Chapter 15

AGE OF THE OFFERED HAND

“I think [history] will remember him as the man who taught us to keep the peace. George taught us to stay in touch with our allies, and stay in touch with the world, not just when you need them. I think [future generations] will remember him as a peacemaker.”

—Barbara Bush

Not even the bitter cold of the 1985 inaugural, had it been replicated, could put a chill on the excitement of January 20, 1989. Dad had worked too hard, and come so far, over the past decade—going from an asterisk in 1979 to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1989. It had been a long, exhilarating climb, and with a lot of help he had finally reached the summit of the “mountaintop of U.S. politics,” as he has called the presidency.

The day started with a prayer service at St. John’s Church, and Mom and Dad met the Reagans at the White House for coffee before riding up to the Capitol. The morning chill clung stubbornly to our nation’s capital that day; and as the president and president-elect rode together, President Reagan recounted how, when he was sworn in as governor of California, “just as I placed my hand on the Bible, the sun came through and warmed it.”

For our family, inauguration day 1989 possessed a similar fateful feeling.

As Dad and Mom prepared to walk out onto the West Front of the U.S. Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony, however, something wasn’t quite right. Suddenly, Dad turned to Tim McBride, his personal aide at the time.

“Tim, I need my overcoat,” he said. “President Reagan is in his, and I don’t want to draw this contrast.” The day turned cloudy and windy, and although it was mild, Mrs. Reagan was bundling President Reagan up in an overcoat and a scarf.

With the entire Congress, the Supreme Court, the cabinet, a who’s who of Washington, and a worldwide television audience awaiting the ceremony, Tim realized he didn’t have enough time to retrieve Dad’s coat from the car, so he offered up his own topcoat, which happened to be the same size.

“On one of the biggest days of his life, what’s he thinking about?” Tim reflected. “The other guy.”

Dad’s inauguration marked the two hundredth anniversary of the presidency; and it was awe-inspiring to consider that only thirty-nine other men (President Grover Cleveland counts twice!) had preceded my father into that high office. Sitting behind the podium off the center aisle and looking out at the enormous crowd on the National Mall, I realized that so many people across America—and even around the world—would now be counting on Dad to lead them and help them. A small crowd of protesters also gathered on the Mall away from the ceremony, and their presence reminded me that—even on this festive day—there were still those in the loyal opposition determined to challenge Dad at every turn.

I loved standing next to my eighty-seven-year-old grandmother, my namesake, sharing a front-row seat to history. Dad later said how he regretted that his father was not alive when he became president, but the fact that Ganny was there made that remarkable occasion all the more special for all of us.

As the ceremony started, I remember thinking how tall and handsome Dad looked. People who only know him from their TV set are always surprised how tall he appears in person at 6'2". I also remember looking at the network booths and all the faces that dominated our nightly news. Everyone looked like caricatures of themselves. It seemed surreal to have all those familiar faces in one spot.

But it was real, and as the sun pierced through the breaking winter clouds, I watched my father become the forty-first president of the United States. In one majestic moment, Dad was the leader of the free world.

It was deeply moving to know our country was in such good, decent hands. The family pride that swelled in my heart, however, was accompanied by an undeniable lump in my throat. The presidency in some respects can be compared to a roller-coaster ride. From high atop that initial platform, the new chief executive is inevitably hurled into the ups and downs of life in Washington.

Jon Meacham, the managing editor of Newsweek, pointed out an interesting historical footnote from the swearing-in ceremony. While Dad is generally very reserved about public demonstrations of his faith, he opened his inaugural address that day with a prayer. Jon noted that the only other presidents who have done that to date are George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.

Following the ceremony, Mom and Dad escorted the Reagans to Marine One for their return trip to California. Earlier that day, Dad wrote President Reagan a note with which he enclosed a small image of the White House as a gift:

January 20th

Dear Mr. President and Nancy,

Here’s a tiny going away present. You’ve probably got a thousand of these, but Barbara and I felt this might be a nice reminder of the House you’ve graced for so long.

I will choke up, I expect, as we say farewell later today—so here goes—

It’s been great. I’ll never forget all you’ve done. I’ll try to earn that support.

Good luck—Love, too!

George

Meanwhile, the rest of us filed into Statuary Hall, the “Old Hall of the House,” where we were seated for the traditional congressional luncheon. We weren’t far from where the 1984 swearing-in ceremony had taken place, in the Capitol Rotunda. Situated between the House Chamber and the Capitol Rotunda, Statuary Hall served as the original House of Representatives from 1807 to 1857 as well as the site of six presidential inaugurations—the last one being in 1850. Today, the semicircular room with its arches and columns is filled with busts and statues of leaders from all fifty states and, more often than not, tour groups. In this historic, ornate setting, the Congress saluted the new president and vice president, and the warm toasts offered by the congressional leaders added to the excitement and hope of the day.

