I never thought my dad would become an artist. Growing up, I was the artistic one in our family. Family legend says that when I was a toddler, my parents would wake to find me sitting in the living room coloring away. If there was an art class, I registered for it. I particularly loved painting. In high school, I’d paint canvases in my room, and Dad would often walk in to chat. But he was always more interested in our chatting than in the art. So, when my sixty-five-year-old dad mentioned that he’d started painting, I was shocked. His artistic career started with drawings. After he left office and got his first-ever smartphone, he’d text Jenna and me updates of his day, via stick figures drawn on an iPhone app. A stick figure of him waving in a plane window, a stick figure of him riding his bike. He didn’t take his “art” too seriously and neither did we.
The next thing I knew, though, he had found an art teacher and purchased oil paints. He painted everything from my cat Eleanor to landscapes in Zambia. When he thought that his skill had matured enough, he turned his brush to people, starting with world leaders he knew well. He created portraits of Great Britain’s Tony Blair, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and the Dalai Lama, among others. His next series of subjects were private figures—people whom he considered to be every bit as consequential: wounded warriors. Just as he had honored heads of state, he wanted to honor these men and women. Typical of my dad, he didn’t want to do it in a way that would make him the center of attention. To him, it is the subject that matters most, not the person doing the painting.
Dad was inspired by British prime minister Winston Churchill’s book Painting As a Pastime, but for my dad, painting has become a passion. My parents have converted the upstairs attic of their Dallas house to an artist’s studio, and the first thing Dad asks me whenever I come home is, “Do you want to come up to the studio?” His clothes are now covered in paint (he wears a white lab coat to protect them from further paint splatters, but trust me, there isn’t much in his closet that doesn’t already have extra colors on it). When he shakes hands, there is invariably paint on his fingertips.
Painting has changed how he views the world. Now, a landscape he’s driven past hundreds of times comes to life via a shadow, a color, a tint—he’s constantly taking photos of places as inspiration, so he can study the contours and the shading and ultimately capture them in a painting. He notices the world differently, picking out the myriad colors in the sky beyond the traditional “blue.” In a similar way, when he stands at his easel, the faces of the wounded warriors he paints also come to life. He works to capture them in all their dimensions.
Recently, I was home in Dallas for a speech, staying with my parents. After dinner one night, with the lights dim throughout the house, I climbed the stairs to my dad’s painting studio. Arranged around the walls were hundreds of paintings of men’s and women’s faces, hundreds of eyes staring back at me. I didn’t know these men and women personally, but he did. He had studied each person and could recite their family members’ names, their deployment date, their physical and mental wounds, their worries, and ultimately their hopes. He’d studied each wounded warrior both physically, to paint them, and through conversation, to understand them. He does not shy away from listening to and talking about their struggles with PTS (post-traumatic stress—he wants to permanently remove the “D” of “Disorder” from PTSD). He says, “We can’t not talk about it. We can’t pretend someone is fine when they aren’t.”
That night, I sat down as a baseball game played on the TV in the background, with a veritable amphitheater of men and women around me, while Dad asked, “Do you want to be my curator?” I did. When we visit, I love talking to him about each painting. I love understanding what or who influences him (he took online courses from the Museum of Modern Art in New York that introduced him to new artists daily). I love seeing his joy in showing off his studio. But I also love the depth of what this art means to him. I see the discipline in his approach and even a type of mindfulness, where he purposely disengages from the electronic world and focuses on the canvas in front of him for hours on end.
To my dad, the meaning is different: His portraits are another way to incorporate people who matter into his life. His wounded-warrior subjects do not simply sit for him; they come to the ranch; they golf and bicycle with him. He shares in their lives, and they share in his. They have become “his people,” not only on the canvas, but beyond.
As for me, I still don’t know if there will ever be a right answer to any question on war. What I do know is that my dad looked his decision in the face and made it—and in the years since, he has never looked away from the many faces of those it affected. He has always owned his responsibility, personally and deeply, in ways known only to him, ways at which the rest of us, myself included, can only guess.
Dear Barbara and Jenna,
Yesterday I made the hardest decision a President has to make. I ordered young Americans into combat. It was an emotional moment for me because I fully understand the risks of war. More than once I have hugged and wept with the loved ones of a soldier lost in combat in Afghanistan.
I also know my decision will be unpopular on college campuses. I hurt for you because of the pressures on you. There will be marches, loud professors denouncing me and our actions, and bad posters.
I am confident in my decision.
I am also confident that there is an almighty God who will provide comfort, strength, and love. And I pray daily. I pray for those I love. And the three I love the most are you and mom.
