George H. W. Bush

by Curt Smith

  In February 1990 the Sandinistas were voted out of power in free elections in Nicaragua. In Czechoslovakia workers risked imprisonment by passing faded copies of playwright-turned-politician Václav Havel’s manuscripts from one reader to another. In China students handed out handbills printed on mimeograph machines detailing the murder in Tiananmen Square. In October 1781 the British band at Yorktown had played “The World Turned Upside Down.” In less than two years, Bush had helped invert his world. In the Market Opinion Research poll, Poppy’s first four months registered 70 percent approval vs. Nixon’s 61, Reagan’s 67, and Ike’s 74. By mid-1990 his mid-60s monthly approval average swung between 52 and 76 percent. Gallup, ABC News / Washington Post, USA Today, and NBC News / Wall Street Journal showed like results. “Kinder, gentler” seemed to be wearing well.

  On March 22, 1990, Bush showed a comic streak to shame Henny Youngman. At a news conference on the South Grounds of the White House, he confirmed a reported ban on broccoli aboard Air Force One, saying, with fists clenched and voice rising, “I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid, and my mother made me eat it. And I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” This opened a national dialogue on Bush’s teenage eating habits—beef jerky, nachos, tacos, hamburgers, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, chili, pork rinds, refried beans, barbecued ribs, and cake—all gobbled like an excavator gulps dirt. Mrs. Bush remained a broccoli holdout, the president said—indeed, a “total totalitarian,” threatening to serve him a meal of broccoli soup and salad, a broccoli main course, and as the First Lady said, “finish with a little broccoli ice cream.”

  That summer Bush taped a Fourth of July TV special from Ford’s Theatre, telling a story that President Lincoln loved. Two ladies were debating the merits of Honest Abe and Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. The first said, “I think Jefferson will succeed because he is a praying man.” Second: “But so is Abraham.” First: “Yes, but the Lord will think Abraham is joking.” By turn, Bush launched Fitness Month on the South Lawn, quoting a fine golfer who often dieted but seldom exercised, Jackie Gleason: “a little traveling music.” He addressed the Red Cross, glad to serve as honorary chair, a reason “being that if my speech is a disaster, relief is close at hand.” He gloried that Barbara had already become the most popular First Lady, depending on your age, since Jacqueline Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt—“Everybody’s mother,” she said to explain her appeal. Increasingly, Bush feared he might have to repeal the pledge that helped make him president.

  “Read my lips! No new taxes!” had been Bush’s campaign cry—and risk. In 1985 Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, mandating a zero federal budget deficit by 1991. Since his inaugural Bush had inherited a huge deficit, Congress had become even more wastrel, and budget deficit estimates for fiscal year 1991 had soared from $111 billion to $171 billion. That year began October 1, 1990. Unless Bush cut the deficit to at least $64 billion, Gramm-Rudman would slash every entry in the federal budget by a draconian 40 percent—defense, farming, education, the elderly. Bush was trapped. Growth had stalled, largely owing to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s refusal to cut interest rates till the deficit shrank. Yet Poppy had vowed not to raise taxes. At the same time, Democrats refused to cut spending—moreover, could override Bush’s veto pen, and had. As 1950s television’s Chester A. Riley bayed, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

  In April 1990 Bush and Democratic leaders agreed to new revenue for the 1990 budget. “I mean to live by what I’ve said: no new taxes,” 41 said, publicly. His diary read differently: “If we handle it wrong, our troops will rebel on taxes.” Then ABC White House correspondent Brit Hume asked about taxes. “Well, I’d like it [the vow] to be more than a first-year pledge,” Bush said, tentatively. On June 25 he, Sununu, budget director Richard Darman, Treasury Secretary Brady, and Democratic dons met in closed session at Andrews Air Force Base—their aim, broader talks, with other members of each party. House Speaker Tom Foley, replacing Jim Wright, made Bush an offer: entitlement and budget reform, defense and domestic discretionary spending cuts—and new taxes—or risk Gramm-Rudman and continued deadlock. “The more he [Poppy] sat in on the meetings,” said Marlin Fitzwater, “the more he decided that regardless of the politics, regardless of the consequences, that he had to raise more money through taxation.”

  Bush could have gone over Congress to the public, explaining his change of heart. Instead, he trusted the Democrat elite—we’ll cover you politically. “He did it out of good motives trying to get something done, as he said, to govern,” said Brit Hume. Finally, Bush said, “Okay, if I can say you agreed.” Foley and Senate leader Mitchell said fine; Democrats were almost always for new taxes anyway. Bush hoped a pact including new taxes would sire short- and long-term stability. Too late did he grasp the tax reversal’s effect on his credibility. In 1517 Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking the Reformation. In 1928 Calvin Coolidge announced on the White House bulletin board that he would not seek reelection: “I do not choose to run.” Darman wrote a two-sentence statement that Sununu edited, gave to Fitzwater, and had him put on the press office bulletin board—no cause or context about why overnight the White House was crying uncle.

