GEORGE W. BUSH NEVER LACKED confidence. Since his bike-riding, baseball-playing Midland youth, he had shown himself to be a natural leader, brimming with self-assurance. It could come off as frat-boy cockiness, even arrogance—the smirks, the nicknames, the swagger—and at times shrouded the discipline, focus, and hard work that went into nearly everything he did. All those traits were on display as Bush plunged into his new duties in the Texas statehouse, and despite having never held public office, Bush settled into his state’s highest elected office as comfortably as his father—with a résumé of public service as long as his forearm—had taken to the Oval Office. As he did, he quickly began to win over critics.
Being comfortable in his skin was part of Bush’s charm. Paul Burka, a hard-bitten veteran journalist for Texas Monthly and former legislature staffer, wrote after Bush had left the statehouse, “I have never seen anyone that good at the game of politics. It was impossible to be around the guy and not like him. He filled a room. He was always himself. He said what he thought. He had the ability to let his guard down without losing the dignity of ‘I am your governor.’” After Bush’s first hundred days in office, Burka judged that the former co–managing partner of the Texas Rangers was “batting a thousand” as governor.
Bush’s success came in large measure due to his courtship of the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, big-as-Texas Bob Bullock, who controlled the state’s legislative agenda and reigned supreme over the Democratic-dominated House and Senate. As Bush wrote, “Bullock was not of my party or my generation; he was a crafty master of the political process not inclined to think much of a rookie like me.” In fact, Bullock was the kind of authentic folksy Texas politician who might have nipped at Bush’s Achilles’ heel by caricaturizing him as a carpetbagging Ivy Leaguer. Instead the lieutenant governor took a shine to Bush. “I am genuinely fond of him,” he said of the governor two years into the latter’s tenure. “He’s a fine person. He says that when he makes a campaign promise, he’s given his word. I admire that a lot.”
The two worked together to enact much of Bush’s gubernatorial agenda, taking aim with focused precision at four key issues Bush had built his campaign around: improving public education, enacting tougher juvenile and criminal laws, enacting fairer tort laws, and implementing welfare reform. The former, an overhaul of public schools, was prompted by Bush’s concern over the high rate of illiteracy among Texas youth. Working with education experts and lawmakers, Bush granted schools greater autonomy while holding them accountable to meet standards and achieve results. The changes, a template for the No Child Left Behind education reform he would implement as president, saw appreciable boosts in student test scores, including those of minorities, within his term in office. In 1994, the year before Bush took office, 58 percent of Texas’s third graders passed the state’s standardized academic test, a number that would increase to 76 percent by 1998. During the same period, employment grew by 15 percent while juvenile crime and welfare payouts fell by 30 and 47 percent respectively. In addition, Bush would put money back in the wallets of Texans by helping to steer through a $1-billion tax cut.
Though Governor Bush did not invite comparisons to former president Bush, his father was never far from his mind. He used the old oak desk that George H. W. Bush had used as a U.S. congressman—or so he thought. When his father saw the desk, which George W. had affixed with a brass plaque that read “Representative George Bush,” the elder Bush broke the news that the desk had never been in Washington; he had picked it up in a Midland sidewalk sale for a hundred dollars as an up-and-comer in the oil business. Despite abhorring interruptions as he pursued his gubernatorial duties, George W. put everything on hold when aides told him his father was on the line. “When somebody says, ‘The president is calling,’ we know which one it is,” said his legislative director. The calls were not to proffer unsolicited advice or live vicariously through him or reflect in his political glory, but just to check in—“how are you doing, how’s the family?”–type conversations. In fact, Bush seemed genuinely glad to be “out of it,” by which he meant the day-to-day political issues—and content to see George W. inherit the mantle.
The elder Bush sought to downplay his rarefied status as a former president as the email domain for his office—FLFW, an acronym for “former leader of the free world”—suggested. It didn’t mean, however, that he was leading a quiet life. After leaving the White House, Dwight Eisenhower remarked that retirement for an ex-president was “just a word in the dictionary.” So it was for Bush. His was a crowded existence that included campaign appearances and fundraisers, lucrative speeches, dedications, award ceremonies, board meetings, and philanthropic activities, as well as a frenetic leisure schedule. In 1996 alone, Bush spent 143 nights on the road.
Additionally, Bush added author to his spate of activities, writing, along with Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, published in 1998, about the dramatic world events that transpired during his presidential watch. A year later, he offered All the Best, George Bush, a compendium of his profusion of letters, notes, and diary entries culled from fifty-seven years of adult life, providing as intimate a reflection of Bush as might have come from a memoir.
