What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  That was the loyalty he owed to his country—and his President. Richard Nixon had vouchsafed this job to Bush, after Bush lost his race for the Senate. No one would ever see Bush wavering from Richard Nixon. That’s why the hard-eyed men in the White House thought of Bush for that RNC job. (“He takes our line beautifully,” said a memo from Bob Haldeman.) And that’s why Barbara Bush could hardly have been surprised when loyal George came back from Camp David and gave her the news she least wanted to hear. ... Actually, he didn’t have to tell her, straight out.

  “Boy!” said George Bush. “You just can’t say no to the President!”

  Thank you for your note about the Watergate affair. I want to say I left the wonderful job at the United Nations to return to politics because I feel strongly that those of us who care must try to elevate politics.

  The connotations of Watergate are grubby and I don’t like it. ... There is a public distrust in government and to the degree that I can make some small contribution to correcting that, this new job in politics will be worthwhile.

  I appreciate your taking the time to write ...

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  He answered each letter personally, assuring Republicans that their Party had nothing to do with Watergate, promising the faithful that he’d spare no effort to trumpet the President’s achievements, adjuring the Nixon-haters not to judge too soon or too harshly—to let the Constitutional process take its course. ... What else could he do? He told his friends—the ones who counseled him to get off that sinking ship—that he wasn’t just defending the President, he was defending the Party, and the Presidency.

  ... I fully share your concern about this sordid and grubby Watergate mess. ...

  Watergate was the product of the actions of a few misguided, very irresponsible individuals who violated a high trust and who served neither the President nor their country well. ...

  Keep in mind that the RNC and CRP are two separate entities. The whole Party shouldn’t be blamed for the actions of a few zealots. ...

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  But he was defending the President—no way around it. Richard Nixon had assured Bush, personally, that he had nothing to do with the break-in, the cover-up—any of that nonsense. ... Bush had the President’s word—man to man.

  And how could he demonstrate his continued belief in the man who had become his friend, his patron ... save by throwing himself into defense—personally? Bush knew no other way.

  The President has said repeatedly he wasn’t involved in the sordid Watergate affairs. I believe him. I am confident he will be fully exonerated once this matter is cleared up in the courts.

  I am also confident that people are basically fair. ... The voters will not hold the Republicans responsible for what the Party was not involved in. ...

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  If Bush was confident, he was more and more alone. Yale friends wrote, asking why he could not do something to rid the country of Nixon. Republican officials relayed forecasts of disaster in elections to come. Money for the Party disappeared. Bush had to fire half the staff at the committee. He handled each termination personally.

  When GOP Congressmen edged toward impeachment, or Senators mused on Nixon’s possible resignation ... Bush’s phone would ring. The White House was on the line—Chuck Colson, or one of his legion (Teeter, the Party pollster, called them “the after-dark crowd”). ...

  “YOU GO OUT THERE AND TELL THOSE ASSHOLES ...”

  You could hear Colson’s snarl in Bush’s earpiece, all the way across the office.

  “... THEY FUCK WITH US, WE’LL CRUSH ’EM ... LIKE BUGS! ALL OF ’EM ...”

  And you’d see Bush’s back go stiff, in his big chair, as he said with conscious quiet to the phone: “I’m not sure that would do any good ... I’m not sure that’s what the committee ought to be doing.”

  Then there’d be more of Colson, screaming ... after which, Bush would set down the earpiece in its cradle, precisely, almost daintily, with thumb and index finger pincering its midpoint, only the tips of two fingers touching it. ... “Well,” he’d say, “that was pleasant.”

  ... I have read every word of the transcripts, but I have not seen all the evidence, and thus, I am not going to join in suggesting that Richard Nixon authorized payment of hush money. Indeed, I am surprised that one who is concerned about government as you would not understand the point that all evidence should be seen and heard before definitive judgments are made by Members of Congress.

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  ... I recognize that it is very hard to get the message of support out around the country, particularly when the press is having such a heyday with Watergate and the negative aspects.

