My Father, My President

by Doro Bush Koch

  I told President Bush that in about two hours I would be making a statement about stepping down. I also said that I had just sent him a farewell letter but I still wanted to take the opportunity and call him to reiterate once again how much I valued all that we had been able to achieve together—both when he was vice president and, particularly, when both of us were president. I expressed the hope that the leaders of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries, particularly of Russia, understood their responsibility in preserving and increasing the capital we had created over these years in relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, and generally in international relations.

  I have on my desk the Decree of the President of the USSR. Due to the cessation of my duties as commander in chief, I transfer control of nuclear weapons to the president of the Russian Federation. I attach great importance to this matter being under secure control. As soon as I make my statement on stepping down, the decree will enter into force. So you can celebrate Christmas and sleep quietly tonight.

  As for me, I have no intention of hiding in the taiga. I will remain in politics and in public life. What I intend to do is help the processes to get under way in our country and for new thinking to prevail in world politics.

  U.S. media people have often asked me what I thought about relations with you. I would like to say, not only through the media but to you personally on this day, that I very highly appreciate our cooperation and partnership, our friendship. Our roles may change, and in fact they will change. But what we built together between the two of us and what we did together will remain forever.

  President Gorbachev remembers Dad’s reply as follows:

  I want to assure you that we’ll remain engaged in your affairs. We’ll try hard to help, particularly the Russian republic, given the problems it is facing, which may get worse in winter.

  I am very glad to hear that you have no intention of hiding in the taiga and will continue to be active in politics and public affairs. I am sure that this will help the new Commonwealth.

  I have written you a letter, which will be sent today. I say in it that I am confident that what you have done will go down in history and future historians will fully appreciate your achievements.

  I note with satisfaction what you’ve just said about nuclear weapons. This is extremely important internationally. I appreciate your attitude, and that of the leaders of the republics, in this matter. I want to assure you that we’ll continue to cooperate very closely in this important regard.

  Now, on a personal note: I have noted your wonderful, very pointed remarks about the relationship that you developed with me and Jim Baker. I value those remarks very highly, and they fully reflect my own feelings.

  I hope our paths will cross again soon. You’ll be a welcome guest, and we’ll be happy to host you, after things settle down, perhaps here at Camp David.

  My friendship toward you is unchanged and will always remain the same as we go forward. There should be no doubt whatsoever in this regard.

  Of course, I will work on relations with the leaders of Russia and the other republics with due respect, openly and positively, and I hope on a progressive basis. We’ll move toward recognition, with full respect for the sovereignty of each republic. We’ll work with them on a broad range of issues. But this will in no way affect my determination to maintain contacts with you, consider your advice in your new capacity, and preserve our friendship with you and Raisa. Barbara and I cherish it.

  So on this very special day, at this historic crossroad, I salute you and thank you for all you’ve done for peace, and I thank you for your friendship.

  “Perestroika and President Gorbachev’s New Thought ushered in a new era in world politics,” Chancellor Kohl said of the former Soviet leader. “His name will remain inextricably linked with the end of the Cold War, the arms race, and to the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic. His level-headed actions after the fall of the Berlin Wall were decisive for the further development of the peaceful revolution. On November 10, 1989, the day after the fall of the Wall, the then-KGB forces in Moscow and the hardliners tried to persuade him to send in tanks and military units against the demonstrators in the DDR, who were supposedly storming Soviet Army facilities. But I was able to calm Gorbachev and convince him that his information was incorrect. Because of the trust in each other that we had built up in the preceding months, he believed me when I assured him that the demonstrators were peaceful and wanted nothing other than to live in freedom. We will always be grateful to Gorbachev, who—faced with the decision of sending in tanks and or leaving them in the barracks—chose the peaceful solution.”

