While I was having lunch with my editor in October of 2022, he surprised me by asking me to write another book where George Herbert Walker Bush was the star.
“The world is not done with him,” were Sean Desmond’s exact words.
I confess I looked at him across the table and said, “You do know he died at the end of the last book?” (That would be The Man I Knew, which came out in 2021.)
But after we talked it through, I realized what a brilliant idea it was.
Let’s be honest: Our beloved country is not in a good place. Our partisan divide gets worse almost every day. We get angry at even the hint of a slight. Too many of us have forgotten the art of agreeing to disagree—and then maybe go get a beer and talk about sports or the weather.
Instead, we use social media or other avenues to attack and defame and humiliate those who don’t see the world as we do.
There are days when I think Merriam-Webster should remove the word “compromise” from its dictionary. It’s not used much anymore.
It wasn’t always this way.
It doesn’t have to be this way now.
I know someone who can help.
Our forty-first President left us a blueprint on how to get back to a more civil society that respects the rule of law; that respects and even likes one another; that looks to the future with optimism and hope.
I am not trying to claim that the forty-first President is the only leader, past or present, to whom we can turn now for inspiration and some valuable life lessons. But he is the man I knew. He is the man who taught me so many things: how to think through an issue but then be decisive; how to lead with integrity; how to give back; how to make a difference.
How to be a better person.
Whether you agreed with his politics or not, everyone who knew him remembers the same thing: He was one of the kindest, most decent, and most honorable men they knew. And if you disagree with that, then my guess is you never met him.
So, you might ask, if he was so kind and decent and honorable, how did he manage to become the most powerful person in the world? Sadly, most people assume, rightly or wrongly, that politicians don’t have such qualities.
Well, hopefully this book will help answer that question.
It’s not intended to be a historical account of either President Bush’s life or his years in office. Those subjects have been covered, and then covered again.
Instead, this is a book about his leadership skills and style, about his big heart, his humility, his courage, his character.
This book is about what we can learn from him that maybe can help our nation’s leaders get to a better place.
Actually, help all of us get to a better place.
But before we go on, I’d like to make one important point:
He was not perfect.
His oldest son acknowledged his imperfections when he eulogized his father at his state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC: “To us, he was close to perfect. But, not totally perfect,” said President George W. Bush. “His short game was lousy. He wasn’t exactly Fred Astaire on the dance floor. The man couldn’t stomach vegetables, especially broccoli. And by the way, he passed these genetic defects along to us.”
Just from my twenty-five years as his chief of staff, I would admit President Bush could be stubborn, single-minded, and sometimes exhausting. I once left the office, slammed the door behind me, and went home for the day because he had so irritated me.
And yes, he could be tough.
Although he was not considered a gifted politician, he was still a politician. When he had to, he knew how to play political hardball. If Bob Dole were here, he would attest to the rough and tumble of their 1988 Republican primary disagreements; as would Geraldine Ferraro, his vice presidential sparring partner in 1984. Certainly both Michael Dukakis, his opponent in the 1988 general election; and William Jefferson Clinton, the man who defeated him in 1992, could tell a story or two about how cunning George Bush could be in the political arena.
Yet, at the end of the day, he and his opponents shook hands and moved on.
Although he never became close with Governor Dukakis, they became friends, beginning with a lunch Vice President Bush hosted soon after the 1988 election was over.
He called Geraldine Ferraro shortly before she died to tell her that he loved her. Yes, they had become close friends.
A very frail Senator Dole painfully hoisted himself out of his wheelchair to pay his respects to his old political opponent when 411 lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. When I asked him why he had done that, his answer was simple: “I had to stand for the President. It didn’t feel right to be sitting down when I saluted that amazing man.”
And if she were here, Barbara Bush would tell you her husband became the father that President Clinton never knew.
Jon Meacham, while writing his biography of George H. W. Bush, Destiny and Power, observed:
“What is critical to understand about Bush is that winning was not the end of his endeavors, but the means—the way by which he could bring a sense of decency and of dignity to a public arena often bereft of both. As he observed as his mind turned to his 1988 White House run: If you want to be President—and I do—there are certain things that I have to do, certain speculation that I have to put up with, and certain ugliness that will crop into a campaign or into the pre-campaign. His impulses to do good and to do in his opponent were intertwined.”
He, of course, won in 1988, but then lost his reelection bid in 1992. Some of you might argue that makes him a loser. President Bush himself described his loss as the equivalent of being fired by the American people.
So just what can we learn from someone who suffered such a public—and what he considered a humiliating—defeat?
You could say he lost the battle but won the war. When he died twenty-six years later, he was one of the most revered men in the world.
To help explain the person who was George Herbert Walker Bush, I reached out to a wide variety of his friends, former staff, colleagues, former heads of state, members of the media, and even a celebrity or two and asked them to write about one of these topics: (1) What did you learn from George H. W. Bush?; or (2) tell a story that illustrates something about his character.
Their answers included everything from how he ended the Cold War without a shot being fired to how he taught them to drink a martini.
You definitely will notice a common theme and a repetition of his virtues, yet each story is unique; each one an important building block that helps tell the story of George H. W. Bush.
(I admit I was amused by how many of them started their stories by saying that 41 said to them: “I have an idea.” I have stated before that those were the scariest words he said to me while I was his chief of staff.)
So what can we learn from all these stories that might help make our country—and us—kinder and gentler?
That at the end of the day, a true leader is courageous, decisive, humble, kind, and wise.
And character really does matter.
Jean Becker
To help you follow all the voices in the book:
• Everything President Bush said or wrote is in bold.
• The contributors speak in regular font. (They will be identified as we go—especially how they fit into 41’s world—but if you wish to know more about them, please see the glossary at the end of the book.)
• The narrator (that would be me) speaks in italics.
• When I or any of the contributors talk about President Bush, we are talking about the forty-first president. If we are referring to the forty-third president, we will specify that it’s President George W. Bush. Likewise, when we write about Mrs. Bush, that would be Barbara and not Laura.
• A few years ago Mary Kate Cary, one of President Bush’s White House speechwriters, put together a documentary about President Bush, 41ON41, which featured forty-one people talking about… well, 41. She very generously gave me the transcripts of all her interviews, which allowed me to include in this book some of the people who knew President Bush best but who for various reasons were unable to contribute to this book. (Barbara Bush and General Brent Scowcroft immediately come to mind.) When I use quotes from 41ON41 it will be noted in parentheses. Note: The documentary came out in 2014, four years before President Bush passed away, so most of their quotes are in present tense.
1 I will not always call the forty-first President “41” in the book, but I reserve the right to do so often for two reasons: (1) He loved the nickname; and (2) it will help me on the word count.