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  ... Last year for example, I traveled 97,000 miles, to 33 states, gave 101 speeches, 78 press conferences, was on national TV 11 times to speak for Nixon. ...

  We really need you.

  Yours very truly,

  George Bush

  No, it could not be just letters, or phone calls. Bush flew around the nation with abandon, interposing his person between the Party and its date with a brick wall. The speeches and press statements were the same as the letters—same words—but Bush thought if people could see him, hear him, in person ... see his hope for the nation, for its government, for his Party, its candidates, for decency ... well, that would make a difference—wouldn’t it?

  That was what he had to give, that was the measure of loyalty—and the requirement of the code: personal commitment.

  That’s what made it worse, in the end ... when he found out.

  Nixon had lied to him, personally.

  Bush never could shrug that off—couldn’t chalk it up to politics ... that wasn’t politics to him. That was a personal breach.

  Even a year later, Bush remarked to a friend, with uncharacteristic bluntness: “I wouldn’t care if I never see Richard Nixon again.”

  Of course, by that time. Bush had less reason to be politic. In fact, he wasn’t sure whether politics was his game, at all.

  59

  The Cavalcade of Stars

  LOYALTY WOULD BE HIS watchword. He was still Vice President—part of the Reagan team. He’d said that so many times, even his white men understood: Bush—well, he probably means it. ... Teeter, in fact, had good and important reasons why Bush had to run as Reagan’s shadow: in the fall of 1987, it was the only way that made sense to the voters—it was his Veephood made Bush big-league.

  But that didn’t stop the white men from trying to hedge their bets—just a little. (Why not have your cake, too?) Especially when things got serious ... like this Iowa event: the Iowa GOP would gather in September for the Presidential Cavalcade of Stars, a cattle show for Republican candidates ... and a straw poll.

  A straw poll meant news stories.

  And that meant Bush had to win.

  That’s the problem with running big-league. You have to look big-league every time.

  So the Iowa chairman of GBFP, George Wittgraf, a gentleman-lawyer from Cherokee, got a thunderstorm of calls from Fifteenth Street: tickets, buses, schedules, backdrops—everything had to be big-league! Several calls came from Rich Bond, who graced the Wing of Power as the Deputy Campaign Manager—deputy to Atwater ... but saw himself, in the flowchart of his own mind, pendent on one thin line to the big box—George Bush. In fact, if you shot Bond up with truth serum, he might tell you: it shoulda been him (and not Lee) in that big corner office on Fifteenth Street.

  It was Bond, after all, who’d run Iowa for Bush in 1980—Bond and Wittgraf—in that wonderful year when they’d won every straw poll, and then whipped the front-runner, Reagan, in the caucus ... that put Bush on the map! ... And after that campaign, it was Bond who moved into the gray granite pile, next to the White House, to serve as political adviser in the OVP.
... It was Bond (and Wittgraf) who saw to the care and feeding of the old “Bush Brigade” in Iowa—meetings, mailings, reunions ... for eight years ... waiting for the next chance to trumpet George Bush for President.

  This was the chance. This would be the first time Bush would work the same stage as his rivals. This was Bush’s coming out. This was Bush returning to the scene of his (and Bond’s) great triumph in 1980 ... so Bond meant to cross all the T’s on this Iowa Cavalcade.

  He had his top deputy, Mary Matalin, watching the arrangements. Winning the straw poll meant having hundreds of people show up to vote ... and that meant tickets—at twenty-five dollars a pop. So, the Bush campaign got people to buy tickets. Then they reserved buses to carry ticket holders to the hall in Ames. They sent a mailing to all known Bush supporters, statewide, explaining the importance of the vote. They followed up with phone banks—“Can you come on Saturday?” ... Then, too, they had Bobby Holt, Junior’s oilman friend from Midland, raise another forty or fifty thousand dollars for the Iowa GOP, so it could hand over more tickets for Republicans who’d be safe votes for Bush. ... And that was before the blizzard of arrangements from the Schedulers (the VP had to speak first!), the Secret Service, the Chief of Advance, the Wocka, the White House Military Office ...