The inaugural parade immediately followed lunch, so everyone in our family, except Mom and Dad, rushed to the White House and into the presidential box—the glass-encased reviewing stand erected on the north side of the White House grounds. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad started to make their way down Pennsylvania Avenue. They were supposed to ride in the limo, but Dad was eager to greet everyone along the parade route, so he and Mom would periodically jump out of the car to walk and wave. At one point, Mom spotted her favorite weatherman, Willard Scott, and ran over and gave him a quick kiss.

Arriving at the presidential box, Mom and Dad enjoyed watching the 78 floats, 145 parade units, and 10,000 participants pass by. Dad was particularly excited when a float passed by carrying his old friend Jack Guy and the rest of the surviving crew members from his navy squadron, VT51. The kids loved it, too—little blond-haired blue-eyed Sam had enough energy for everybody, and loved seeing the parade and running around with his cousins in the reviewing stand. The only one who wasn’t enjoying herself was my daughter Ellie, then aged three, who told me she was starting to feel sick. My heart ached at the sight of her, wearing her brand-new dress we’d bought for the day, and her little cheeks pink with fever. Since we were right in front of the White House, I asked a military aide if we could go inside, and he escorted us up the driveway and right through the North Portico doors.

I was so worried about Ellie that it took a minute to realize I was in the White House, making us the first family members other than Mom and Dad to enter the building on that first day.

It was there that I met the chief usher, Gary Walters, and first experienced how the amazing White House staff somehow makes that very public building feel like a safe family home. In this minor case, Gary called one of the on-call White House doctors, who came immediately to help get Ellie on the mend.

Gary, who is still at the White House today, has likened his job to that of a hotel manager. The White House staff comprises over ninety people, including chefs, housemen, butlers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, curators, and calligraphers. These dedicated public servants maintain the home of the president, provide for the care of the White House and its grounds, and tend to the endless details that go with the ceremonial events of the presidency. Without them, the White House simply could not function.

It turned out Ellie only had an ear infection and was going to be fine. Since she was feeling better, we thought it would be all right to leave her and Sam, who was five, with our nanny Eileen that evening while Billy and I joined our friends and attended several inaugural balls, including the one hosted by our home state, Maine.

Attending an inaugural ball is a privilege that few Americans get to enjoy, and I was grateful for the opportunity. But having said that, going to an inaugural ball always sounds more glamorous than it really is: guests are packed into a cavernous room like sardines; you are lucky to see anyone you know; and you have no room to dance!

Of course, Mom and Dad had plenty of room for their quick spins around the dance floor at each of the fourteen balls they attended—which makes me tired just thinking about it. In fact, Mom’s only unpleasant memory of that inaugural weekend was her feet. They hurt the entire time, because she had bought four pairs of twenty-nine-dollar shoes and had them dyed to match her gowns for the various events. The shoes turned her feet whatever color they had been dyed.

“Don’t ever buy a twenty-nine-dollar pair of shoes,” Mom advises today.

(By the way, after the inaugural, many people started sending Mom tips for changing her hairstyle and hair color. In fact, one citizen sent in computer-generated photos of Mom with a series of suggested hairdos so she could see how she’d look!)

Before we left the White House for the evening’s festivities, it was decided that Marvin and Margaret would stay in the Lincoln Bedroom that first evening. Before Marvin and Margaret turned in for the night, however, Gary Walters warned them that it was “definitely a haunted room.”

While there were no confirmed ghost sightings that night, Marvin did learn an important historical lesson: “Even though it wasn’t Abraham Lincoln’s bed, but an actual time-period piece, I discovered people must have been a lot shorter back then because there wasn’t a lot of room to navigate,” he said. “I think Margaret probably ended up sleeping on the couch, but it was still great.”

The next morning, Saturday, January 21, at 9:09, Dad gave his first press conference in the Oval Office. In the very first remarks he made to the press, he talked not about policy, but about his mother, his first guest in the oval office, and what a joy it was to have her in the White House. When the media asked her how she felt, my grandmother responded, “It’s the most exciting day of my life—so far.”

Then, referring to Ellie as the “points of light kid” from the campaign commercial, Dad briefed Helen Thomas and the White House press corps that he gave his granddaughter some Tylenol at 6:00 a.m., that Ellie had eaten pancakes, and that she was making a quick recovery. It would be normal for Dad to talk about Ellie, but in the Oval Office as president—that was a whole new twist!

That first full day, 250 family members descended on the White House for lunch. Everyone from my siblings and our spouses to Ganny, Aunt Nan, Uncle Bucky, even Uncle Lou—they were all there. Uncle Johnny told me the story that two nights earlier, he had gotten a phone call at his hotel from a woman named Wendy Robbins Rockwell. “Wendy Robbins, my God, I haven’t seen you since I got out of Yale,” he said. Wendy replied, “I called you because you told me when we were eleven years old that your brother was going to be president of the United States. I just called to congratulate you on being right!”