  “To have that happen—to have the Cold War end and the Soviet Union dissolve without a conflict—is almost a miracle,” General Scowcroft reflected. “If you had asked any American twenty years earlier how such a series of events might happen, they would have guessed it would happen by war. I mean, these things just don’t happen the way it happened. Today, looking back, it seems sort of inevitable. But the president managed it in a way to reduce the tensions—not to alarm the Soviet Union with what was going on in Eastern Europe, not to excite the French and the British about German reunification. All these things he managed very carefully. It wasn’t inevitable at all.”

  “I am convinced it was his diplomacy and his instincts that took us through a time that was far more dangerous than almost anybody recognized as the Soviet Union was collapsing,” Bob Gates added, “sitting over there with forty thousand nuclear warheads and the potential for civil war, for military intervention in Eastern Europe and Poland and elsewhere. All those things were very real risks, and it was because of his diplomacy that that empire peacefully disintegrated virtually without bloodshed.”

  Chapter 20

  A STEEP INCLINE

  “In 1992, I was deeply torn, because I liked your father so much; but we had a lot of differences on domestic policy, very few on foreign policy. In some ways it was personally very difficult for me, that campaign, because I liked him so much.”

  —Bill Clinton

  Mom and Dad rang in 1992, the worst political year of their lives, in Sydney, Australia. They were on the first leg of a four-nation, twelve-day trip to Asia. In their hearts, I am sure both my parents were happy to get away from what had become a terribly unpleasant domestic political scene: conservative commentator Pat Buchanan and white supremacist David Duke had declared they would challenge Dad for the GOP nomination, while Democratic presidential contenders such as Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, former California Governor Jerry Brown, and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin were all attacking Dad as being out of touch and uncaring.

  It was a constant chorus of political critics in stereo, and we had yet to hear from one H. Ross Perot.

  The daily pounding and blistering criticism not only hurt Dad’s political poll numbers but also contributed to a growing—if also technically inaccurate—perception that the economy was still in a recession. Most experts today agree that the economy emerged from a brief recession in the spring of 1991; but as the calendar turned to 1992, many Americans were being told—and some clearly believed—we were heading for another Great Depression.

  The Asia trip was undertaken largely at the initiative of Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, who would help chair the forthcoming reelection campaign—and who was arguing for Dad to be more aggressive about getting his economic message out. Though the itinerary took them to Australia, Singapore, Korea, and Japan, the target audience for the visuals and messages the trip produced was really in swing states like Michigan and Ohio. The idea was to announce a series of new trade and commercial agreements that would, in turn, show how Dad was working to open new markets for American businesses and help create more jobs for American workers.

  This was not your ordinary presidential trip, though, because also joining Dad for parts of this trip were a number of business leaders
such as the Big Three car executives from Detroit—the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—as well as leading representatives from other sectors such as manufacturing. It was a good mix of people, and truth be told it had been a reasonably good and productive trip—that is, until they reached Japan.

  First, even before they arrived, some in the Japanese media picked up on the fact that the U.S. CEOs accompanying Dad were overpaid when compared to their Japanese counterparts. In those days, the average Japanese CEO made maybe half a million dollars, while the U.S. CEOs who would be trying to win concessions from the Japanese auto industry received many times that. So even before Mom and Dad landed in Tokyo, this news item seemed to serve as a harbinger that it would not be a smooth visit.

  The news item that made global headlines from that Japan visit came after they arrived, on January 8. That night, a flu bug caught up with Dad at a formal state dinner, and he threw up on Kiichi Miyazawa, the prime minister of Japan, which we believe may be the one and only time in history a president has done that.

  “All during the daytime, he was just sick as a dog,” Secret Service Agent John Magaw recalled. “Doctors were telling him, you can’t continue to do this. So finally around noon, we got him to postpone whatever was on his calendar, and for the next two hours or so he rested and took medication. Still, the doctors were saying it doesn’t look good, so they got as much medicine as they could possibly get in him.”

