41: A Portrait of My Father

by George W. Bush

  Some of my warmest memories of our West Texas years are of the times I spent with Dad. As my brother Jeb put it, “He invented quality time.” GBPLM

  In Midland with Dad, my grandmother, and my sister, Robin, in 1953. Before Robin died of leukemia later that year, she told Dad, “I love you more than tongue can tell.” GBPLM

  With Dad at the christening of “the Scorpion,” his company’s revolutionary offshore oil rig, in 1956. His experience running Zapata Offshore helped him to develop the leadership style that he would enjoy for years to come. GBPLM

  Campaigning with Dad was a thrilling experience. But after hearing the stump speech over and over, Mother started needlepointing purses for volunteers. GBPLM

  The lesson of George Bush’s first political campaign, for the United States Senate in 1964, was that there are some races that you just can’t win. The loss stung, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for politics or his desire to serve. GBPLM

  In 1966, George Bush was elected to the United States House of Representatives. Mother moved to the capital with him and took to Washington quickly. GBPLM

  Out of both respect and sympathy, George Bush went to Andrews Air Force Base to see off outgoing President Lyndon Johnson. Dad was the only Republican Congressman there. LBJ Presidential Library/Frank Wolfe

  After Dad’s unsuccessful Senate campaign in 1970, President Richard Nixon made him Ambassador to the United Nations. After Watergate, when George Bush was Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he wrote in a private letter to President Nixon, “I now firmly feel that resignation is best for this country, best for this President.” GBPLM

  Hosting a gathering for Cameroon National Day at the Ambassador’s Residence at the Waldorf Astoria. As UN Ambassador, Dad mastered the art of personal diplomacy. GBPLM

  DIPLOMACY

  AS A CONGRESSMAN FROM HOUSTON, home of the Johnson Space Center, George Bush took a keen interest in the space program. When Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to fly around the moon in December 1968, my father wanted to honor the commander of the mission, his friend Frank Borman. Some Congressmen might have issued a press release or introduced a congressional resolution. That was not George Bush’s style. To celebrate Frank Borman’s accomplishment, he hosted a dinner in his honor at the Alibi Club in Washington, DC. The guest list was classic George Bush: some Members of Congress, some Washington friends, and some pals from Houston, like C. Fred and Marion Chambers. Generously, Dad included me on the list.

  “How would you like to fly up to Washington for a dinner with an astronaut?” he asked in a phone call.

  I was at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, for pilot training with the Texas Air National Guard. “That sounds interesting, Dad,” I said.

  Then he revealed an ulterior motive. “I also invited Tricia Nixon. I thought it might be fun for you to take her to the party.”

  I was briefly speechless. “I’m going to have to get back to you on that,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about flying to Washington for a blind date with the President’s oldest daughter. I mentioned the invite to several of my flight school buddies. They didn’t believe me. Only a fifty-dollar wager would quiet their needling. I called Dad back.

  “Count me in,” I said.

  On the appointed evening, I pulled up to the White House gate in my parents’ purple Gremlin, which was outfitted with Levi’s jean seat covers. A White House usher met me at the Diplomatic Reception Entrance and took me upstairs. I asked if the President was there. The usher said that he and Mrs. Nixon were traveling.

  I awkwardly sat on the couches overlooking the Rose Garden and awaited my date’s arrival. Eventually Tricia emerged, and I introduced myself. We went downstairs and climbed into a white Lincoln Town Car. As we hit the seats, one of the Secret Service agents in the front swiveled his head and said, “Good evening, Miss Nixon.”

  Off we went to the Alibi Club, where we were seated at a round oak table. Being a swashbuckling pilot, I had taken to drink. During dinner, I reached for some butter, knocked over a glass, and watched in horror as the stain of red wine crept across the table. Then I fired up a cigarette, prompting a polite suggestion from Tricia that I not smoke. The date came to an end when she asked me to take her back to the White House immediately after dinner. When I returned to the party, my father was standing around chatting with a few friends.

  “How’d it go, son?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, one of his friends leaned in and whispered, “Get any?”

  I smiled. “Not even close.”

  More than forty years later, when I drove through the White House gates as President, I thought back to that first visit and had a good chuckle.

  —

  MY FIRST TIME meeting Richard Nixon came when my father brought me with him to an ecumenical church service that the President held in the East Room. I admired the beauty of the room—the tall ceilings, elegant chandeliers, and full-length Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington that Dolley Madison rescued before the British burned the White House in 1814. The idea of a church service in the White House struck me as unusual. So did the President. When I shook hands with him, he seemed somewhat stiff and formal. I had voted for Richard Nixon, but I didn’t feel very warm about him.

  Part of the problem was that Nixon’s style of leadership did not seem to fit the times. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Americans were grappling with race riots in major cities, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, an unpopular war in Vietnam, and a changing culture in which drug use was becoming prevalent and women were demanding their rightful place in society. A country looks to its leaders to set a mood, and the rattled nation needed a President to project optimism, unity, and calm. Instead, Richard Nixon came across as dark and divisive. His White House, led by senior aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, seemed cold and conspiratorial. And that was before the news broke about secret tapes and enemies lists.