With presidents in the family, the distant cousins do come out of the woodwork. In fact, we had cousins there that day that I had never laid eyes on and, still to this day, don’t know their names.

Dad wanted to have an “open house” on his first day as president, and tours were conducted on a first-come, first-served basis. Some people had waited in line all night to see the mansion—but when Mom and Dad tried to greet the crowd, the line came to a standstill. Mom and Dad didn’t want to delay the throngs of people outside in the cold still waiting to get in, so their meet-and-greet couldn’t last long.

My grandmother stayed upstairs in the residence most of the day. Because of her frail condition, she had come to Washington on an ambulance plane with a doctor and nurse to see her son become president. The day before, during the inaugural parade, she had come in out of the cold—going up to the Queen’s Bedroom to watch the rest of the parade with Billy Graham.

Incidentally, after Ganny returned home to Connecticut, my Aunt Nan called to ask her what she thought of the White House. “Oh, Nannie,” my grandmother replied, “it’s much too big. They’re never going to be able to make it cozy. They ought to go back where they were before. It was a much better size for living. They should just use the White House for official things.”

One of the truly unique features of our democratic system is the seamless, peaceful transfer of power between chief executives. Our Constitution tells us what day and even what time the swearing-in should occur. Geniuses that they were, however, our founders were less helpful on the mechanics of how this transition takes place—how one family’s worldly possessions can be moved out of the White House, and another family moved in, in the course of a single day.

That miracle of democracy generally falls to the White House staff and a small army of movers.

The transition went well for Dad. For starters, he was the first sitting vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836—and during his eight years as Ronald Reagan’s number two, he had seen firsthand how the institution of the presidency functioned.

Previous vice presidents split their time between the largely ceremonial office in the Old Executive Office Building, now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and their office on Capitol Hill, where they preside as president of the Senate. Dad also had an office located inside the West Wing. This helped when it came time to move his desk into the Oval Office.

President Reagan had used what is known as the Resolute Desk, which was built from the ship timbers of the HMS Resolute. Queen Victoria of England presented it to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 as a gesture of friendship between our nations—and the desk had been used by every president from Hayes to Kennedy. It became famous as the Oval Office desk in which the Kennedy children were photographed playing hide-and-seek.

After President Kennedy’s assassination, however, President Johnson loaned the Resolute Desk to the Smithsonian and had his vice presidential desk brought over from the Capitol. This started a tradition whereby vice presidents brought their VP desks with them to the White House. Both President Nixon and President Ford followed suit, as did Dad.

Since President Carter had not been a vice president, he brought the Resolute Desk back into use. Presidents Reagan and Clinton also used it, as does my brother George. Dad liked to use the Resolute Desk in his office upstairs in the White House residence.

Dad had a few things on his Oval Office desk throughout his four years: a favorite clock, a photo of my sister, Robin, and, in the top middle drawer, a note from President Reagan that was waiting for him that first day. It came on a playful memo pad stamped “Don’t let the turkeys get you down” with a Boynton cartoon drawing of turkeys standing on an elephant at the bottom. President Reagan’s note read:

Dear George,

You’ll have moments when you want to use this particular stationery. Well, go to it.

George I treasure the memories we share and wish you all the very best. You’ll be in my prayers. God bless you and Barbara. I’ll miss our Thursday lunches.

Ron

“What a sweet man,” Dad said when he found the note. He had it encased in clear Lucite and kept it in his desk drawer all through his presidency. Later, at President Reagan’s funeral, Dad referred to this same note in his eulogy: “He certainly never let the turkeys get him down. He fought hard for his beliefs. He led from conviction but never made an adversary into an enemy. He was never mean-spirited.”

One more permanent item eventually worked its way onto Dad’s desk—roughly eleven months later. After U.S. troops returned from ousting Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega in December 1989, Dad and Mom stopped by a San Antonio hospital to visit the wounded soldiers.

Jay Allison, my father’s personal aide at the time, remembers Dad coming out of the critical-care unit with a small American flag in his breast pocket. Jay could see that it had been an emotional visit; and for a long time, Dad simply couldn’t talk about it.

During that hospital visit, my father had met a severely wounded Army Ranger, nineteen years old, who had been in the first wave of troops landing in Panama. The Ranger handed Dad his flag and said that even if he’d known beforehand that he would lose an arm and a leg in combat—which he did—he still supported the president’s decision because it was the right thing to do. Dad kept that flag in the pencil cup on his desk in the Oval Office every day after that—and he promised the Ranger that it would serve as a daily reminder of the personal sacrifice our soldiers make. Later, according to Dad’s assistant Patty Presock, when visiting heads of state came to the Oval Office, Dad would ask that a miniature flag from the visitor’s country—like the ones guests at the arrival ceremonies were always given—also be placed in the pencil cup.

