THERE ARE TWO beds in the presidential quarters aboard Air Force One. When Barbara Bush isn’t traveling with her husband, the extra bunk belongs to Jim Baker.7
“Bushie,”8Jim said, kicking off his shoes and leaning back against the pillows plumped up against the back of the bed, “I was back down in Houston other day . . .” They both liked to talk Texan. It was a macho bonding thing and significant in their synergy. “. . . and this old boy, he come up to me, and he says . . .” It was the start of a ribald story. They both liked ribald stories. But Lord, they had to be careful where they told them. If some hoot owl from the press ever overheard George Herbert Walker Bush say, “Question: Do you know why the good Lord gave women cunts? . . . Answer: So that men will talk to them,” before you know it every pussy-whipped liberal commentator would have his dick in a wringer howling about politically incorrect thinking, contempt for women, sexism, Sandra Day O’Connor, and whatnot.
“You know what,” Bush said, “it’s the vision thing. Tell me the truth . . . you were . . . you know, with him and now you’re . . .” He meant, but did not say, “with me.” Baker understood. Bush did that a lot. Incomplete sentences. Half thoughts. Disconnected strands. Him was Ronald Reagan.
Baker had started out in politics with George Bush. He managed Bush’s campaign when he ran against Ronald Reagan to become the Republican nominee back in 1980. Baker, sensing which way the wind would blow, and aiming at the vice presidential nomination for his boy, discouraged Bush from attacking his rival too energetically and then got him to withdraw sooner than he otherwise might have. The Reagan people were so impressed with Bush’s handler that they invited Baker to become Reagan’s chief of staff. He accepted. Just as Bush accepted the VP slot. In the Reagan White House, Baker had been a more powerful figure than Vice President Bush.
“Look at the polls,” Bush said. Meaning Look at how I’m slipping in the polls, but Reagan is still incredibly popular and I do exactly what he did, how come I have a problem?
“Well, Bushie, ol’ pard,” Baker said, skinning his cowboy boots off—elegant, eight-hundred-dollar wear-’em-with-a-pinstripe-banker’s-suit cowboy boots but still Texas, if you know what I mean—“the man could shoot a line of shit like no shitter before or since. Why, if you could imagine the size of the bull that could create that much bullshit, you would have yourself the bull that shit Texas.” He got the second boot off and wiggled his toes. Cowboy boots are toe squeezers, no doubt about it, even custom-cut.
“What’s show time?” Bush asked Baker.
“Five hours,” Baker said.
Bush sighed. It’s tough being president. Frankly, it’s a lot tougher than being an actor. Because actors don’t work all that often and nobody cares how fucked up they get. As long as their box is good. The president has meetings all day. Then his chopper takes him out to Air Force One. Although he has an entire plane as his private hotel room with a fawning staff dedicated to his every whim, he will have to get off that plane in two hours or six hours or eight hours, having traveled some portion or all of that time, and appear to be alert, energetic, healthy, to have had enough sleep, not to be jet-lagged, and glad to be there—wherever there is. Getting sleep whenever he can, regardless of his personal clock and biological rhythms, was even more crucial than having makeup when he was in front of the cameras.
“Time,” Bush said, “for the blue bomb.”9He took out the Halcion. Both of them were using it. By prescriptions and on the recommendation of their doctors, of course. It’s a hypnotic, a chemical cousin of Valium and Librium. Its advantage is that it doesn’t linger in the body, and so, presumably, the pill taker is less groggy the morning or afternoon or whenever after.
Baker poured them each a tumbler of Chivas to wash it down.
Bush was still feeling agitated. It’s hard to imagine a president not feeling agitated. Even when there is something to exult over—cutting the budget, beating the Russkies, end-running the Democratic Congress, rising in the polls, pushing back the Commies in Central America—someone out there is immediately carping, complaining, whining, and trying to cut that achievement down. Meanwhile, some new goddamn problem is being picked out by the media to be the new crisis that the president, and only the president, must supply leadership for.
“Pineapple face,” the president said.
