The president asked me, “Can you call them as you see them?” I told him I could. The oath that I took to do this job, and that promise to him, are the two things that keep me going in the difficult cases. I will not break my word to that man. I get real emotional about it. Because when you’re at your lowest, you can really get the measure of the people who are there—and President and Mrs. Bush were there.
Here’s what Dad had to say about Clarence Thomas: “He got brutalized in the hearing. In the view of the liberal opponents of Clarence Thomas, there’s no such thing as a distinguished conservative black person. If you’re conservative, they’ll turn on you, and Clarence Thomas was turned on by the community. He was passed close to unanimously for the appeals court, and he served with distinction. Then suddenly, he’s made into an evil guy with no morals. I found it very offensive, and the more they piled on him, the more determined I was to stay with him and to support him. I remember him coming down to the White House with Jack Danforth saying, ‘Do you think it’s time I got out of the race? I think it may be hurting you, Mr. President.’ I put my arm around him and I said, ‘You can’t do that. You’ve got to stay in this fight, and you’re going to be confirmed, I’m sure of it. You’ll be a great justice.’ And he has been.”
Dad continued: “All this Anita Hill stuff was transparently phony, in my view. John Danforth, who was a very distinguished Episcopal minister as well as a senator, swore by Clarence Thomas. His judgment helped the votes in the Senate, but of course the most liberal media turned on him. I remember he called it a ‘high-tech lynching’—and it was. They just piled on him, and lifted up this Anita Hill who came out of nowhere. She followed him around, wanted to work for him, wanted to be on his staff, wanted to be at his side, and then suddenly she turned on him.”
Like the horseshoe tournament, there was another unique competition initiated during Dad’s presidency, this one called the Brent Scowcroft Award for Somnolent Excellence. It grew to be a very prestigious award within the administration, even if the award’s namesake and nominees did protest on occasion.
“Brent was a marvelous national security adviser, who did work long hours every night,” Dad said. “Though he fell asleep regularly in daytime meetings, he didn’t feel that he was worthy of having the award named for him. We all knew that that was modesty on his part, however, because he was terrific at falling asleep during meetings.”
To be considered for the Scowcroft Award, first you had to fall asleep at a meeting at which Dad was present. Witnesses were required. Dad would then judge you on the soundness of your sleep and how tight your eyes were closed. Points were also awarded for “the recovery,” which Dad explained using General Scowcroft as an example:
“He’d be sleeping like this in the middle of the meeting, and then he’d hear something subconsciously, so he’d wake up. He had a notepad, and he’d immediately start smiling and writing down what he hadn’t heard. So recovery was part of it.”
A new file was started in 1991 with Dad’s hand-typed, private Scowcroft Award notes:
April 30, 1991: The challenge today mounted by Dick Cheney is worthy of total approval. He slept soundly. Everyone applauded when he woke up—a sterling performance as far as sleeping goes . . .
May 9: A fantastic challenge by Ed Derwinski [secretary of veterans affairs]. Very firm eye closure and a remarkable recovery gambit. Ed with eyes tightly closed used the seldom-used nod technique. He nodded vigorously whenever in his slumber he heard the end of a sentence . . .
May 17: Following the Queen’s [Elizabeth of the U.K.] state dinner . . . the next morning Brent and John S [Sununu] jointly announced that I had made a serious challenge for the Scowcroft Award. Aware of my innocence, I discussed this important matter with Bar, who confirmed I was never out of it. Eyes open at all times, she stated. Brent’s witness was Doro, who defended her father against this ludicrous charge. Though this entry is now part of the Scowcroft File it really is so fallacious a charge that it shouldn’t have been brought up . . .
Eventually, the Scowcroft Award grew to be such a successful award domestically that Dad instituted an international award.
“One time a delegation from Iceland made a starring performance,” Dad recalled, “because they had three people sitting at the table at this CSCE [Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe] meeting in Paris, and all three of them were asleep at the same time. Even the guy that was speaking was asleep while he was speaking.”
Describing Dad as “unmerciful” concerning the award, the harassment apparently got so bad that General Scowcroft had a pair of eyeglasses with wide-open eyes painted on them. He also noted how “his” award exemplifies why Dad is so good with people.
“Sometimes in our debates, things would get very heated and very tense,” the general said. “In the middle of it, the president would come out with some joke—and you could just feel the tension breaking. That’s what he used the Scowcroft Award for.”
Of all the modern presidents, Dad was perhaps the most avid boatman to occupy the Oval Office. President Kennedy served aboard a PT boat in World War II and sailed at his home in Hyannisport, but Dad had an absolute passion for his twenty-eight-foot cigarette boat, Fidelity—and for driving it fast.
It was while Dad was out on his boat on August 21, 1991, that he received the news of Mikhail Gorbachev’s release from house arrest following a failed coup.
Throughout July and August, there had been rumors that some of the Soviet hard-liners in the military and government hierarchy would attempt a coup to stop President Gorbachev and his reforms. When Dad visited Moscow in July, President Gorbachev had dismissed these threats as rumors; but on August 18, the hard-liners struck. TV reports indicated that President Gorbachev had resigned for health reasons, replaced by a committee of old-school Soviets.
