41: A Portrait of My Father

by George W. Bush

  President Nixon assured the country that he knew nothing about Watergate. For more than a year, Dad defended the President. George Bush, who always believed the best of people, trusted the President when he gave his word. As details about Watergate continued to drip out, Dad grew increasingly concerned. The Senate opened an investigation. Senior White House aides resigned. A special prosecutor was appointed. Then it came out that the President had secretly taped his conversations in the Oval Office. He refused to turn over the tapes, as the special prosecutor had demanded. When the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General refused to execute Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor, the President dismissed the special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General—a move that became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually, the White House released a limited number of transcripts of the Oval Office conversations. But there were key gaps, including an infamous eighteen and a half minutes that had been “accidentally erased.”

  I watched the scandal unfold from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was attending Harvard Business School. The campus environment was hostile to Republicans, especially Richard Nixon. I kept my head down, studied hard, and generally did not discuss politics. One exception came when I visited Dad’s only sister, my energetic and spirited aunt Nancy, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. We would play nine holes at her favorite golf course and commiserate about the putrid swamp that George Bush had waded into.

  The more I learned about Watergate, the more disgusted I became. I was shocked that the President had surrounded himself with people who had acted like the law didn’t apply to them. And I was angry about the dilemma they had created for my father. On one hand, he was trying to defend a President to whom he felt loyal. On the other hand, he had to protect the party against Democratic efforts to anchor every Republican to the sinking ship that was the Nixon White House.

  In late July 1974, as the Watergate scandal was reaching its crescendo, Dad wrote a long letter to my brothers and me. To that point, he had not shared his thoughts about how agonizing the experience had been. Always an optimist, he opened the letter by reflecting on all the things he had to be thankful for, including our close family and the opportunity to serve the country he loved. He praised President Nixon’s positive features. Then he reflected on Nixon’s flaws: his insecurity, his poor judgment, his disrespect for Congress, and, above all, the harsh and amoral way in which he spoke about his supposed friends on the White House tapes.

  One of those supposed friends was George Bush. Nixon had called Dad a “worrywart” and complained that he hadn’t used the RNC aggressively enough to defend him. The President’s suggestion that Dad was weak hurt him. For many excruciating months, he had spoken up for Richard Nixon. “It stings but it doesn’t bleed,” he wrote in his letter to us. He closed with the lessons he hoped we would learn from the Watergate debacle:

  Listen to your conscience. Don’t be afraid not to join the mob—if you feel inside it’s wrong. Don’t confuse being “soft” with seeing the other guy’s point of view…. Avoid self-righteously turning on a friend, but have your friendship mean enough that you would be willing to share with your friend your judgment. Don’t assign away your judgment to achieve power.

  He couldn’t have realized it at the time, but his words set a standard that both Jeb and I would strive to follow when we held public office.

  The final straw came on August 5, 1974. The Supreme Court had ruled that the White House must turn over all the tapes to Leon Jaworski, the new Watergate special prosecutor and a friend of Dad’s from Houston. The tapes revealed that Nixon had spoken to one of his aides about thwarting the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate break-in. That was proof that he knew about the cover-up and that he had lied to the country. The revelation shattered Dad’s trust in Nixon.

  The day after the smoking-gun tape became public, Nixon held a meeting with his Cabinet and key political advisers. Dad attended the meeting and witnessed a surreal scene in which the President spent the meeting talking about the economy and other policy issues rather than confronting the only question that really mattered. Later that day, Dad gave Nixon’s Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, a candid assessment. After speaking to some of his old friends in Congress, he had learned that the President would not have the votes to survive an impeachment proceeding.

  Despite his deep disappointment, my father refused to condemn Nixon publicly. While he might have benefited in the short run, Dad saw little point in “piling on,” as he put it. He voiced his opinion privately in a letter to the President on August 7. As far as I know, he is the only party Chairman in American history who has ever written such a letter. “I now firmly feel that resignation is best for this country, best for this President,” he wrote. “I believe this view is held by most Republican leaders across the country.” Writing with his characteristic sympathy, Dad continued, “This letter is made much more difficult because of the gratitude I will always have for you. If you do leave office, history will properly record your achievements with a lasting respect.” The next day, President Nixon announced that he would resign.

  Mother and Dad were relieved by the President’s decision. They went to the White House for his farewell address. As Dad described it, the White House was filled with “an aura of sadness, like someone had died.” In the East Room, where I had first met Nixon at the ecumenical church service a few years earlier, he concluded his speech by saying, “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

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  IT WOULD HAVE been hard to imagine at the time, but serving as party Chairman during Watergate proved to be a valuable experience. Dad met hundreds of party leaders and grassroots Republican activists—a network that would prove vital in his later campaigns. Although he saw how people in honorable positions could do dishonorable things, he didn’t let the experience jade his view of public service.