“I understand your frustration,” Baker said. He knew that Bush was complaining about Noriega’s trial. Bush had sent in troops to get the drug-dealing dictator out of Panama. He’d started a whole war to do it. He’d personally approved the name of the project: Operation Just Cause. A great name that said it all. They’d brought the son of a bitch back to Miami. A good venue, you would think, for drug prosecutions. And the damn trial seemed to be stalled forever. Going through motions and appeals and whatnot, even before the damn thing started. The longer it went on, the more embarrassing it got. “The prosecutor is a good ol’ boy,” Baker reassured his boss. “I checked with Justice and we got none better. None better. It’s just gonna take as long as it takes, but our boy’s gonna bring home the bacon.”
Bush got up to change into his sleepwear. Pajamas. Barbara had had them made as a special present for the inauguration. They were white flannel printed with seals balancing little presidents on their noses.
“Y’all want to hear this story I heard down Houston?” Baker asked. There was no answer. Baker poured them each another shot.
Bush picked up his glass. The 747 cut through the night sky, huge and steady, easily able to keep the Head of the Free World safe. But with the Evil Empire crumbling, “Head of the Free World” was rapidly losing its ring. He was going to have to think of something new to be called. Leader of the . . .? Put the speech-writers on it. They knew about word things.
“Shit,” Bush said. “I’m going to miss him.”
Atwater had died, just two nights earlier. The doctors had inserted radioactive pellets into his brain. Actually, the pellets worked. They succeeded in destroying the tumor as well as an unknown amount of healthy brain with it. But almost immediately another tumor had sprouted elsewhere. The doctors determined that he couldn’t take another round of radiation. It was a fast slide down from there.
Baker raised his glass. “To Lee.”
“With him here,” Bush said, “what I did, that didn’t matter. Lee could destroy anyone. That was one bad good ol’ boy.”
By now it was clear that the presidential utterances had a theme, or at least a subtext. He was feeling, as presidents periodically do, insecure. There was nothing too terribly wrong, but there were a great many things not too terribly right. The economy, the S&L mess, his son’s involvement in the S&L mess, the country still seeming to slip vis-à-vis Japan and Germany, creeping unemployment, and mostly he just didn’t get enough respect. In the hands of the right opponent, who knew what could happen. Not that the Democrats were smart enough to come up with the right opponent, but what if they made a mistake and came up with a winner by accident. Baker realized that what might have brought this vague angst to the front burner was Atwater’s death, it was like losing a special weapon or going to war with the rule that you could only have as many guns as the enemy.
“He got religion at the end, and I’m glad that he did,” Bush said, like the verse of an old country song.
It might have been the Halcion. It might have been the Chivas. Baker was feeling relaxed, yet powerful and in control. Even his toes didn’t hurt anymore and there was none of that tension in his gut. “George,” he said, “I have to tell you something.”
“What is it, Jimbo,” Bush asked, snuggling down under the presidential covers with the big seal in the middle.
“Just before he died,” Baker said, “he called me to his side. There was something about a message.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Well, he was a bad ’ol boy to the end.”
“You mean he wasn’t groveling on his knees apologizing for sticking Willie Horton on George Dukakis?”
“Bushie, he gave me something. His final campaign ploy. His ultimate campaign ploy.”
“Does it apply to anyone the Democrats run?”
“It applies to us. I have to tell you, my immediate reaction when I read it was that it was insane. That it had to be destroyed. But I kept it. It has a certain strange and compelling logic. It just does. But it’s a madman’s option. Maybe.”
“Do you have it?” the president asked.
Baker got off the bed, Barbara’s bed, and went to his briefcase. He decoded the lock and took the folded, bent papers out. Wishing for a moment that he’d never mentioned them, he said, “Nobody has seen this but you and me.” Then he handed the papers to George Herbert Walker Bush, who turned on the light over the bed, put on his reading glasses, and began to read the last great scam of Lee Atwater.10
7 Newsweek, 1/29/90
8 How Baker addresses Bush according to The Fabulous Bush & Baker Boys, New York Times Magazine, 5/6/90.
9 A phrase attributed in print to Baker (Time, 10/14/91). One can imagine that two people so close would pick up on the same slang. In 1990 it was the most prescribed sleeping pill in the world. It was banned in Britain in October 1991.
10 The reader may have noted two different typefaces. They indicate two different time lines. There is a point where the two facets of the story meet up with each other and unite. Then, for the most part, only one typeface is used.