I noticed that something had changed within the walls of the White House that first week. Previously, if I walked down the hall with Dad, we’d navigate our way through the crowd, dodging staff members going to and from meetings. Now, however, people stepped aside for Dad and stood up a little straighter as he passed by. They were not doing this because Dad had changed—but rather out of respect for the office that he held.

Dad also did things a little differently as well. Two interesting observations about Dad’s behavior in the Oval Office come from two close colleagues.

Judge William Webster served as director of the CIA under Dad—and he recalled visiting with Dad one Saturday morning in one of the little cubbyhole offices off the Oval Office. Dad was dressed in a sport shirt and casual clothes, and the two were discussing a matter when Dad realized he had something on his Oval Office desk related to their conversation. The trouble was, he told Director Webster, “I don’t like to go into the Oval Office without wearing a coat and tie.” He’d have to send Judge Webster the document the next day, Dad decided.

“It reflected a deeply felt respect for the office,” the judge later said. “This was just the two of us. He wasn’t showing off for the press. He certainly was not trying to show off for me—I’d known him for a long, long time. It’s the way he felt, and it’s the way he has lived.”

Dick Darman, meanwhile, had spent four years in the White House as an assistant to President Reagan before Dad asked him to head the Office of Management and Budget. During the Reagan years, Dick had often been in the Oval Office just before the media were allowed in for one event or another. In such situations, Dick said he was always struck by how quickly and completely Ronald Reagan could focus on the TV cameras and play to them.

“President Bush was different,” Dick said. “The first time I was with him when the press entered the Oval Office, the reporters formed the usual semicircle around the president’s desk. The TV cameras were in the center facing the president directly. Helen Thomas happened to be at a far end of the semicircle. When she asked the first question, the president turned to her and stayed focused on her as he responded. In so doing, he turned his head three-quarters of the way away from the TV cameras. From a media-management perspective, that would ordinarily have been considered a mistake. But the president was less interested in the cameras than he was in showing his questioner proper courtesy and respect. He simply did not enjoy the contrivances of the larger media game.”

Every incoming president strives to hit the ground running, so to speak, and Dad’s White House team started to take shape the day after his victory in November 1988. That first morning after election night, in fact, he had a press conference to announce his opening round of appointments. He tapped his friend and fellow Houstonian James Baker as secretary of state; New Hampshire Governor John Sununu became White House chief of staff; Boyden Gray as White House counsel; and Dad’s longtime friend and former congressional aide Chase Untermeyer as assistant to the president for personnel. On the day before—Election Day—Dad asked Lee Atwater to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, Dad’s old job.

Craig Fuller, former chief of staff in the vice president’s office, and Bob Teeter, who had been the campaign pollster, were named cochairmen of the presidential transition. By January, Fuller and Teeter, in turn, helped Dad put in place the remainder of the cabinet appointments. Among others, Dad also asked his trusted friends Nick Brady and Bob Mosbacher to serve as secretaries of treasury and commerce, respectively; former New York congressman Jack Kemp became secretary of housing and urban development; and another former opponent, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, saw his wife, Elizabeth, become secretary of labor. Chicago lawyer Sam Skinner became the secretary of transportation. For the post of national security adviser, Dad turned to General Brent Scowcroft, who served in that same capacity in the Ford administration.

Many of these were people I had grown up knowing, and it was not a surprise to see them return to public service in Dad’s administration.

This was indeed a “friendly takeover” from the Reagan administration—one Republican president to another—and, perhaps as a result, many of the Reagan staffers thought they were going to stay for another eight years. Yet, no matter how people might agree philosophically, a president needs certain people in certain positions—people that have a feel for the nuances of his agenda and are personally loyal to the president.

“One of the hard things we had to do in the first few months was have a lot of the Reagan people leave,” John Sununu recalled, “so we could fill it with Bush loyalists instead of generic Republican loyalists or Reagan loyalists. And you know the president: that kind of thing is generally hard for him to do—he’s such a kind man. Besides, that’s the kind of job a chief of staff can and should handle for the president—so that’s where I developed the reputation for being direct.”

During the transition period in December, Dad’s chief of protocol, Joseph Verner Reed, also suggested that the president-elect invite the United Nations secretary-general, Javiar Pérez de Cuéllar, to dinner early in his administration as a gesture of friendship to the United Nations. Dad enthusiastically embraced this suggestion and replied, “I want to have Secretary-General de Cuéllar as my first dinner guest at the White House.”

On January 24, Dad and Mom hosted a dinner party for the secretary-general and more than thirty U.N. officials upstairs in the family quarters. “The gesture, I can assure you, was appreciated not only by the member states’ permanent representatives, but also the thousands of international civil servants across the globe who learned about it,” Ambassador Reed recalled. “It was a great triumph of international diplomacy for the most senior United Nations alumnus.”