He relished doing whatever he wanted, unconstrained by the weight of public office. After addressing the International Parachute Association in Houston and relating his terrifying World War II plane crash during which he aborted his plane and pulled his chute too early, he resolved, at age seventy-two, to make one more jump. When he informed his children of his plans, George W. responded as though his father was having a midlife crisis. “Just don’t tell anybody about your girlfriend,” he joked. In March of 1997, the former commander in chief journeyed to the Arizona desert, where Bush donned a white Elvis jumpsuit—“The King would have approved,” he maintained—and along with members of the army’s Golden Knights, plunged from a plane at 120 miles per hour with a “twinge of fear,” pulling the chute with a jolt at five thousand feet before landing safely on terra firma. Instead of getting the jump out of his system, Bush became an adrenaline junkie of sorts, making several more jumps in the years to come, including those on his eightieth, eighty-fifth, and ninetieth birthdays, the last of which his son, the forty-third president, was there to greet him as he touched down.
On November 6, 1997, he went through a rite of passage accorded to all modern ex-presidents as he and Barbara christened the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, which housed the forty million documents and papers of his administration, joined by their successors, Bill and Hillary Clinton. The president was nearly a year into his second term in office after winning reelection in a rout against two other former Bush opponents, Republican nominee Bob Dole and Independent candidate Ross Perot, with Clinton yielding 49 percent of the vote versus 41 and 8 percent for Dole and Perot respectively. Also on hand at the unveiling of the Bush Library were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Lady Bird Johnson, and members of the Bush family. Jeb played master of ceremonies, introducing the day’s speakers including his brother, the governor of Texas. “He stood always ready to serve, as war hero, loving husband, world leader, dedicated father, and invincible optimist,” said George W. of his dad while adding a subtle dig at Clinton, “and a president who brought dignity and character and honor to the White House.” When it was his turn to speak, the forty-first president apologized to his late mother for violating her “no bragging rule” given the museum’s depiction of his presidency, then waxed sentimental about his days in the White House. “Now that my political days are over,” he said in closing, “I can honestly say that the most rewarding titles I’ve held are the only three I have left—a husband, a father, and a granddad.”
Bush the father would see his second son climb back into the political ring in the following weeks. Jeb had spent the previous several years shoring up his marriage, which had suffered from the strain of the first campaign, converting to Columba’s Catholicism, and reconnecting with his three children. Now, at forty-four, he was ready for another go at the Florida governorship. Losing one’s first political race was virtually a Bush tradition—Prescott and George had lost their Senate bids in 1950 and 1964 respectively, and George W. his congressional campaign in 1978. Another Bush tradition was winning in the next contest having taken to heart the lessons from the first. As he squared off against his opponent, Florida’s lieutenant governor Buddy MacKay, Jeb retooled his strategy, tamping down his natural conservatism, which had come off as strident four years earlier, and stressing compassion and inclusiveness. The husband of a Mexican immigrant and the father of Hispanic children played up his own family’s diversity as a means of relating to Latinos, African Americans, and liberal Democrats.
Jeb’s venture came as George W. prepared for reelection in Texas. In early December 1997, he announced for a second term at Sam Houston Elementary School, his grade school in Midland, a contest that would have him matched up against Garry Mauro, the state’s Democratic land commissioner. He did so with his father’s ’92 defeat in mind, “knowing the perils of incumbency,” as well as the fickleness of the Texas electorate. “The only reason to look back,” he reminded voters who might be wary of him resting on his laurels, “was to determine who is best to lead us forward.”
As his boys were in the thick of their campaigns, George got wind through Barbara that they were uncomfortable with the way the media was diminishing him; their political attributes were being touted at his expense. They had vision. They spoke in complete sentences. On the first day of August 1998, three months before Texans and Floridians went to the polls, Bush wrote his sons a letter giving them his blessing to distance themselves from him as they sought to establish themselves as leaders on their own. As it related to the family business of politics, the missive—a Bush family manifesto, of sorts—was as revealing of the Bush patriarch’s relationship with his sons as any he would write.
Dear George and Jeb,
. . . Your mother tells me that both of you have mentioned to her your concerns about some of the political stories—the ones that seem to put me down and make me seem irrelevant—that contrast you favorably to a father who had no vision and who was but a place holder in the broader scheme of things.
I have been reluctant to pass along advice. Both of you are charting your own course, spelling out what direction you want to take your State, in George’s case running on a record of accomplishment.