  For a time, breaking “No New Taxes” meant chaos. “The budget plan was successful in achieving a non-partisan [adverse] public reaction,” said GOP pollster Bob Teeter. “The President’s perceived handling of the budget crisis has caused much more disapproval than approval.” Later, it became a low-grade fever for much of 1991, dwarfed by Bush’s global élan. In 1992 the virus returned to help Ross Perot, making 41 seem just another pol. In 1990 I wrote as many as four fundamentally different drafts of the same budget speech in an afternoon. We were glad to have axed the pledge. We weren’t glad, but had been forced to do it. We would never do it again. (This pleased conservatives, not trusting Dems to cut spending.) We just wanted the damn thing done. For Bush’s writers, the broken pledge made the 1990 campaign more Kafkaesque than Reaganesque.

  At a Detroit fund-raiser, Bush minimized progress toward an agreement. In Iowa the president said he had negotiated for eight months. “The American people didn’t send me here [sic] to play politics. They sent me here to govern. So I put it all on the table—and I took the heat.” In California he called his tax reversal “a serious response to a serious deficit”—and it might have been seen as such had he stayed on message, telling how the act decreed two dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in new taxes. (Ultimately, it didn’t happen.) Bush wrote me, “On tonight’s speech to political audience, better to not polarize until talks are over for better or worse.” He composed this text: “You know how much I want to get a real deficit package. I have composed etc. etc. but now is not the time for partisan rhetoric. Now is the time to get the job done etc. etc.” The etc. etc. would have been to inform people how a lower deficit could fuel prosperity—here, till America’s longest post–World War II recession began in 2007.

  A budget agreement was announced September 30, 1990, raising the top federal individual income tax rate from 28 to 31 percent—a relatively minor, not major, hike. (Today’s top rate is 39.6 percent.) Some liberals opposed its spending cuts. As Bush feared, “the [conservative] troops rebelled,” having largely been ignored. On October 2 he gave a rare Oval Office speech on network television, saying, “This is the first time in my presidency that I’ve made an appeal like this to you.” Conditions had changed since 1988, Poppy said, a smaller deficit now a prerequisite for growth. Then House minority whip Newt Gingrich had changed as well. At Andrews he backed the deal. Now he pivoted, blasting it and taking most of the GOP House—for Bush, betrayal. “It was stunning to see how many fellow Republicans shot old George out of the saddle,” former Senate minority whip Alan Simpson told Bush writer–turned–U.S. News columnist Mary Kate Cary in 2014. “[It] bring
s tears to your eyes.” Gingrich Inc. wanted Democrats to further cut spending, deeming “No New Taxes” less political than theological. Only 32 of 168 Republicans backed the final package. It passed because 218 of 246 Democrats voted yes, liking what they saw.

  That month I tried bipartisanship too, giving liberal New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick and his two young daughters a tour of the White House. Both girls sent thank-you notes, including Laura, age eight: “Dear Mr. Smith: Thank you for the wonderful tour. My sister enjoyed it, too. My father says you are a nice man for a Republican.” For months the cliché that the nice man in the Oval Office was more interested in foreign than domestic affairs had become consensus. The administration denied it, except that the cliché was true. Bush himself agreed in his diary on October 6: “There’s a story in one of the papers saying that I am more comfortable with foreign affairs, and that is absolutely true. Because I don’t like the deficiencies of the domestic, political scene. I hate the posturing on both sides.” Having broken the “taxes” pledge, Bush found their speeches no-win to give.

  Other speeches were easier, even that summer’s Nixon Library dedication at Yorba Linda, California. On one hand, Nixon’s once protégé felt betrayed by the 1972 Watergate burglary of Democratic Party headquarters—then, far worse, a cover-up by Nixon officials to protect those party to the crime. On the other, Bush felt gratitude for Nixon’s past loyalty and shared his belief that “Americans elect a president for foreign policy,” enormously respecting the thirty-seventh president’s. Admiring Nixon yet appreciating Bush’s attitude, I requested and got the speech. In the Oval Office, we discussed it. “This is sensitive,” he said. “I owe Nixon an awful lot, but he lied to me. Try to be gracious, not obsequious.” Back at the computer, I squared a circle as I walked Bush’s line.

  On July 19, 1990, more than seventy-five thousand people sat under a cerulean blue sky: union members, other blue-collar workers, small-business owners, housewives, retirees, farmers—all grandly unhip and unboutique. Nixon had grown up among them, as had I. Presidents Ford and Reagan spoke woodenly and wonderfully, respectively. Bush then rose to introduce Nixon, whereupon John Sununu, sitting in front of me, turned and jibed, deadpan, “Smith, he had better be good.”

  Bush observed that next-day visitors would be the first to enter America’s tenth presidential library. “They will note that only FDR ran as many times as Richard Nixon—five—for national office, each winning four elections, and that [at that time] more people [had] voted for Richard Nixon as president than any other man in history. They will hear of Horatio Alger and Alger Hiss; of the book Six Crises and the seventh crisis, Watergate”—Bush’s was the only of the day’s four presidents to mention it. “They will think of Checkers, Millie’s role model. And, yes, Mr. President, they will hear again your answer to my ‘vision thing’—‘Let me make this perfectly clear.’”