President Gorbachev and his family were taken to their vacation dacha on the Crimean Sea, where they were held under armed guard. After four days, however, the coup-plotters were disbanded and the White House switchboard was finally able to contact President Gorbachev by phone.
“I was not satisfied with the connection we had,” Special Agent John Magaw said. “I wasn’t sure it would be secure. We weren’t very far out [in the boat], so we turned around and, bang, the president threw it in high as he did a lot of times. When we went into the house, I stayed outside the bedroom, but I could see [President and Mrs. Bush]. The president sat on the edge of the bed, and there was tremendous concern in his voice. He said, ‘Mr. President, I’m sorry to hear what’s happened. Where are you, what’s going on? Is your family going to be okay?’ While I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, I could see that the president was reasonably satisfied with the answers.”
“At 5:45 p.m., seventy-three hours after communications had been disconnected, the connection was restored. I first talked with Boris Yeltsin, who had taken the right stand during the attempted coup, and then with other leaders of the republics,” President Gorbachev said. “It was, of course, also important to resume contacts with the leaders of those countries that by that time had become our partners and to assure them that we would do everything possible to stabilize the situation, and that there was no reason for concern as to the control of nuclear weapons. In my conversation with George Bush, I was particularly touched when he and Barbara conveyed their best to Raisa, for whom those days were a terrible ordeal, and said that for three days they had been praying for us.”
When Dad went to Kennebunkport for his August vacation that summer, it became clear to the press that fishing would be a huge part of his agenda. As Marlin Fitzwater recalled, each day’s press briefing included the question, Is the president going fishing today?
“The media knew that the president often used these fishing expeditions to discuss business with staff, friends, or heads of state invited along for the ride,” Marlin recalled, “so reporters asked about every detail of the fishing. Soon every briefing began with the same question: ‘D
id the President catch any fish today?’”
After two or three days, one of the reporters filed a pool report to all other reporters, saying it was “day three with no fish.” Then it became “days four, five, and six with no fish.”
Dad thought this was rather funny and soon joined in the fun by chiding himself to the press, saying, “Well, boys, it is day seven with no fish.”
“But then the president’s competitive instincts took over, and he started to get serious about his fishing,” Marlin recalled. “Trips on the water lasted longer. He would go further out to sea looking for fish. Guests started including real fishermen.”
Some horrible hand of fate had taken over, because the harder my president appeared to try, the less fish were available. He couldn’t even get a bite.
“Not only that, as we got to day twelve or thirteen, his humor about the whole matter began to fade,” Marlin said. “In fact, the staff didn’t even want to ask him about it anymore. And I started going to the Secret Service for a fishing report, rather than upset the president.”
Finally, on day seventeen, Dad caught a fish. By that time, Marlin said, the fishing report was more famous than foreign policy.
As 1991 wore on, it became clear that Chief of Staff John Sununu had an increasingly strained relationship with the media, and the political damage he sustained as a result, fair or unfair, in turn weakened his hand in dealing with Congress. There was tremendous scrutiny on Sununu especially after it was learned that he had taken government aircraft to go see his dentist. The media took to referring to this as the Air Sununu Scandal.
As the press commentary intensified, Sununu dug his heels in.
“From the Reagan days, there was a presidential order that the chief of staff and the national security adviser could not fly on commercial planes,” Sununu explained. “So Scowcroft and I were always operating under that order. But when they started going after me in the press, they always seemed to bury the part about the presidential order in paragraph 73.”
Andy Card, Sununu’s deputy, recalled that on June 12, Dad’s birthday, the chief of staff was going up to New York to attend a stamp show—but didn’t disclose what his plans were directly to Andy. “At first, I heard he was going up for briefings with the General Services Administration. I thought it was a weird thing for a chief of staff to do, but turns out he was going up for a stamp show. This was during the height of the Air Sununu Scandal, and I told him, ‘This is not right.’”
According to Andy, Governor Sununu defended the trip by saying, “I’m driving. I’m not taking the plane. I’m driving up. The White House driver is driving me up, and I’m going to work in the car.”
That same day, Dad gave a big domestic policy speech on the South Lawn which focused on his “points of light” initiative. The event was being driven by Gregg Petersmeyer and his team in the Office of National Service, and Sununu’s absence did not go unnoticed.
“That was when his relevance was significantly diminished in the White House,” Andy said. “Ann Devroy, a tough, take-no-prisoners reporter for the Washington Post, was on a mission to do him in—and so during the summer, Sununu was seen as a damaged leader in the White House. It became increasingly uncomfortable for the staff as more people in Congress and elsewhere recognized it.”
A more candid conversation about the role of the chief of staff— and what should happen—took place that August up in Maine.
“This was at the same time that the president was asked to make decisions about his campaign, the reelection campaign,” Andy said. “What’s the structure going to look like? Do you start things that early? What role does Bob Mosbacher play? What role does Fred Malek play? What role does Bob Teeter play? What role does the chief of staff play? So it was an interesting time in terms of both policy dialogue and campaign dialogue.”