Dad’s first week in office was a particularly busy one, filled with swearing-in ceremonies for cabinet officers and senior White House staff. When that first Thursday arrived, though, Dad was not so caught up in events that he didn’t notice something was missing—and he wasn’t alone.

“When we came home to California after George’s inauguration,” Nancy Reagan remembered, “Ronnie began work in his new office the next day. It was a busy and exciting first week for Ronnie, but when Thursday came around, it just didn’t seem to be the same. As Ronnie sat down at his desk to have a sandwich, the phone rang and the White House operator said President Bush was calling. When he picked up the phone, Ronnie heard George’s friendly voice saying that he, too, was about to eat lunch and it just wasn’t the same without him. Ronnie was so touched, and I’ll always remember how much that phone call meant to him.”

Meanwhile, Dad and Vice President Quayle kept the Thursday lunch tradition alive.

The vice president would discuss the different Washington personalities with Dad. “He’d like to know what was happening on the Hill, for example, in the House and the Senate,” Vice President Quayle related. “Behind the scenes, it would help him in his dealings with these various members. He’d get some personal insights on what was really going on.”

When Vice President Quayle would return from foreign trips, he said Dad was very interested in what the various foreign leaders were doing—“other than the big topics that came through our communiqués that we’d always write afterwards. He knew all these people, and it would help him in his role as president to have a better appreciation and understanding of the people involved.”

“I always looked forward to that time with him,” Vice President Quayle added. “Beyond the substantive things, we’d talk about family and joke back and forth. There were always some light moments, but it was a way to kick back and reflect on what was going on.”

One of the central hallmarks of Dad’s presidency had to be the way he forged personal relationships with his fellow world leaders—and during the transition period, President Reagan and President-elect Bush held a historic joint meeting with the foreign leader who figured most prominently in Dad’s national security plans as he was preparing to take office: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev had come into office in 1985 and taken the world by storm as a new breed of Soviet leader. He seemed more adept at populist, Western-style diplomacy; he had a sense of humor; and he was promising more openness through his glasnost and perestroika reforms of the Soviet political and economic systems.

Dad had first met President Gorbachev at President Chernenko’s funeral when Dad was vice president. The next time they spent time together came in December 1987, shortly after Dad declared his second candidacy for president, when President Gorbachev visited Washington to sign the INF Treaty with President Reagan. This treaty would eliminate intermediate and short-range missiles staged in the USSR and Europe—a globally significant development coming just two and a half years into President Gorbachev’s tenure.

At the conclusion of a successful three-day summit, Dad rode out to Andrews Air Force Base with Mr. Gorbachev, and their private conversation was indicative of how far our countries’ relations had progressed. “It was possible for us to have a conversation that was unprecedented in its candor and willingness,” President Gorbachev told me. “Vice President George Bush told me he wanted ‘to look over the horizon,’ and so we did.”

President Gorbachev recalled how the conversation went:

“In the months to come, I will be mostly working on the campaign,” Dad said to him. “If things continue to go well for me and I win big in the first primaries, my nomination will be assured . . . If I am elected, I will continue on the course we’ve set . . . Years ago, it took Richard Nixon to go to China. Now it takes Ronald Regan to sign the INF Treaty and have it ratified. This is a role for a conservative . . . With the Democrats, you would do well overall, but, as we say here, they don’t deliver. Although I’ll be very busy campaigning, I would be ready to help on some U.S.-Soviet issues, perhaps troubleshooting.”

President Gorbachev replied, “I appreciate what you’ve said, and I value the spirit in which it was said . . . If you become your country’s leader, I hope we’ll continue our interaction. It is good that you’ve made clear this intention.”

The two then discussed relations with China and agreed that they would be dealing with it without hidden agendas, without trying “to play a card.”

“Later, as president, George Bush adhered to that agreement,” President Gorbachev recalled.

A year later, on December 7, 1988, President Gorbachev and President Reagan met at Governors Island in New York Harbor—eight hundred yards off the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The event was a public opportunity for President Reagan to pass the baton of Cold War leadership to Dad, who was president-elect by then.

In his book, A World Transformed, Dad recalled being “a bit uncomfortable” about that meeting—in particular, about being placed in the “awkward position” of having to weigh [his] role as vice president against his future role as president. President Reagan had been “extraordinarily considerate and kind” to him for eight years, so he “tried to avoid anything that might give the appearance of undermining the president’s authority.” To the end, Dad was “determined to be a supportive vice president, one who had been—and would continue to be—loyal to his president.”

Sadly, President Gorbachev’s visit to the United States was cut short the next day by the news of a terrible earthquake that devastated Armenia and killed at least fifty thousand people.

Into this void stepped AmeriCares, a wonderful relief organization started by Dad’s grade school classmate Bob McCauley. McCauley planned to send a plane loaded with medical supplies to Yerevan and called to see if any member of the Bush family would like to make the flight. He felt that such a gesture would mean a great deal to the Russian people. So my brother Jeb and his twelve-year-old son, George P., volunteered to go.