  The Watergate experience confirmed a key lesson: A leader must surround himself with people of good character and set high standards. Watergate also reinforced the importance of personal relationships. Nixon seemed to have few real friends. He seemed introverted, mysterious, and suspicious. A cost of his isolation was that he had no one to keep him grounded or talk him out of his worst instincts. By contrast, my father was extroverted, optimistic, and determined to see the best in people. As a result, he managed to maintain his friendships in Washington throughout Watergate—and he struck up some new ones. One unlikely friend was Bob Strauss, Dad’s counterpart at the Democratic National Committee. They bonded over their experiences and shared many laughs. They came to respect each other so much that Dad later named Strauss Ambassador to the Soviet Union. The contrast was striking. Richard Nixon kept a list of his political enemies; George Bush turned his political opponents into friends.

  Unfortunately, the hangover from Watergate would affect every President who followed Richard Nixon. A generation of reporters saw the Washington Post win a Pulitzer for exposing the scandal, and many dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. A strong and skeptical press corps is good for democracy. Often the media’s first instinct is to portray every story as a scandal, however, which presents a distorted picture of government and leaves the public cynical.

  As for George Bush, his character and good judgment allowed him to survive Watergate with his reputation and integrity intact—a feat that seems more impressive with time.

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  AFTER WATCHING Richard Nixon board the helicopter on the South Lawn for his departure from the White House on August 9, 1974, Mother and Dad returned to the East Room to see the new President, Gerald Ford, take the oath of office. Ford remains the only President who was never elected; Richard Nixon appointed him after his first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned to avoid jail time for tax fraud.

  Ford offered an immediate contrast with Nixon. He was a big, sturdy Midwesterner with an op
timistic demeanor, exactly the kind of healer the nation needed. When President Ford uttered his famous line “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” it seemed to me that he was referring to more than Watergate. My hope was that a long era of tension and pain—the race riots, Vietnam, Nixon’s enemies list—was coming to a close.

  Ford immediately had to make a major decision. Former President Nixon could have faced criminal charges for his involvement in Watergate. President Ford understood that a trial of the former President would have forced the American people to relive the traumas of Watergate for years to come. He removed that possibility by granting Nixon a full and unconditional pardon. His decision was deeply unpopular, and many think it cost him the 1976 election. George Bush respected the President’s decision. Not only was it necessary, but it also showed political courage.

  I spent the summer of 1974 in Fairbanks, Alaska, where I was working a job for Alaska International Air. I had gone there between my first and second years of Harvard Business School both to satisfy my sense of adventure and to assess the business opportunities. I was startled by the beauty of Alaska and enjoyed the hiking, the fishing, and the long summer days. I was also surprised, however, by how dependent the state and its businesses were on the federal government. That did not appeal to me, and by the end of the summer I concluded that business opportunities were better in Texas.

  One morning I picked up the local newspaper in Fairbanks and read that George Bush was on the short list of people who Gerald Ford was considering to fill the vacant vice presidency. It had never occurred to me that Dad would be a candidate for the job. I called Dad, who confirmed that the report was true.

  “Well, there are some people who think I could do a good job,” he said, “but I wouldn’t make much out of it.”

  He was on the list partly because an RNC poll of party leaders showed that Dad had more support than anyone else. Some of his friends on Capitol Hill were lobbying the new President on his behalf. If Dad wanted to be VP, I was rooting for him hard. Deep down I wondered whether Ford could pick someone with such a recent connection to Nixon.

  Sure enough, I heard on the radio a few days later that Ford had selected Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York, to be the new Vice President. I could only imagine what Prescott Bush would have thought of that choice.

  Two days later, President Ford called my father to the Oval Office to discuss his future. Dad told him that he had enjoyed his time at the UN and that he would like to expand his diplomatic experience. The President told him he could take his pick of ambassadorships—including Great Britain and France, two coveted posts once held by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

  A Ford aide had tipped Dad off about the subject of the meeting, so he was prepared. He told the President that he would like to go to China. Dad was aware that the American representative to China did not have the rank of Ambassador, because the United States did not have full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. But he wasn’t hung up on titles. He had spent time thinking about China, and he was convinced that America’s relationship with China would be pivotal in the future—an insight that few had at the time. In the fall of 1974, President Ford named him head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing (then known as Peking).

  Looking back on it, Dad’s decision to take the top diplomatic post in China was probably the most surprising career move he had made since he and Mother set out for West Texas in 1948. Just as he didn’t want to pursue the conventional path of an investment banker on Wall Street, he did not want to be stuck attending diplomatic dinners in London or Paris. Like West Texas, China represented the frontier—an exciting place to live, with a distinctive culture and great promise for the future. For someone worn out by the Washington scene, China was a perfect place to escape to.

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  LIAISON BUSH ARRIVED in China in October 1974. Before leaving Washington, he had done a lot of homework on his new post. He had met with China experts throughout the U.S. government. On the flight over, he stopped in Japan and consulted with the U.S. Ambassador in Tokyo. He and Mother took Chinese lessons. They certainly didn’t master the language. But they did know how to say hello and thank you—a good start for any diplomat.

