My Father, My President

by Doro Bush Koch

  George had come into the primary fight riding a wave of great expectations, and thanks to the help of a very talented political team and thousands of dedicated volunteers, he had met them.

  In August, the Republican Convention was held in Philadelphia, where George officially became the Republican nominee. In his acceptance speech, he said, “Mother, everybody loves you and so do I. Growing up, she gave me love and lots of advice. I gave her white hair. And I want to thank my dad, the most decent man I have ever known. All of my life I have been amazed that a gentle soul could be so strong. Dad, I am proud to be your son.”

  Coming out of Philadelphia, the Bush-Cheney ticket surged to an 18-point lead, and everyone was geared up for the bruising home stretch.

  At one point during the fall campaign, I pulled into a local gas station and saw a woman at the pump who had a “George W. Bush” bumper sticker on her car. I went over to thank her, explaining that I was the candidate’s sister. “No, you’re not,” she said to me. “Governor Bush doesn’t have a sister.” I politely explained that yes, he does, and I am his sister. No, she repeated, that’s not possible.

  At this point, I could tell she was starting to suspect that I was some kind of nut. To prove my real identity to her, I ran and got a copy of Mom’s 1994 book, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, out and showed her a family photo. (I just happened to have the book that day; I don’t always drive around town with a copy!) Anyway, I thought I had convinced her until I found out later that she called the campaign to verify who I was—she didn’t believe me, after all!

  When the fall debates took place between Al Gore and my brother, I went to support George. I remember thinking that I had come to the event to support my brother, and yet what on earth could I do? So I spent time in the holding room with George, Laura, and other friends and family. George was relaxed and ready, but the rest of us were miserable, nervous wrecks. I had bought an herbal stress-relieving balm from the local grocery store, and brought that along in case it might help. I shared the stress-reliever with Laura, and we rubbed it all over our “pulse points,” as instructed on the label. I’m not sure if it was George’s great performance or the herbal balm, but we were much calmer by the end of the debate, which my brother won.

  My parents voted early on election day 2000, then made the ninety-minute drive to Texas A&M, where Dad had an event with Bush School students in College Station. While they were at the Bush Library Foundation office on the A&M campus, Jean Becker started receiving exit poll results from Ron Kaufman, Dad’s former political director at the White House. The first wave of numbers was not encouraging.

  From College Station, Mom and Dad drove to the Governor’s Mansion in Austin. The plan called for us to have a family dinner at the Four Seasons and then go upstairs to a suite and watch the returns.

  Events took a disturbing turn during dinner, however, when the networks called Florida for Vice President Gore, and I remember Jeb tearfully hugging George and expressing his regret that Florida had gone the other way.

  “I felt like I let him down,” Jeb said.

  With the early returns not offering much encouragement, my brother George decided he would prefer to watch the returns back at the Governor’s Mansion with Laura, Mom and Dad, and Laura’s mother, Jenna Welch. Meanwhile, Marvin and I went to a conference room right next to the family suite with Karl Rove, Condi Rice, Don Evans, and others. The room had four televisions and a bank of laptops with people on the Internet collecting information from around the country.

  On nights like election night 2000, even the most brilliant people set reason to the side. For example, I sat next to Condi, and at one point we decided to switch seats. As we did, we started winning states. From that moment forward, whenever we lost a few states, Condi and I decided to switch seats again—as if that somehow altered the cosmic order of things.

  Before they pulled Florida back from being called for Gore, however, there were a handful of states that we knew we needed to win if we were going to lose Florida.

  New Mexico was one of the states, and when it came across the wire that we lost New Mexico, too, I remember Condi Rice saying, “That was one of the ones we needed, wasn’t it?” That stark realization sucked the life right out of the room.

  Things were still looking bleak when Karen Hughes, one of my brother George’s closest friends and counselors, arrived at the Governor’s Mansion.

  “I went up the back stairs and saw President Bush 41,” she said. “He was sitting on the couch by himself. Without thinking, I said, ‘Oh, hello, Mr. President, how are you?’ He said very quietly, ‘Not very good right now.’ I felt so terrible. Here’s this wonderful man just dying inside, watching in agony, concerned for his son.”

  Throughout the night—as she had in 1992—Mom would periodically go into the main room, watch for a while, then leave.

  Back at the Four Seasons, we were still anxiously watching returns when an NBC reporter called to say, “Florida is not a done deal.” They were suspicious of how quickly Florida was called, and at that point in the night they were thinking about pulling it back. As word of this critical turn spread, Marvin walked over to the window, leaned out, and said, “Condi, you can come off the roof now.” Everybody cracked up.

  I also remember seeing Jeb run down the hall with a cell phone on each ear as word came in that Florida was being put back in the undecided column. He was heading over to the Governor’s Mansion to monitor events from there. I remained behind at the hotel, so Karen Hughes detailed what happened from there:

  Jeb came bounding up the stairs with a couple of staff members, shouting “back from the ashes.” He got on the computer and started reading election returns—like the local county judge race. Jeb was convinced that we were going to carry Florida.