“It was really like being in a different world,” my nephew George P. told me. “In terms of the total devastation, I’m not sure I can really describe the amount of pain and suffering that we witnessed. Just about every structure was off of its foundation. There were people literally walking through the street with very little clothes on and starving and it was just—I mean, at age twelve, it was the most graphic thing I’d ever seen in my life.”

“With tears in his eyes, the son of President-elect George Bush presented candy and gifts today to brighten the Christmas of children injured in Armenia’s earthquake,” read the lead paragraph in the Washington Post article that Christmas Day. “This is probably the greatest Christmas gift I could give myself or my son,” Jeb was quoted as saying, referring to their visit with more than six hundred boys and girls in Children’s Hospital No. 3 in Yerevan.

“The best thing about that was Gorbachev telling me afterwards that when Jeb went to church in Armenia and shed a tear there, it did more for the U.S.-Russia relationship than anything I could possibly imagine,” Dad recalled. “To me, it just seemed like the compassionate thing to do, and Jeb wanted to do it, as did George P.”

Upon their arrival home, Dad wrote a letter to George P.:

. . . Men are not supposed to cry, says convention; but we do and we should and we should not worry when we do.

When Ganny dies I will cry—my Mom—she’s 87 now. She has hurt a lot in the last few years and her bones are very brittle and so in a sense it will be a blessing when she goes to God; but I will cry because I love her a lot and I will miss her. I cried when my Dad died. He was a big guy—bigger than your Dad even. He was strong and principled—and, you know, when we were very little we were a little scared of him though we knew he loved us. When he was sick in the hospital I ran my hand through his hair and it felt different than I thought it would. Isn’t it odd?—I cried about that.

I cry when I am happy and I cry when I am sad. But when I saw you and your wonderful Dad in that church in Armenia on Christmas Day I cried because I was both happy and sad. I was very proud of you. Don’t ever forget what you saw there. Don’t ever forget what you participated in. In less than two weeks I will be President of the United States. I know I will not forget what that little trip of yours meant to people all over the world.

You’re a good man Charlie Brown and I miss you a lot . . . Tell your Mom and Dad I love ’em. Devotedly,

Gampy

As the weeks went by in the new administration, our family began to adapt to life as the First Family. My brother George was thinking about trying to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team; Neil was looking to get out of the oil business and perhaps go into cable television; Jeb was serving on a few boards; Marvin was doing well in the investment business; and I had just taken a new job with the state of Maine tourism office.

Early in 1989, Mom was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a condition where antibodies attack the thyroid gland and cause the eye muscles to tighten, giving the appearance that the eyes are bulging. Graves’ disease is not curable, but it is treatable with either radiation or surgery followed by thyroid hormone replacement pills.

It was bad enough that Mom had to cope with this condition, but Dad was also diagnosed with Graves’ disease shortly thereafter—and their dog, Millie, came down with lupus, another autoimmune disease. Neither is contagious.

Given the profound improbability of this happening, experts checked the vice president’s residence in case there was something in the water or air there—but nothing was ever found. In fact, the most helpful analysis Mom and Dad got came from my brother George, who called Mom and Dad to suggest that “if they would quit drinking out of Millie’s water bowl, it never would have happened in the first place.”

During the spring of 1989, Millie also had her first and only litter of puppies—thus fulfilling one of Mom’s wishes. On a whim, back during the campaign, my mother had made a list of things she wanted to do someday if Dad lost the election. Along with things like touring the French wine country and going on ocean cruises, Mom listed that she wanted their dog to have puppies. Once Dad won the 1988 election, however, Mom realized that the only thing doable on the list was the puppies, so Millie got “married” to Tug, another springer spaniel, who belonged to their good friends Sarah and Will Farish. Next thing you knew, a slew of six puppies was frolicking around in the Rose Garden—and it seemed as if the entire White House staff was helping to look after them.

Mom and Dad used shredded newspapers for Millie’s bed, but the newspaper ink rubbed off onto the puppies and Mom jokingly complained to the newspaper executives about it. The executives responded by sending over reams of clean, unprinted paper!

Another member of our family who was also adjusting to life with Dad in the White House was our Uncle Lou Walker, my grandmother’s brother. Uncle Lou was impressed with Dad’s new station in life, and was quite pleased when my godfather, Spike Heminway, had business cards printed up for Uncle Lou announcing him as “The Uncle of the President of the United States.”

One time, Uncle Lou and my Aunt Grace were in Antigua with some friends, and Donald Trump’s yacht came into the harbor to moor. Uncle Lou came up with the idea of seeing if the group could board The Donald’s yacht. Everyone agreed, so they piled into a motorboat and sped off. As they neared the yacht, Uncle Lou started yelling up to the deck, “Ahoy there!”