  And that was before the speech: that’s where the white men wanted to have their cake and eat it. ... See, the Gipper wasn’t popular in Iowa—barely won there in ’84. So this was Bush’s chance to show he was his own man. He could illumine his issues—fill in the shadows of a Bush Presidency, open up a crucial crack of light between him and his Big Friend.

  Well ... couldn’t he?

  No.

  Loyalty! Was that too complicated? ... George Bush was not going to distance himself. Bush was not going to have any issues come between him and his friend. ... Sure, he’d mention education—Reagan was for education, you know, as a concept ... and ethics: Bush and the Gipper were for ethics in government!

  But he wasn’t going to mention ethics ... and Ed Meese.

  Ethics ... and Mike Deaver. No.

  What kind of team play would that be?

  What kind of politics? ... To Bush, it was simple: he was identified with Reagan. So, strengthening Reagan strengthened Bush. Anything to undercut Reagan would eat the ground out from under ... George Bush! That’s why he’d never show his cape in any of those White House bullfights—even when they begged him. The Don Regan thing! ... The white men all told Bush, he had to say something—get out front!—to show he was easing Regan out, taking care of the problem: he was saving the President!

  No!

  In fact, Bush did help Regan out the door (had to fight off Nancy Reagan—let the Chief of Staff get away with his kneecaps!) ... but Bush did his part invisibly. He’d never show that the Gipper couldn’t clean his own house.

  So, Bush got the speech he wanted: a loyalty speech. It wasn’t much of a, uh, shocker, but ... they did their best. The new speechwriter, Reid Detchon, gave it all he had: Bush meant to be a Boy Scout—how about a tough Boy Scout?

  “For the last seven years, I’ve stood side by side with a GREAT President ...

  “And I’m damned proud of it!” ...

  That was the opener.

  So the Bush Stratoliner swooped down upon Des Moines, and the choppers were waiting for an airlift to Marshalltown ... where the limos and vans were idling in line for the scores of staff—everybody came—and the doctor, and the military aid ... and the ambulance fell in with its strobes awhir, and the CAT squad rumbled in its armored Suburban ... the whole big-league big top swept down Highway 30 into Ames, to a Holiday Inn, where the Service whisked the VP off to a holding room—security and comfort! The VP might want to rest ... and thence to the campus of Iowa State, to the field house where the faithful had gathered ... and everything went fine.

  Except ... Bond and Atwater split away and climbed to the lop of the hall, last row of the balcony, where they could look down on the swarm below ... it was like a convention floor: a press pen with two hundred reporters and crew—everybody came to a straw vote—and behind, the thousands ... too many thousands! The place was teeming with Republicans! ... Wait a minute! Were these Republicans? ... They didn’t look like Bushies—you know, with sport coats and flowered dresses. These wore T-shirts, and funny hats! And they were clapping, and whooping in rapture, like Christ was coming, and the T-shirts said ... Robertson.

  Atwater’s head sank into his hands. “Oh, ohhh, oughhh,” he was moaning. “Where’s our people?”

  “Well, they didn’t all sit together,” Bond said. “They ...”

  Atwater fixed Bond with a gaze of earnest menace.

  “Ah’m gonna kill you.”

  Bond’s eyes were fixed on the crowd. He said: “We’re dead.” (He meant, already.)

  But ... not so fast! The VP still had to speak!

  So they brought Bush out from the holding room, and introduced him, and he stilled the applause, looked down at his speech ...

  “For the last seven years ...”

  Bush’s eyes swept the hall—who were these people? Those hats! ROBERTSON ... ROBERTSON ... And the buttons: I WAS THERE WHEN ROBERTSON WON!

  “I’ve stood side by side with a GREAT President. And I’m ...”

  God! They were, uh, Christians!