  When Fox declared Florida for Governor Bush, Jeb said, “I’m not seeing that. Where are the numbers? We’d better be sure.” I felt as the senior staff person there that I didn’t want us to go out and declare victory and not have it be the case. We were trying to make certain that the numbers were backing up what we were hearing on the news.

  Then Vice President Gore called and conceded. That was a euphoric moment. President and Mrs. Bush 41 hugged the president-elect, who also kissed Laura and shook hands with Jeb. There was a sudden release of tension.

  Once the networks declared and Al Gore called, a lot of people came over from headquarters, including campaign chairman Don Evans and Karl. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney also arrived with Senator Alan Simpson and his wife, Ann.

  Jeb, meanwhile, was still looking at the numbers. I wanted to make sure everybody had the idea this was over, so I was calling the press to make sure they knew Al Gore had conceded.

  The president-elect went downstairs to get ready to go do a victory statement. Before he could go out, however, Don Evans received a call from Bill Daley, the chairman of the Gore campaign, saying that Gore was going to call back and we should wait. All of a sudden, everybody was confused. No one knew what was happening.

  I walked back upstairs, and President Bush 41 and the president-elect were standing in the living room. The president-elect was on the phone and he was talking to Gore. And I remember him saying, “What do you mean you’re retracting your concession?” It was bizarre.

  That’s when Al Gore said something like, “Don’t get snippy with me.”

  When it was clear the election would not end that night, we decided to send Chairman Evans over to make a statement, and the president-elect said, “I’m going to bed.” President Bush 41 said, “I am, too.”

  There wasn’t really much discussion after that.

  I just can’t imagine much of a bigger up or down than thinking that you’ve been elected president—only to learn maybe you haven’t. But both the candidate and his father were so stoic and so controlled. Obviously, they were feeling it very intensely, but no one yelled, no one said any bad words.

  After election night 2000, the country was plunged into a thirty-five-day p
eriod of court fights, press conferences, and endless political debate—some of it acrimonious and baseless commentary. George and Laura handled this extraordinary period by assembling a superb team led by Secretary Baker to manage the recount process. Then they got out of Austin, out of the spotlight. George didn’t want to get caught up in reacting to every new twist and turn, which was smart—as there would seemingly be a new crisis every day.

  “He was at peace,” Dad said. “He got ridiculed for being out at his ranch and not tuning in to every little up or down in that long, long, arduous process. He knows who he is. He did his best. He did all these old verities that you learn from your parents—do your best, give the other guy credit, try your hardest. I mean, he did those things.”

  While in Crawford, my brother George would check in with people by computer. He would instant-message me and others, “What are you doing? What’s going on?” It got to the point where I didn’t want to leave my desk for fear of missing a message from him. (Later, when he became president, he wrote us all a final e-mail, saying he’d have to sign off of e-mailing as he was no longer a private citizen.)

  Dad was nervous, too, and called all of us more than usual.

  He also dispelled a myth that arose.

  “I read in the paper that I was the one that got Jim Baker to fly down to Florida, to lead that beautiful effort in the recount,” Dad explained. “Jim’s presence there meant everything to me, but I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t know about it until I either heard it from Dick Cheney or from George. Some people didn’t believe that, but it is the truth. I didn’t know one single thing about it. But if George later said, ‘What do you think about it?’ I’d say, ‘You couldn’t have done better.’”

  Jeb was also caught in a difficult position during the recount. He had worked his heart out for his brother, but as governor, his first priority—his duty—was to determine if the election was conducted in a proper manner and that the recount process was thorough and fair. Like George, Jeb kept a low profile and left the grandstanding on TV to others.

  Lord knows, there was plenty of commentary to go around.

  “When a national leader accused Jeb and George of using Nazi tactics, and the media didn’t really respond to that, I was outraged,” Dad said. “But it was more than just the political outrage: it was the hurt of a father who has pride in two wonderful sons who would never use such tactics. So it was a period of anxiety, but if George had lost, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world for us.”

  From afar, Dad continued to monitor events in Florida closely through Secretary Baker and Margaret Tutwiler, and at one crucial point in the court proceedings in Tallahassee, Dad checked in with Margaret to get the latest news.

  “I told him everything I knew about the matter from my perspective,” Margaret said, “and then I remember saying, ‘I’ll have Mr. Baker call you back as soon as I can find him.’ When I asked for his phone number, the area code was 517, so I asked where he was. He said, ‘I’m at the Mayo Clinic getting ready to have a hip replacement.’ His attention was entirely on George his son—not himself.”

  One day during the recount, my former husband, Billy LeBlond, was in town for the weekend visiting Sam and Ellie. We were all at my house when I received a call saying a group of people were gathering to protest in front of the house on Massachusetts Avenue where Vice President Gore lived. I jumped at the opportunity to get out and do something, as I couldn’t stand being in this awful limbo. Everyone in my family laughed and said, “You can’t do that. You’re crazy—someone might see you there!” But I was determined, so I put together a disguise and announced I was going.