Getting the attention of one of the crew members, Uncle Lou said, “I’d like to come aboard.” When the deckhand inquired who he was, Uncle Lou said unabashedly, “I’m the uncle of the president of the United States and I’d like to come aboard with my friends and see the yacht. Is Mr. Trump there?”

The deckhand then answered the “uncle of the president of the United States”: “Shove off, fella.”

Each time a new president enters office, particular attention is paid among the media, on Capitol Hill, across the country, and around the world to what he does during his first one hundred days. This presidential benchmark was first applied to Franklin Roosevelt, who entered office in 1933 during the height of the Great Depression, a period of genuine national crisis. Since then, however, this “first one hundred days” yardstick has been used in the United States and even abroad to measure a national leader’s initial progress.

In Dad’s case, his first hundred days could be summed up in one word: bipartisanship. Dad counted among his friends dozens of Democrats on Capitol Hill, including his old friend Sonny Montgomery from Mississippi, House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, and others. It helped a great deal to have friends on the other side of the political aisle when you consider that the Democrats controlled both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate for all four years of Dad’s presidency. Compromise would be essential to achieving any meaningful legislation.

To emphasize his desire for bipartisanship, Dad declared that he wanted his presidency to be known as “the age of the offered hand” in his inaugural address. For much of his first two years in office, both Dad and Congress tried to make good on that pledge.

In his first hundred days, in fact, Dad and Democratic leaders in Congress managed to reach a bipartisan budget agreement, as well as a key bipartisan agreement on foreign policy in Central America.

The former Democratic whip in the U.S. House, Tony Coehlo, recalled Dad’s first meeting with the congressional leadership:

After I was elected majority whip [the third-ranking Democratic member in the U.S. House] in 1987, I started attending these leadership meetings—with the top Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and the Senate meeting with the president, the vice president, the chief of staff, and some cabinet officers but not the whole cabinet.

I’m just a dumb little Portuguese kid who milked cows in California, very poor family—and the first time I walked in the room I was overwhelmed, sitting there at the cabinet table with all these people and the president.

When President Reagan came in, we all stand up, of course. He sat down, the rest of us sat down. Then he reached into his breast pocket and he pulled out some three-by-five cards. And he started reading from the three-by-five cards. I don’t remember the specifics, but I remember him saying, “Good morning. It’s nice to have all of you here this morning. Today, we’re going to discuss three items. One of them is health . . .” at which point he turned the conversation over to whoever the expert at the table was. President Reagan, that I saw, never led the discussion. He always turned it over to other people.

When the conversation on the first item finished, President Reagan continued referring to his notecards. “The second item is on trade,” he said, still reading. “I know that you’ve put in your own bill—and it’s a big bill that you intend to push—but we have some ideas and our own legislation. I hope you will listen to it and hopefully we can have some compromises. Leading the discussion on the trade bill will be Secretary of the Treasury Jim”—still reading, turning over the notecard—“Baker . . .”

I’m just sitting there watching all this, and I don’t think I said anything. I was just overwhelmed.

Now skip forward two years, to January of 1989—and the first meeting of the leadership for the government. President Bush walks in, and we all stand up. He sits down, and we sit down. He reaches into his breast pocket, and I’m going, “Oh no.” He read some notes, then he put them back into his breast pocket and said, “Now I want to sort of set rules for these meetings, and I hope that you will agree with it. We’re going to come here, and let’s use the hour effectively. There are some things that I want to discuss with you, and there will be things that I’m sure you’ll want to discuss with me. And I will lead these discussions. But don’t feel restricted. Let’s get into a real dialogue. Let’s see if we can solve problems.”

At that very moment, he got a round of applause from everybody at the table. It was refreshing. President Bush would make sure he knew the subjects that he needed to bring up, then he’d put them back in the pocket—and we’d start a free-flowing discussion. It wasn’t always pleasant. We had our share of disagreements, but President Bush moderated the whole thing, and I always felt we got things done.

It worked so well that first year that one time he called a meeting at five in the afternoon. After we assembled, he said, “When we have these meetings, I hope they can remain confidential. That’s hard to say in Washington; but if we’re really going to be effective, we’ve got to be open and trust our colleagues not to go out and repeat them.” Everybody basically agreed with that.

Then the president said, “The reason I’m calling this meeting is because I’m about to do something, and I want to let you know before I do it. The critical thing here is that we keep it confidential to maintain the element of surprise.”

President Bush wanted us to know he was going into Panama after Manuel Noriega. The great thing is: not only did everybody support him, but after everybody left that meeting nobody said a word. The operation started the next day, and at the next meeting he was extremely complimentary of everybody. We felt good about it. We felt good that people in the room honored that trust and it didn’t get out. After that, people felt freer, more open to say things because they trusted the president and he trusted us.

He was a fabulous leader that way.

Even during Dad’s so-called honeymoon period, open, frank exchanges in the Cabinet Room were not enough to keep partisanship from rearing its ugly head on occasion.