  On the other hand, I have always appreciated President Nixon because of the opportunities he created for my father. In December 1970, Dad was serving out the final month of his term in the House of Representatives. He had given up his seat to run for the Senate and wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. With two Senate losses in the past six years, his political future did not look bright. But President Nixon—who had been told that his own political career was finished after losing the 1962 California Governor’s race and declaring, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”—found a place for George Bush.

  About a month after the 1970 election, Dad met with the President at the White House. Mother called to tell me that Dad had been nominated to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. I was surprised. I thought back to his campaign speeches blasting the UN as an ineffective institution that should have little influence on American foreign policy. At the time, the Texas crowds had responded with loud cheers. I wondered what they’d say when they heard about UN Ambassador Bush.

  Looking back on it, I see why the UN position appealed to my father. His travels abroad and experience negotiating offshore drilling contracts with foreign companies and governments had sparked an interest in international issues. The new position got him out of Washington and gave him a life after defeat. Plus the job came with a seat in the Cabinet, which would allow Dad to see the workings of the White House up close.

  My father’s first mission was to get confirmed. Previous UN Ambassadors included heavyweights like Adlai Stevenson, a former Governor of Illinois and two-time Democratic presidential nominee, and Arthur Goldberg, who left his lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court to take the job. The New York Times editorialized, “Nothing in [George Bush’s] record qualifies him for this important position.” Thankfully, most Senators disagreed—and were willing to overlook Dad’s skepticism about the UN during the 1964 campaign. The Senate confirmed him handily, and he took his oath as Ambassador in February 1971. Once again, he and Moth
er were on the move. This time they did not have to find a place to live. One of the perks of the UN job was that it came with housing: a penthouse apartment on the forty-second floor of the Waldorf Astoria.

  —

  OVER THE YEARS, George Bush became an expert at starting new jobs. As soon as he was appointed to the position at the UN, he reached out to a wide variety of people for advice, including former President Lyndon Johnson. When he made his first visit to the U.S. mission at the UN headquarters in New York, he ate lunch with some of the top administrative staff. He took a tour of UN agencies in Europe and received detailed briefings on each agency’s operations. While he admired the service of many American diplomats, he recognized quickly that the UN was inefficient and that its management structure provided no accountability. When I became President thirty years later, little had changed. I grew increasingly frustrated with the UN’s inability to achieve results as well as with its propensity to send mixed signals, such as giving Cuba and Libya seats on the Human Rights Council or failing to stop the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. Nevertheless, I learned that many of my fellow world leaders, especially in Europe, needed the UN imprimatur to convince their parliaments to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  As UN Ambassador, Dad devoted his energy to building trust with his fellow Ambassadors. He chatted his way through the required dinners and cocktail parties. He also created other opportunities to get to know his colleagues. He and Mother took Ambassadors and their families to Broadway shows, a John Denver concert at Carnegie Hall, and baseball games at Shea Stadium. He invited the Italian and French Ambassadors and their families to Walker’s Point, asked his mother to host a luncheon for the Chinese delegation in Greenwich, escorted a group of Ambassadors to NASA headquarters in Houston, and organized a private screening of The Godfather. He recognized that the key to effective diplomacy was developing personal relationships—an approach that can be called “personal diplomacy.” The brand of diplomacy that my father developed at the UN became a hallmark of his foreign policy for years to come, especially during the presidency.

  One of my parents’ favorite places to entertain was the spectacular apartment at the Waldorf. The nine-room suite had once belonged to Douglas MacArthur, and it measured up to his luxurious taste. The first time I visited my parents at the Waldorf, I found Dad in the living room, which was forty-eight feet long with elegant flooring and woodwork.

  “Is this big enough for you, Dad?” I asked.

  “It’s adequate,” he deadpanned.

  Mother and Dad had a very happy life at the Waldorf, and so did my little sister Doro. As I told John Negroponte when I appointed him UN Ambassador years later, “I don’t think you’ll have any problem adjusting to the accommodations.”

  The most controversial policy issue facing the UN during Dad’s tenure was the question of which delegation should represent China. The country held a coveted seat on the Security Council that two rival factions—the Nationalists, based in Taiwan, and Mao Zedong’s Communists, based on the mainland—were vying to fill. The United States had always supported the Nationalists as China’s representative at the UN. But as Mao Zedong and the Communists grew in power, they claimed that they were the only legitimate Chinese government and pushed to exclude Taiwan from the UN.

  In the fall of 1971, the UN General Assembly held a vote on who would represent China. The Nixon administration supported “dual representation,” meaning that both mainland China and Taiwan would have seats. My father, tapping into the personal relationships he had developed, reached out to almost a hundred UN delegates, explaining his concerns about emboldening the Communists and urging them not to turn their backs on the Taiwanese. Dad’s position was undercut, however, when President Nixon dispatched National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to Beijing to set up a historic visit to the People’s Republic of China. Kissinger’s trip weakened Dad’s hand by reinforcing Mao’s claim that he was leading the true Chinese government.