But the advice is this. Do not worry when you see the stories that compare you favorably to a Dad for whom English was a second language and for whom the word destiny meant nothing.
First, I am content with how historians will judge my administrations—even the economy. I hope and think they will say we helped change the world in a positive sense . . .
It is inevitable that the new breed journalists will have to find a hook in stories, will have to write not only on your plans and your dreams but will have to compare those with what, in their view, I failed to accomplish.
That can be hurtful to a family that loves each other. That can hurt you boys who have been wonderful to me, you two of whom I am so very proud. But the advice is don’t worry about it. At some point, you may want to say, “Well, I don’t agree with my Dad on that point” or “Frankly, I think Dad was wrong on that.” Do it. Chart your own course, not just on the issues but on defining yourselves. No one will ever question your love of family—your devotion to your parents. We have all lived long enough and lived in a way that demonstrates our closeness; so do not worry when the comparison might be hurtful to your Dad for nothing can ever be written that will drive a wedge between us—nothing at all . . .
And that’s not just the journalists. There is the Washington Establishment. The far right will continue to accuse me of “Betraying the Reagan Revolution”—something that Ronald Reagan would never do. Then they feed the press giving them the anti-Bush quote of the day. I saw one the other day “No New Bushes” an obvious reference to no new taxes . . .
Nothing that crowd can ever say or those journalists can ever write will diminish my pride in you both, so worry not. These comparisons are inevitable and they will inevitably be hurtful to all of us, but not hurtful enough to divide, not hurtful enough to really mean anything. So when the next one surfaces just say “Dad understands. He is at my side. He understands that I would never say much less do anything to hurt any member of our family.”
So read my lips—no more worrying. Go on out there and, as they say in the oil fields, “Show ’em a clean one.”
This from your very proud and devoted,
On November 3, the eve of the election, Bush wrote his friend Hugh Sidey. Nervous as always before the polls came in, he expressed concern about the possibility of Jeb’s loss while exuding unabashed pride over George W., who had been in Houston the previous day for a rally.
Should Jeb lose in Florida I will be heartbroken—not because I want to be the former President with two Governor sons. No, heartbroken because I know how hurt Jeb will be . . .
[George W.] is good, this boy of ours. He’s uptight at times, feisty at other times—but who wouldn’t be after months of grueling campaigning.
He includes people. He has no sharp edges on issues. He is no ideologue, no divider. He brings people together and he knows how to get things done. He [has] principles to which he adheres but he knows how to give a little to get a lot. He doesn’t hog the credit. He’s low on ego, high on drive.
All the talk about his wild youth is pure nuts. His character will pass muster with flying colors.
Bush ended the letter hopefully.
Six years ago I was president of the United States of America. Tonight, maybe, the father of two governors. How great it is!
But then tomorrow a whole new life begins.
The following day, he got his wish, becoming the father of the governors of the second and fourth largest states in the union. Jeb captured 55 percent of the vote versus MacKay’s 45 percent. Along with his win came a Republican majority in the legislature, marking the first time the GOP controlled Florida’s executive and legislative branches in the twentieth century. George W. won bigger in Texas, taking a landslide 69 percent of the vote—including just under half of the Hispanic vote—and bucking the prevailing Texas trend of rejecting the incumbent that the popular Ann Richards had seen four years earlier. He had achieved statewide election in Texas twice, something that had eluded his father as many times in his failed runs for the U.S. Senate.
If “a whole new life” had begun for George H. W. Bush in the wake of his sons’ victories, the change was far greater for George W. Bush. In spite of—or rather because of—his impressive win, Bush’s second-term agenda as governor in 1999 was less on the minds of those in the media and in political circles than the inevitable question: Would he run for president in 2000? “I hardly ever think about it, except every day when people ask me about it,” he claimed. Even before his reelection win, as speculation intensified around a possible presidential run commensurate with his rising national poll numbers, Bush said he felt like “a cork in a raging river.” But he was quick to add, “I’m interested or I would have said no.” The main consideration was whether he and Laura wanted to “make a lifestyle change,” especially as they considered their sixteen-year-old twins. “The girls matter a lot,” he said. “If the answer is to go, they’ll be good soldiers. But they won’t like it. I wouldn’t have liked it [at their age, either].”
Given his last name, the word dynasty became a staple in coverage of him. He spurned it, just as his father shunned legacy as the “L-word.” “In a dynasty, you don’t have to earn anything,” he told a reporter with a hint of irritation, just after his reelection. “In a democracy, you have to earn it.” As for an attempt to earn the presidency, that was a decision that George W. Bush knew he had to make—and soon.