For example, while most of Dad’s cabinet appointments sailed through to an easy confirmation by the U.S. Senate, one was not so fortunate: Dad’s nominee to be the secretary of defense, his 1988 campaign cochairman and longtime Texas ally Senator John Tower. Senate Democrats decided to oppose the Tower nomination, tearing into their colleague based on horrible rumors that Tower was very fond of women and alcohol.

Despite the risk of an early political defeat in the Senate, Dad continued to support his nominee, writing a friend at the time: “I have never seen such a campaign of innuendo, vicious rumor and gossip in my entire life.”

In fact, about the best thing to come of the entire Tower nomination was the active, positive support Dad received from Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, who did everything he could to help lead the fight for Senator Tower. Meanwhile, the ugly attacks prompted the nominee to take the extraordinary step of forswearing alcohol if confirmed. Since they were both staying at the Jefferson Hotel during their respective confirmation hearings, Senator Tower went to Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner’s room at 11:00 one Saturday night and asked Sam to witness Tower signing a written pledge that he would not drink alcohol if he was confirmed as secretary of defense.

“Senator Tower said he was going on the ABC Sunday show the next day with Sam Donaldson and was going to announce the pledge on national TV,” Secretary Skinner recalled.

Senator Tower then took out a piece of paper where he had written down his pledge, and Skinner agreed to sign it. He noticed there was a second signature line, for Dr. Narva, the Senate doctor.

“After he left, I called Boyden Gray and gave him a heads-up,” Sam added. “The next morning I watched as he announced the pledge and took it out of his pocket on national TV. I held my breath hoping he would not mention that I had signed it, and when he did not, I breathed a sigh of relief. I could just imagine what the president would say if he heard that his newest cabinet member had witnessed ‘the pledge.’ ”

Sadly, the Tower nomination was voted down in the Senate on March 9, after which Dad nominated Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney to replace Senator Tower. Dad had first met Cheney in 1969, when Cheney worked for Congressman Bill Steiger, a second-term House member from Wisconsin. Dad got to know him better when Cheney served as President Ford’s chief of staff.

“By 1988, I had just been elected the Republican whip at the House, the Republican leader, and I had planned to spend my career in the House of Representatives hoping to someday be the Republican leader,” Vice President Cheney recalled. “Then President Bush came along and asked me to be secretary of defense, and I haven’t regretted it for a minute.”

“He changed my life.” The vice president added:

With the Democrats outnumbering the Republicans on the Hill, it was risky for Dad to take a leading Republican House member out of action, but my father clearly believed Cheney would be accepted by his colleagues—and, more important, would do a great job. Cheney subsequently breezed through the Senate confirmation process, served as secretary of defense throughout Dad’s administration, and has since gone on to serve with distinction as President George W. Bush’s vice president.

Before the Tower nomination battle even began, however, General Scowcroft began a thorough review of U.S. policies around the world, and found that National Security Council internal policies needed improvement. As the NSC and Dad debated the results, it became clear that Dad was uncomfortable with the formal structure of the NSC.

“He wanted to discuss issues more frankly, without a bunch of back-benchers sitting around taking notes,” said Scowcroft, so he set up an informal group, which he called the Gang of Eight. The Gang of Eight was comprised of Dad, Vice President Quayle, Secretary of State Baker, Secretary of Defense Cheney, Governor Sununu, General Scowcroft, a note-taker from the NSC staff, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell.

Dad also encouraged open debate, letting his very strong policy officials argue out something in front of him. Between Scowcroft, Baker, Cheney, and Powell, this was not a group of shrinking violets.

“We would argue with each other and get mad at each other,” former secretary Powell told me. “Scowcroft and I would be shouting at each other, and Cheney would be mad at me because I’m supposed to be his subordinate—but I’ve been asked my opinion and I would say something with which he didn’t necessarily agree. But the beauty of it was that even though we would have these disputes and arguments, we never lost sight of the fact that we were a team and we worked for the president. And he was good enough to let us argue in front of him without stopping us and without holding anything against us, and then he’d make the necessary decision.”

Dad never micromanaged his Gang of Eight, and he purposely chose people who were compatible with each other. “He selected the team not only because of their knowledge and their skills, but because he knew that he could trust them and that they could work with each other,” said General Scowcroft. “That’s very rare, because most presidents select their cabinet and their NSC and they have no idea how it will work because they’re dealing with people who’ve never worked together.”

This foreign policy review prompted criticism from some in the media that the new administration lacked “vision,” and also elicited concerns in Moscow.

“At first, I was somewhat concerned that President Bush’s administration took ‘time out’ to reassess relations with the USSR,” President Gorbachev told me. “I still believe that we would have been better off without it, for relations between our two countries were already on a firm foundation, which George Bush had helped to create. There were probably some internal reasons for that pause. Be that as it may, subsequent contacts confirmed that the policy of building up U.S.-Soviet relations would continue.”