  That night, when Mom and Dad arrived at Prime Minister Miyazawa’s palace, Dad told Rich Miller, whose shift as Dad’s head Secret Service agent followed John Magaw’s, that he was feeling poorly. So they went to the restroom with another agent, Tom Ferrell, and Dad became sick to his stomach, soiling his tie. The agents told Dad he could not go forward with the event, but Dad insisted, telling them, “It would be a slap in the face to the Japanese to cancel now.”

  “I looked at Tom and said, ‘If your tie matches his suit, you’re going to have to give it up,’” Rich recalls. “So he does. The president got a little kick out of that, and he put it on and then he went inside.”

  The room was set up with a very large U-shaped table with Mom and Dad in the middle, while Rich sat eight or nine seats from them on the left side.

  “I looked at him at one point, and he started looking very pale,” Rich continues. “He mouthed the word to me, ‘bathroom.’ Of course, he was hoping it was behind the podium, but there wasn’t anything back there.” Dad would have had to walk all the way through the guests to go outside, so he just gutted it out. Meanwhile, he continued to get paler, which concerned Rich enough that he finally got up and started approaching Dad.

  “Just about the time I got behind him, I put my hand on his shoulder and he fell to the left,” Rich said. “I reached down to grab him, trying to turn the president to his left so he doesn’t vomit on himself, but I couldn’t turn him. I’m thinking, ‘What’s the story here?’ At that moment, Prime Minister Miyazawa looks at me, pulls my arm, and says, ‘Hey, you’re pulling my leg.’ ”

  Mom had moved near Dad by this point and was holding up a napkin to give Dad some privacy from the audience in the room.

  When Rich laid Dad on the floor, he remembers that Dad was unconscious for about three seconds before the doctors and nurses revived him. Major Paula Trivette, a very able army nurse, literally vaulted over the table to get to Dad. Dr. Lee opened his tie to get him some air, then he unzipped Dad’s trousers—which obviously caught Dad’s attention.

  “Burt, what the hell are you doing down there?” Dad asked. Hearing this, Mom turned to the crowd and said, “I think the president is going to be fine.”

  “I wanted to clear the room so he could go out in a way that nobody would see him,” Rich said, “but he said, ‘No, I’m going to walk out of here.’ He had that look about him that when he says I’m going to do this, you know he’s going to do what he said.”

  When Rich stood him up, however, Dad had also soiled his suit. Once again, Special Agent Tom Ferrell was called to surrender an article of clothing—this time his raincoat. Donning the coat, Dad walked out of the palace right by the press to the car.

  Mom, meanwhile, stayed behind at the dinner—no doubt relieved to know Dad would be all right, but also left to help salvage an awkward situation. What followed was vintage Barbara Bush. At the time for Dad’s scheduled remarks, Mom stood up and said:

  I rarely get to speak for George Bush, but tonight I know he would want me to thank you, on behalf of his administration and the businessmen who are here, for a wonderful visit and for a great friendship, and on my part, for a lovely day, and I think for a wonderful day for all of you.

  You know, I can’t explain what happened to George because it never happened before. But I’m beginning to think it is the ambassador’s fault. [Laughter] He and George played the emperor and the crown prince in tennis today, and they were badly beaten. And we Bushes aren’t used to that. [Laughter] So he felt worse than I thought . . .

  Mom then called on General Scowcroft to deliver Dad’s prepared remarks. Her comments—combined with the fact that she stayed at the dinner—helped to reassure everyone that the situation was not as serious as it might have appeared on TV.

  The dinner program that night was supposed to have been closed to the news media except for an unmanned Japanese camera set up to capture the toasts. The images that camera position caught of Dad fainting and being helped to his feet were soon beamed out to the waiting world, and caused a global stir. What was left unreported was that almost half the press corps had also come down with the same flu.