Love, DAD
The Dad We Know
BARBARA
In 2004, Jenna and I decided to join our dad’s campaign. We had just graduated from college and had a summer free to zigzag across the country in support of our dad. Campaigning is a piecemeal experience—bouncing from rally to town to Holiday Inn and Motel 6, nibbling on trays of white bread sandwiches and pickles on the campaign bus. Jenna and I were the opening act for our mom or our aunt, or, better yet, our dad. Campaigning with Dad was always my favorite, and sometimes, it was just the two of us, alone. One would assume the opposite—because our destination was a stadium full of tens of thousands of people. But the second the heavy black Suburban door closed, it would be just Dad and me, sitting side by side, with time to talk. The stunning thing to me is that while I always thought I knew my dad, where I really got to know all of him was not in these private moments, but in very public ones.
For campaign events, I had rehearsed my standard intro speech over and over—a speech about a dad who drove the car pool in embarrassing hats (do all dads do this?), who without a doubt chose Jenna and me over his career, who embodied love in my eyes. But every time I’d walk up to the podium, I’d become so overwhelmed by the energy and enthusiasm, the yells and claps, of thousands of people cheering for my dad (cheers I never heard while living my East Coast life), I’d have to battle back tears to get through my remarks. As Dad would walk onto the stage, he’d hug me, and the tears would be unleashed. I’d sit on the sidelines, beaming as I listened to him speak, tears streaming down my face. Every now and then, he’d look over at me and wink. And, occasionally, he’d well up too.
Up until that last campaign, I’d shunned political events. I thought they were too scripted and fake, too tedious and boring. I didn’t go to events when he was governor of Texas, or rallies during his first presidential campaign. I’d never gotten (and still pretty much don’t get) a big boost from being around huge crowds of people. But this was different. For the first time, I saw my dad interact with thousands of complete strangers. I saw how he inspired them, I saw their reactions of appreciation toward him. I saw how emotional they got when he spoke. It was completely different from anything I had experienced—or had expected.
There have been other poignant, private moments that have, ironically enough, come on a public stage. For a long time, my dad has been open about his issues with alcohol. I don’t remember when my dad used to drink. I don’t remember if he
was too loud or boisterous or too willing to make a flippant remark or needle a friend. Jenna and I were four and a half when he stopped. What I knew was that he didn’t drink, that when everyone else had a beer at a baseball game, he was the person without a cup in his hand. It was confusing as a child. I didn’t grasp the importance of his desire to choose his kids and his family over anything else that might get in the way.
As I became an adult, we talked about it more, about the nuances of knowing when a thing like alcohol is too much to handle, rather than declaring it completely right or completely wrong. But I myself had never heard him speak publicly about alcohol until I went to a speech that he gave for Father’s Day 2015. It was the type of speech that I easily could’ve missed (and I likely have missed many others like it), except that my dad was one of three men receiving “Father of the Year” Awards, and I was presenting him with his statuette. Even so, the topic of his speech sounded saccharine: George W. Bush on his greatest role—dad.
I sat on the dais and I listened as my dad spoke about struggling with alcohol, about how before he became a dad he might have been “slightly self-absorbed at times.” And then he said the lines that made me cry: “You see, what happened to me was alcohol was becoming a love. It was beginning to crowd out my affections for the most important love if you’re a dad, and that’s loving your little girls. And so, fatherhood meant sobriety from 1986 on.” I sat on a formal stage inside the New York Hilton, crying in front of strangers, because I realized that this was not a choice my dad had made once; it was a choice he made again and again, day after day. He was talking in a way I had never heard him talk before and revealing himself to me in a totally different way. In that moment, it didn’t matter that we were in public. It was just me and my dad.
JENNA
When I was a young girl, my family spent weekends at a lake that was home to alligators. It was good fishing for my dad, but not ideal swimming for my sister and me. Regardless, we loved spending time at the cabin because there were no distractions. It was nature and family. And that was it.
After most dinners, my dad would ask, “Who wants to go on a night walk?” In retrospect, I’m sure he knew how eager I would be to grab a flashlight and conquer the loop around the lake, the thrill of nocturnal alligators in the back of my mind. Sometimes my sister and my mom came along, but often it was just my dad and me. We walked under the moonlight and talked. I don’t remember exact details from our conversations twenty-five years ago, but I remember how loved and safe I felt on our adventurous hikes. Those hours of uninterrupted time talking and listening were as precious to him as they were to me. Those night walks are symbolic of how he was as a father: simple, always present, always there.
I think, too, of another walk, one Barbara and I took with him on a brilliantly sunny day in Maine when we were both twenty-three and out of college. The night before, we had celebrated the wedding of one of our cousins, where the guests, including us, grew raucous with hours of open bar and champagne. My dad called us the next morning and asked us to go on a walk, something that had become far more rare now that he was in the White House. Above the sound of the waves and the ocean wind, my dad talked to us about alcoholism. He talked about himself, saying that when he was drinking, he didn’t like the person he was becoming. He said that overdrinking ran in our family, and was something that Barbara and I needed to watch out for. I’m sure there are other dads who have spoken like this with their daughters, but I’m sure, too, that many have never had these conversations. I remember being a bit irritated listening that afternoon, nursing a headache and a case of fuzzy mouth. But now I see it as a brave and responsible conversation, one that he could have easily avoided, but didn’t. And I think some of the choices I’ve made in my twenties and thirties stem in part from what my dad said to us on that sunny day.