  Dad did his best, but the dual-representation strategy failed and Taiwan lost its UN seat by a few votes, fifty-nine to fifty-five. Several delegates who had promised to support Taiwan either switched their position or abstained from the vote. In a show of sympathy, Ambassador Bush rose from his seat on the floor of the General Assembly and accompanied Taiwan’s disgraced Ambassador, Liu Chieh, out of the UN. They were heckled and jeered on the walk down the aisle. Mother, who had come with Dad to watch the historic vote, remembers delegates spitting at her. The UN, created as an idealistic forum to pursue peace, had become a venue of ugly anti-Americanism.

  In September 1972, a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich. Israel responded by launching attacks against Syria and Lebanon. A majority of the UN Security Council supported a resolution that condemned the Israeli military response but was silent about the terrorist attack against the athletes. Because the United States holds one of the five permanent seats on the Security Council, it has the power to veto any Security Council resolution. The administration chose to exercise America’s veto power for only the second time to block the anti-Israel resolution. Over the next few decades, U.S. Ambassadors to the UN repeatedly used the veto power to defend our ally Israel from unfair condemnation.

  In all his government positions, George Bush took his duties seriously. But he never took himself too seriously. During his time as Ambassador, New York magazine published an article by sportswriter Dick Schaap identifying the “10 most overrated men in New York City.” Dad made the list, as did other local luminaries including New York Senator Jacob Javits, Cardinal Terence Cooke, and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger. Some on the list had an ego delicate enough to take offense. Not Dad. He decided to hold a party for everyone on the list. As he wrote on the invitation, “I’d like the chance to look you over to see why you are so ‘overrated.’ ” Almost all of them (plus Dick Schaap) showed up for a lighthearted evening at the Waldorf.

  —

  THE ASSIGNMENT in New York gave Dad a chance to see his parents more often. In September 1972, his father, Prescott, went to see his doctor for a persistent cough. After a few tests, he was admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering, the hospital where Robin had died in 1953. Unfortunately, his prognosis was bleak. He had advanced lung cancer. He passed away a month later at age seventy-seven.

  My grandmother wanted the funeral to be an uplifting celebration of Prescott Bush’s life. She wrote all the eulogies and had the church choir sing “Gampy’s” favorite hymns. She asked my brothers, male cousins, and me to serve as pallbearers. After the service, Dad, his brothers, and his sister stood on the steps of the church, shaking hands and thanking every guest for coming to pay their respects. It was hard for Dad to say good-bye to the man who had served as his mentor and example. He would carry the lessons of Prescott Bush with him for the rest of his life.

  Before long, Dad found a silver lining in his father’s death. Prescott Bush, who always insisted on integrity in government, did not have to witness what happened in the nation’s capital over the next two years.

  —

  AS AMBASSADOR to the UN, my father played no role in the 1972 presidential campaign, in which President Nixon won reelection over the Democratic candidate, Senator George McGovern. The campaign effectively ended before it began when it was revealed that McGovern’s first selection as a running mate, Senator Tom Eagleton, had undergone electric shock therapy for mental health problems. Nixon went on to a landslide victory, but his reelection came with short coattails. While the President carried every state except Massachusetts (he also lost the District of Columbia), Republicans lost two seats in the Senate and gained only twelve in the House.

  A couple of weeks after the election, the President asked my father to meet him at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland named for President Eisenhower’s grandson, who was also President Nixon’s son-in-law (he married P
resident Nixon’s younger daughter, Julie). The President told Dad that he wanted him to leave the UN and replace Senator Bob Dole of Kansas as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. From Nixon’s perspective, the choice made a lot of sense. Dad had experience running a party organization in Texas, and he was a fresh face with the energy and credibility to promote the Nixon agenda and strengthen the party. From Dad’s perspective, the job was at best a step sideways. He worried that some might think he had failed as a diplomat. He had also been around the Nixon White House enough to know that he didn’t like some of their tactics. He had no interest in smearing decent people on the other side of the political aisle.

  Nevertheless, if leading the Republican Party was how he could best serve the country, he felt obliged to say yes.

  A few days later, Bob Dole came to see him in New York. He told Dad that he was there to feel out his interest in succeeding him at the RNC. Dad felt bad for Dole; no one had told him that he had already been replaced. My father gently broke the news to the embarrassed Senator. The situation revealed that the White House was either overly secretive or dysfunctional.

  In early 1973, Mother and Dad cleared out of Apartment 42A at the Waldorf Towers and headed back to the nation’s capital. Dad figured that the job would be relatively routine. He assumed that he would spend most of his time fund-raising, recruiting candidates, and meeting with party officials, many of whom he already knew. He did not expect that nineteen months later, he would be sitting in the East Room of the White House, listening to Richard Nixon become the first and only President in American history to resign.

  —

  IN THE SUMMER of 1972, five men were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC. The burglars were affiliated with the Committee to Re-Elect the President—known as CREEP. The White House denied any connection to the burglary, and the allegations had little impact on the 1972 election. By early 1973, shortly after Dad took over as RNC Chairman, there were indications that some people close to President Nixon had played a role in a cover-up.