  I was at the other end of that beam in Bethesda, Maryland. I remember waking up early because I wasn’t able to sleep, and out of habit I turned on CNN. It was there I saw, over and over again, Dad fall over at the Japanese dinner. At first, I was scared, and I immediately ran downstairs to find the agent on duty. (I had actually rented out my guest room to the Secret Service. It worked out well, as they were able to have a command post in my home, and I always felt safe.) They told me Dad was fine and that it was just the flu. Even so, the TV channels ran it again and again, and each time I saw it I couldn’t help but worry. I was very glad when he and Mom came home.

  One morbidly humorous postscript to what was an otherwise embarrassing and scary episode: Since the dinner that night was closed to the press, many of the working media members and camera people went to a Tokyo restaurant that night—all gathered in a single room. Clearly, there was a miscommunication as to what had happened to Dad, because the hostess entered the room and in that wonderfully formal and proper Japanese way kept saying, “Very sorry. Very sorry.” When everyone quieted down, the hostess then dropped this bombshell: “Your president died tonight.”

  After a moment of stunned silence, pandemonium broke out as everyone scrambled for the door—fearful that they were missing the story of the century.

  Unfortunately, Dad’s political year got off to a fairly lousy start as well. The problems took root even before 1992 started. In addition to the primary challengers pounding away on the right and left, his attorney general, Dick Thornburgh, lost a special U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania in November following the sudden death of Senator John Heinz, who died in a tragic helicopter crash earlier in 1991. Within a week of Senator Heinz’s death, both Lee Atwater and Dad’s old friend John Tower had died, and within two weeks Dean Burch had died of cancer. It was a rough time in my parents’ lives.

  When that Pennsylvania race began, Dad’s favorability rating was up in the eighties, and Attorney General Thornburgh, who had also served as Pennsylvania governor, had a forty-five point lead against Harris Wofford, the university president who had been appointed to fill Heinz’s seat temporarily.

  “You couldn’t believe that you could squander something like that, but at the end of the election, George Bush’s favorability ratings were below 50 percent and my lead had vanished,” Governor Thornburgh recalled. “I remember going to the White House after that, where I licked m
y wounds. I said to the folks down there, You know, up in Pennsylvania, back when coal was king about a hundred years ago, when the miners went to the mouth of the mine every day they’d release a canary into the mine. And if the canary came back, they knew that it was safe to work in the mine. If the canary didn’t come back, they knew there was trouble in the mine.

  “Boys,” he continued, “I’m your canary, and there’s trouble in the mine.”

  The Pennsylvania Senate race not only introduced health care as a key 1992 issue, it was also interpreted by members of the White House press corps and the national news media as a direct rebuke of the Bush administration for failing to act aggressively on a sluggish economy and other domestic concerns. Thus, between Wofford’s stunning victory in November 1991 and the Sununu resignation the following month, the press must have felt there was plenty of political blood in the water at 1600 Pennsylvania.

  The media feeding frenzy was on.

  On February 4, Dad went to the National Grocers Association convention in Florida, and before he gave his speech he toured the exhibition area where he was shown the latest scanner technology. Of course, Dad knew how a supermarket scanner worked; but in one demonstration, executives showed Dad how the scanner could still ring up a product even if the bar code was torn in five different places—not your typical grocery store technology.

  Unfortunately, a New York Times reporter named Andy Rosenthal, the son of Times former managing editor A. M. Rosenthal, wrote a story under the headline “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed.” He went after Dad for not understanding how a basic scanner worked. Dad’s political opponents seized on Rosenthal’s piece to support their own attacks against my father as being out of touch, and soon this nasty fairy tale was dominating the airwaves.

  “I was amazed at how much coverage this one relatively minor incident had gotten,” remembered Howard Kurtz, the media critic for the Washington Post, “so I started making some phone calls and discovered that the New York Times reporter, whose front-page piece had ricocheted this story into the media stratosphere, had not witnessed the supermarket incident himself. Instead, he had written it from a couple of paragraphs in a pool report. What’s more, the Houston Chronicle reporter who wrote that pool report thought the matter was so insignificant that he didn’t include it in his own news story.”