I can’t go on spontaneous walks very often now with my dad; I’m in New York, he’s in Texas; there isn’t time. But he has found other ways to walk with me.
It’s a pretty well-known fact that I come from a line of people for whom pronunciation isn’t always a strong suit. My dad in particular was known for getting a bit tongue-tied when he was president. My worst moment was not in that league, but in 2017, I was asked to cohost NBC’s red carpet arrival show for Hollywood’s Golden Globes. When I was interviewing the indomitable Pharrell Williams, I conflated two Best Picture nominees and called his film Hidden Fences instead of Hidden Figures. I didn’t even know I had said it until after the show; it was a complete slip of the tongue. A slip of the tongue that was made into a meme; a slip of the tongue that produced a lot of Twitter tirades and that hurt people because both films featured the stories of African Americans. I was heartsick over having made that particular mistake, over the knowledge that some viewers thought I didn’t care. I apologized the next morning. Waiting on my phone was a text from my dad:
I hear the twitter world is buzzing because of something you said
Here are some thoughts
It is no big deal
Your family loves you which is a lot more important than one slip
I made a lot of slips and overall they did not matter
The world is full of people who want to take someone down but there are many more people who think you are great
So let it go. Be your charming natural self
All will be well
Love you dad
Reminder to myself: Always listen to my dad.
One of the hardest things still for me as a daughter of a former president is having people operate under the expectation that I sit in some kind of judgment of what my father did in his public life. But that’s just never how I saw my dad. I have always felt gutted when I’ve heard him criticized. While I do believe that the decisions he made will ultimately be judged by history, perhaps many different times and with many different outcomes and interpretations, that’s not his daughters’ role. Our relationship is with the private man, the dad who loves us as his kids, and whom we love in return.
My father jokes with those he loves. His humor is late-night-comic quick and usually self-deprecating. He will never make fun of someone else when he can make fun of himself. When we were rude and disrespectful teenagers, his favorite line was “I love you. There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. So stop trying.” No matter how deep our disappointment in a broken doll or a playdate or later a test grade or a boy, he would try to pull out a smile or a laugh. And for years we have followed his lead. When we can sense his weariness or crankiness, we make fun of him, joking around until he can no longer help himself—he laughs.
On one particularly long day on the campaign trail in 2004, we were crisscrossing the battleground state of Ohio. Barbara and I were in the car, and we could see complete exhaustion on his face. There was one more rally, one more speech where people were waiting to see him, and as tired as he was, he wouldn’t walk out and show the crowd anything but his most enthusiastic self. Barbara and I acted our most juvenile to give him an energy boost. As we drove past the holding area for the waiting press corps, I said that all those reporters had no idea what goes on inside the tinted windows of the limo. And to prove it, I turned around and stuck my tongue out at the window, at the entire press pool waiting behind the rope line. Shaking his head and laughing, my dad said: “Don’t do that, Jenna. Someone will take a picture. And there you will be, splashed all over the television screen.”
He was right. Like a sheer dress underneath harsh lighting, the limo’s windows weren’t all that opaque. Everyone outside could see my face and my tongue sticking out. And more than a few photographers captured it for posterity.
A few hours later, while I was running on the treadmill in a hotel gym, I saw my face light up the screen on the local news. Trying to avoid the other patrons, I hid my face and ran from the workout area to get to my dad before anyone else. Commentators spoke about how it epitomized the Bush family’s distaste of the media. I can promise you, it wasn’t that complic
ated; it was a moment of a daughter trying to make her dad smile.
Then there was the night, months later, when again Barbara and I noticed that our father was very subdued at dinner. We were living with our parents for a few months, and when we were all in town we made it a priority to sit down together to eat. We hoped it could be like the day in Ohio—jokes, ribbing, and a few moments of sustained silliness that would make him smile and transport him away from whatever burdens he felt. This night, the more we tried poking at our dad, the more he retreated. He looked at his food as he ate; it seemed he couldn’t even look at us. And so we tried again, this time fiercely making fun of him: Dad, you’re so grumpy! Old man, what’s wrong with you? But he wouldn’t laugh. He’d had enough. He stood up without a word, pushed his chair back, and walked out of the room. We were left staring at each other. I remember feeling hurt—at him for leaving, and at myself for not being able to break the melancholy spell he was under. Later, it was our mom who explained that our dad had just received word that a military helicopter had been brought down in Iraq. It was a large transport helicopter. Every service member on board had been killed.
In the days that followed, he would write notes to each of the families who had lost a son, a husband, a brother. I wonder now that if the look of such life on the faces of his daughters made him think of one of the young men he had read about in his casualty report. Did it make him think about the parents who would never share a meal with their child again? And at those moments, there was also nothing we could do for our dad.
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