  Billy and the kids were going to see the Washington Capitals hockey team play, but postponed going to the game to join me on the protest. Billy met me standing in the freezing cold, yelling very creative and very adult chants such as “Get Out of Cheney’s House!” and “Sore Loserman!” and “I say President, you say Bush.”

  Incidentally, I wore a scarf and big sunglasses as my disguise, but this attempt at being incognito failed miserably. There I was shouting away with everyone, and random people would walk up and say, “Hi, Doro!”

  On December 12, the United States Supreme Court voted 7–2 to stop a manual recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, saying such an order had “constitutional problems.” The High Court’s action essentially meant my brother would become the forty-third president of the United States.

  George remembers, “An NBC News guy got a copy of the court order and started reading it on camera. As I recall, I picked up the phone and called Dad and I said, ‘I’m not a lawyer, but I think this means I won.’”

  The next night, Vice President Gore gave a thoughtful concession speech; immediately afterward, Dad called him to thank him for the gracious way in which Gore handled the matter that was so difficult for him and for the whole country.

  “I had returned to the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s residence, after making my speech downtown at the Old Executive Office Building,” Vice President Gore told me. “The telephone rang and the operator put your dad through. He told me that he was personally moved by, and grateful for the content of the speech, and I was equally moved by his personal gesture in calling. It was certainly in keeping with his reputation for gestures of that kind. I was impressed by that and very grateful.”

  Roughly an hour later, Speaker Pete Laney of the Texas House—a Democrat—introduced my brother to the world as president-elect.

  “It didn’t sink in for us until he walked in and was introduced by Pete Laney,” Dad recalled. “I think that was really the most emotional moment for your mom and me—the realization that our son was the forty-third president. I’ll never forget it. We were alone—tucked into our bed in Houston, Texas. We watched, and we sobbed.”

  A week later, George went to Washington to continue working on his transition, which included meetings with congressional leaders, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, Vice President Gore, then finally to the White House to visit President Clinton.

  “When I saw our oldest son walk into the White House as the president-elect, sitting next to a very gracious President Clinton, I thought it was amazing,” Dad said. “I had just been on the phone with George from the Madison Hotel, and then I saw that—another imprimatur of reality, as he was greeted in that office he’s going to serve in for the next four years.”

  Chapter 24

  FAMILY CONTINUITY

  “It’s a name that I wear with pride, but only after I became an adult did I fully appreciate the significance. In my old age I will be able to say I was named after that guy who not only was a great president but also a great human being.”

  —George P. Bush

  On January 20, 2001, I attended my fourth presidential inaugural involving a direct family member. The day was cold and dreary, with a drizzly rain and temperatures just above freezing. The people sitting behind the podium weren’t allowed to bring umbrellas, because the people behind them wouldn’t be able to see the ceremony. Luckily, the people at the Inaugural Committee thought to put a clear plastic poncho and a package of hand-warmers on each seat where we were sitting on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.

  As for our family, we weren’t going to let the rain bother us. We were all ready to celebrate my brother’s and Vice President Cheney’s inauguration, especially after such a grueling ordeal with the recount. His supporters had been deprived of a celebration on election night—and even later, when he was declared the winner, the mood was more along the lines of “Are you sure?” than anything else. This time, we all arrived at the Blair House proud and relieved.

  The inaugural events in 2001 seemed particularly festive to me; and in addition to the regular events, my home state of Maryland hosted a black-tie affair at the Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Washington. George W. won the state in the Republican primary, but during the general election struggle for the so-called blue states—won by Vice Preside
nt Gore—and the red states, won by my brother, Maryland in 2000 turned a deep blue.

  A lot of people are working hard to change the Democratic leanings; Republicans in Maryland remain a very tight-knit group. Someone decided that, as the sister of the president-elect, I should be the honored guest at this special celebration. I remember the long pink and black dress I wore, and since we were welcoming a Texan into the White House, I finished off the outfit with cowboy boots as a tribute to my brother.

  Mom and Dad also dropped by that night, and the crowd went wild.

  “I think it was more emotional for me when George won,” Dad said, comparing his experience with my brother’s. “In 1988, I had been vice president for eight years at Reagan’s side. I knew how the Oval Office worked. There was still awe and wonder on my part when I sat at that desk for the first time—the same feeling that the current president felt when he sat there.”

  “President Bush 43 learned so much about how to instill respect for the office,” said Karen Hughes. “You wear a tie in the Oval Office. You don’t have food in the Oval Office. You don’t wear blue jeans in the Oval Office. You show respect. He knew that from day one, and knew that from watching the example of his dad.”

  One time, I was in the Queen’s Bedroom with Dad, and he looked at his watch and he said, “Oh, I’ve got to run.” Quickly, he showered, put on his coat and tie, and looked as crisp as if he were going to a state dinner.

  I asked, “Dad, where are you going?”

  He said, “I’ve got to run. I don’t want to be late for the president.”

  The first picture taken in the Oval Office, on January 20, 2001, featured the forty-third president and Dad together. Dad also has a similar picture taken on January 21, 1989—his first day in the Oval Office—with his mother, Dorothy.