  “... very very proud!”

  Of course, the Christians didn’t know the difference ... but a score of reporters circled the missing “damned” on their speech texts.

  Couldn’t pull the trigger on his own best line!

  The wise guys were right!

  Jesus! What a wimp!

  What made Dole a star at the Cavalcade—made this bit of guerrilla politics work—was that he had no speech. Well, that wasn’t strictly true—there was a speech (All typed up! Pretty gooood!) ... it’s just that Dole never used it.

  (By that fall, they’d stopped writing texts for him. They had to—he’d go through a writer a week. They’d hand him a speech and he’d drop one eyebrow, fix the writer with a glittering stare, and demand: “Aughh! Is this the best you can do?” The mortified writer would take it back, start over. ... One time, he pushed a writer through four of those rewrites, till the day of the speech, whereupon Dole gave the squint-of-death to draft number five. “Gaggh! Is this the best you can do?” The frazzled writer practically screamed back: “YES!” ... “O-kayy!” said Dole, rolling it neatly into his fist. “I’ll read it now.” ... At any rate, by that September, they’d just tape him speaking off-the-cuff, then shred up his own words into new coleslaw. What the hell! He’d say what he wanted, anyway.)

  One other key was the Kappa Sigma house, right there at Ames. Kappa Sig was Dole’s fraternity. It was also the fraternity house of a couple of Dole’s Iowa ops, and their friends on campus. ... (In the end, the key may have been that Dole had young staff with friends at college.)

  Anyway, the big Cavalcade in the field house was televised ... but the candidates couldn’t see—no TVs in the holding rooms. That’s why Bush walked in cold.

  But Dole had a guy watching TV at the Kappa Sig house ... and that guy had an open phone line ... to a phone in Glassner’s ear, in the holding room, in the field house, where the Bobster was caged ... and the upshot was:

  Dole knew.

  He knew how that crowd raised the roof when Robertson was introduced ... and screamed and cheered two or three dozen times in the middle of the Reverend’s speech. ... Dole knew when Bush’s speech fell dead, and the Veep just stalked offstage. ... Dole knew how Kemp got nowhere with that crowd, bashing the Democrats, doing politics.

  Dole knew enough not to talk politics—not traditional politics: he tossed away his own coleslaw ... and he talked values—straight to that crowd.

  He was glad to see them, he said.

  He meant to welcome them to the Party, and the process.

  Because their participation was a great sign for the GOP ... and for the country, which was in need of moral leadership, the rud
der of Christian values. ... The stakes were high—as he well knew (leading the fight for Robert Bork, on the Court!) ... but with their help ... and their prayers ...

  Praise the Lord! He was like a visiting pastor!

  The key to it all—the fact underneath—was that Dole knew more than the phone from the frat house told him. Dole knew why these people didn’t look like Republicans, why they’d never shown up in any crowd before. Dole never needed a writer to tell him how to talk to the dispossessed.

  These people were left-outs. (That’s why they were watching Robertson’s TV show!) ... The message Bob Dole left with them, that Saturday, was simple: they mattered to him.

  That was the day when Dole got the endorsement of Iowa’s Senator Grassley (“Chuckeeee!”) ... and it was Grassley who introduced him, with the phrase that summed it up in one line.

  “He’s one of us!” Grassley said.

  That line stuck with Dole. It was perfect for Iowa—for everyplace (and everyone) left out of Reagan’s shower of gold. It linked Dole—in four words!—with the millions (these God-struck folk at Ames, for example) who felt that Washington was a place cut off from their town, from their lives, from the values they held dear.

  Dole knew what it meant—the minute he heard Grassley twang it out! ... He could see what it meant in that field house at Ames. ... Bob Dole was One of Us. George Bush had to be one of them.

  When the speaking was done, Dole did not leave, but stood at the door for an hour and a half, shaking hands.

  By that time, Robertson had triumphed in the straw poll. Dole ran second, ninety-some votes ahead of George Bush.