strongly that Congress had managed to erode some of the powers and prerogatives of the presidency, and he wan
ted to help reverse that trend.

  That desire was evident when someone on Dad’s political team came up with the idea to veto some line items in the budget. Scholars even today disagree whether the president has “line-item veto” authority, but Dad’s advisers urged him to show he really was tough and unafraid to take on Congress on spending. That’s when they hit on the idea to veto specific projects in the budget.

  “There was a lot of political pressure being put on the president from within his own party to assert that the Constitution gave the president the inherent line-item veto,” former attorney general Bill Barr, who was head of the Justice Department’s legal counsel office at the time, recalled. “One day Boyden Gray and I were sitting together at a ceremony in the East Room. After the program, the president walked over to Boyden and me and commented that he was being pushed hard on the line-item issue. He asked what Boyden and my preliminary views were. I said that, while an argument could be advanced, I did not think, at the end of the day, the position would be sustained, and that I personally was not persuaded this was the framers’ intent.”

  The president replied, “You guys know my view that the presidency has been weakened since Watergate, and you know that I want to strengthen the office, leaving it stronger than when I came to it. But I think it will end up weakening the office to make claims of power that are not well grounded and then get rebuffed. So, as you look at this, remember—I am not inclined to go down this route, unless you guys tell me that you really believe that the Constitution gives me the power.”