Andy thought Dad should make a decision on the chief of staff and start fresh in the fall, but perhaps owing to Dad’s prevailing sense of loyalty, such a decision was not made, and Sununu continued to hobble onward as the administration moved through September, October, and November.
During the Thanksgiving holiday, Dad went to Camp David. David Bates, who later became the cabinet secretary at the White House, and Dorrance Smith, formerly the longtime producer of This Week with David Brinkley and Dad’s head of media affairs, were up to play tennis. During that same period, Sununu’s friends—like Senator Bob Dole—started calling Dad and saying positive things about the job his chief of staff was doing.
When Dad asked Andy why this sudden flurry of calls was directed at him, Andy replied, “Well, I think that they’re probably calling because Sununu would ask them to call and say he should stay in there.”
Dad called Andy back shortly after that and asked him to come to the White House after he returned from Camp David to meet with Boyden Gray and Dorrance—and to discuss what Sununu was doing. “We met on a Sunday afternoon at the White House, because I think the president wanted to do it when Sununu wouldn’t realize,” Andy remembered. “So we gathered in the Oval Office and came to the conclusion that probably Sununu wasn’t contributing as much as he should, and he should move on.”
A healthy discussion over how the team would deliver this awkward message to Sununu followed and finally, someone suggested Andy should do it. My brother George had a big part in resolving the matter, but at the staff level, the plan called for Andy to deliver the message, accompanied by Dorrance and Boyden.
“On December 2, we went to Sununu’s office and shut the door,” Andy said. “Cutting right to the chase, I said that I thought the president would accept Sununu’s resignation.”
Sununu replied, “No, he won’t. He wants me to stay on.”
Andy pressed: “Well, I think he would accept your resignation, and I think he’d like to have it.”
Sununu then asked everybody to leave except Andy, and the two had a very emotional conversation. They then worked out a method to make the resignation known—doing it the next day, when Dad visited Florida and Mississippi.
“I remember the president did not come to the Oval Office that morning because he was leaving right from the residence to go on the trip,” Andy said, “but he called and wanted to know what was going to happen. So I told him, and then I met him in the Diplomatic Room before they left to get on the helicopter. That’s where I told him that something would happen that day. I couldn’t guarantee at what point during the day, but something would happen. He thanked me, and I stayed at the White House. As they left, I told Marlin Fitzwater to stay on his toes, because something would be happening.”
That morning, December 3, Sununu called Andy into his office to share the resignation letter that he had written in pencil on white lined paper. Sununu said he would deliver the letter and talk to the president about it on the trip. Sununu’s resignation was effective December 15.
“I love John Sununu, and I owed him a lot,” Dad said. “He is one of the brightest men I have ever met, and his sense of humor is great. I hated every moment of this very difficult decision and still love the guy.”
Looking back, Sununu believes the absence of Lee Atwater was a contributing element in his demise. “If Lee had lived, I wouldn’t have had to leave,” he said. “I think a lot of the political problems I ended up with would have been blunted because Atwater was smart enough to deal with those crazy political things, and it put me in a position where I couldn’t take care of my own political problems.”
“It was difficult,” remembered Sam Skinner, who replaced Sununu as chief of staff. “Number one, we were at 41 percent in the polls. The president’s approval rating had gone from 90 percent after the war to 40 percent because of concerns about the economy, and everybody—except the president, it seemed—was pretty demoralized. He always had a positive nature, and he just said we’re going to have to attack it. Of course, we had some unbelievable things happen over the next few months that made us feel as if we were jinxed.”
I have already c
onfessed I am no historian, and to that, let me add I am certainly not qualified to offer a scholarly analysis of the end of the Cold War. Yet I feel reasonably safe in suggesting that December 1991 will stand out in history, for centuries to come, as a period of profound—and positive—change in our world. First, on December 8, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called Dad to tell him that the Russian republics had taken the final, historic step to make their decades-old dream of self-determination a reality. Russia, Ukraine, and the other states that made up the USSR decided they would form a Commonwealth of Independent States. They were in essence casting aside the yolk of tyranny—the Soviet regime in faraway Moscow—that had suppressed them for too long.
Second, on Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Soviet Union. “Because President Bush had built such a strong relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev, he understood on a personal level what the fall of communism meant to him,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. “He understood how difficult the decision was for Gorbachev to essentially manage the death of the Soviet empire. Gorbachev recognized that—and he respected it.”
Then she told me of a fascinating moment: “Before the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time at the Kremlin, the final call Gorbachev made was to President Bush. He wanted reassurance from a trusted, valued friend that the decision he had made was correct, that history would judge him favorably.”
“It so happened that I was making my statement about stepping down from the presidency on the day when Christmas is celebrated in the West [the Russian tradition is to celebrate it later, on January 6], but I nevertheless asked my assistant Pavel Palazchenko to find out whether it was possible to contact the president,” President Gorbachev recalled. They found Dad at Camp David, and President Gorbachev recounted for me how their historic conversation went:
My Father, My President Page 40