  Upon arrival, Dad asked for detailed briefings from his deputy, the experienced foreign-service officer John Holdridge, and he befriended everyone in the office from the junior officers to his driver and Chinese interpreter. He peppered his new colleagues with questions about China, their children, their interests, and their backgrounds. He and Mother worked hard to make the Liaison Office and their personal residence less formal and more welcoming. They invited staff members over for dinners, bought a Ping-Pong table, and added other personal touches. George Bush was a team player, and he was building Team China.

  Another priority was to develop personal relationships with his fellow diplomats. He attended dozens of receptions at other embassies and frequently entertained his counterparts at the Liaison Office. Some people might have considered those events drudgery. Not George Bush. At every cocktail party and in every receiving line, he saw an opportunity to meet a new person and build a new relationship. In his view, no country was too small to merit his attention. Nothing galled him more than what he liked to call bigshot-itis. His first visitor at the Liaison Office was the head of the delegation from Kuwait, a small Middle Eastern kingdom that would play a major role in his presidency decades later.

  Just as he had at the United Nations, George Bush blended his personal life and his diplomacy. He loved to play tennis, so he organized regular matches with his fellow diplomats at the International Club. Dad loved the competition and the exercise. He also recognized that his colleagues were a lot more likely to return his call if they had also returned his serve.

  He devoted a lot of attention to Chinese officials. He already knew the foreign minister, Chiao Kuan Hua, who had been the first Ambassador from the People’s Republic to the UN. Even though Dad had opposed the People’s Republic on the Taiwan vote, they had become friends. The foreign minister fondly remembered the lunch that Dad’s mother had hosted for the Chinese delegation in Greenwich, and he was eager to reciprocate the hospitality.

  Despite his role as America’s senior diplomat in China, Dad’s policy influence was limited. The major decisions on China came from President Ford and Henry Kissinger. Dad might have been frustrated by the lack of collaboration, but he understood the President’s desire to manage the relationship from the White House. During his time as President, he often dealt directly with foreign leaders like John Major of Great Britain or Brian Mulroney of Canada. I did the same with some of my closest counterparts, such as Tony Blair of Great Britain.

  The biggest headline of Dad’s tenure in China came when President Ford made a state visit in 1975, the first since President Nixon’s historic trip three years earlier. Dad accompanied the President to his meeting with Mao Zedong, the revolutionary leader of the Chinese Communist Party. It was fascinating for him to meet Mao, who had grown reclusive as his health failed. In hindsight, it was even more important that Dad got to know the small, smiling Vice Premier who sat at Mao’s side. His name was Deng Xiaoping. Thirteen years later, he and my father would meet again—this time as leaders of their nations.

  The new post in China left my parents with more free time than they’d had in years. They explored Beijing on their bikes and walked around the city with C. Fred, their cocker spaniel named for their Houston friend. C. Fred always drew interested looks from the locals, because the Communists had banned dogs. Mother and Dad continued to take Chinese lessons, and on Sundays they worshipped in a local church—one of the few sanctioned by the Chinese government—where services were conducted in Chinese.

  Mother and Dad encouraged family and friends to visit them in China. One of the first to accept the invitation was my grandmother, who came for Christmas 1974. In typical Dorothy Walker Bush style, she arrived on an exhausting flight from New Y
ork and shortly thereafter joined Dad for a bicycle ride to the Forbidden City. It’s safe to say she was the only seventy-three-year-old Western woman pedaling through the December chill that day.

  Texas friends made the trek to China as well. Jake Hamon, one of Dad’s buddies from the oil business, visited with his wife, Nancy, in March 1975. Nancy came clad in a sable coat and hat. The outfit had at least one admirer in the house. As my parents chatted with the Hamons, Mother looked over with horror to see C. Fred chewing on a furry object. Years later, when Laura and I invited Nancy to a Valentine’s Day party at the White House, she was still chuckling about her mangled hat.

  I visited Mother and Dad in China shortly after I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975. The Liaison Office was comfortable, but I was taken aback by the primitive conditions elsewhere. Most people traveled by bicycle or horse cart. The summer was hot and dry, and the city was covered with dust blown in from the desert. It reminded me of Midland, Texas. Unlike in Midland, however, there were no signs of capitalism. Everyone wore the same dull gray clothes, rationed out by the Chinese government. Dad had a vision that China would emerge as a world power in the future, and he turned out to be right. In 1975, however, the country had a long way to go.

  As part of the trip, I experienced Dad’s personal diplomacy up close. On the Fourth of July, he held a big celebration at the Liaison Office, complete with hamburgers, hot dogs, and American beer. No American official had ever hosted anything like that before, so the event drew a big turnout from the diplomatic corps. I vividly remember a Scandinavian Ambassador exiting the party, somewhat wobbly, with a giant mustard smear on his bright white shirt.