  Bush segued to Nixon’s family—“Think of his mother, a gentle Quaker”—and Nixon’s intellectual complexity—“Knowing how you feel about some intellectuals, Mr. President, I don’t mean to offend you.” He noted how Nixon “‘came from the heart of America’—not geographically, perhaps, but culturally”—then cited RN’s domestic policy from ending the draft via revenue sharing to the Environmental Protection Agency.

  Above all, said Bush, a visitor would recall Nixon “dedicating his life to the greatest cause offered any president”—peace among nations. In Moscow “Richard Nixon signed the first agreement to limit strategic nuclear arms.” In the Middle East, “he planted the first fragile seeds of peace.” In Vietnam he pursued “a quest for peace with honor.”

  “Even now, memories resound of President Nixon’s trip to China—the week that revolutionized the world,” said one sinophile of another. “No American president had ever stood on the soil of the People’s Republic of China. As President Nixon stepped from Air Force One and extended his hand to Zhou Enlai, his vision ended more than two decades of isolation.

  “‘Being president,’ he often said, ‘is nothing compared with what you can do as president,’” Bush concluded. “Mr. President, you worked . . . to help achieve a generation of peace.” As democracy’s tide swept the globe, Nixon could take pride that history would say, “Here was a true architect of peace.”

  That night ABC TV’s Nightline gathered several commentators to dissect the ceremony. Critiquing the speeches, New York Times columnist William Safire proclaimed Bush’s “the best. It touched every base.” Presumably Sununu was pleased.

  Fourteen days later—Thursday, August 2—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded next-door Kuwait and dubbed it his nation’s nineteenth province. In 1940, when Churchill became prime minister with the Nazis at Britain’s door, he wrote, “I felt as if . . . all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Bush must have felt so now—and that a bully had kicked sand in freedom’s face. He reacted quickly, his instinct more sure than in the budget process. As if Providence were in Aspen, Colorado, to write a coda, Margaret Thatcher was with Bush at a conference there. “Now, George,” she said, famously, “this is no time to go wobbly.”

  On August 8 Bush delivered an unwobbly speech, written by Mark Lange, in the Oval Office. “In the life of a nation, we’re called upon to define who we are and what we believe. Sometimes these choices are not easy,” Bush said. “But today as president, I ask for your support in a decision I’ve made to stand up for what’s right and condemn what’s wrong, all in the cause of peace.” At his behest elements of World War II’s famed Eighty-Second Airborne Division and key units of the U.S. Air Force were taking up defensive positions in Saudi Arabia. Iraq proposed a deal to keep half of Kuwait. Bush rejected it, forging a UN armada—Operation Desert Shield. Iraq must withdraw “completely, immediately, and without condition”; its “aggression must not stand.”

  On Monday, August 20, Bush traveled to Baltimore to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and review the lessons of the last eighteen days “that speak to America and to the world.” First, aggression must, and would, be checked—so we had sent U.S. forces to the Middle East reluctantly but decisively. Second, by itself America could do much. With friends and allies, America could do more—so Bush was forging the armada to oppose unprovoked aggression. The third lesson, said Bush, “as veterans won’t surprise you: the stead fast character of the American will. Look at the sands of Saudi Arabia and the waters offshore—where brave Americans are doing their duty—just as you did at Inchon, Remagen, and Hamburger Hill.”

  1. George H. W. Bush, thirteen, in 1937 at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. As president, returning in 1989, he said, “I loved this school, this place.” GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  2. Bush (bottom), with unidentified seaman, moments after being rescued by the submarine USS Finback, September 2, 1944. Bush was shot down, and two crewmates killed, when the Japanese attacked their plane near Chichi Jima. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  3. Babe Ruth (left), dying of throat cancer, presents a manuscript copy of the book The Babe Ruth Story to Bush, captain of Yale University’s varsity team, before a 1948 game at Yale Field. OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

  4. U.S. senator Prescott Bush and wife Dorothy supplemented each other’s strengths. He taught son George self-reliance. She taught him a becoming modesty. Each taught faith, tenacity, and honor. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  5. In 1948 Bush left Connecticut to become an independent oil man in Texas. Here he is shown examining equipment on an oil rig with a worker. He entered politics only when financially self-sufficient. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  6. Richard Nixon was Bush’s first mentor, campaigning for him for Congress and U.S. Senate. In 1971 Bush became the president’s UN ambassador—the first step in his impressive foreign policy education. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  7. In 1971 Democrat, ex-Texas governor, and Bush rival John Connally became Nixon’s
secretary of the treasury. Here Connally, to Bush’s right, makes a point aboard Air Force One. Nixon listens to rear. RICHARD NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  8. In 1980 Ronald Reagan won the GOP presidential nomination, chose Bush as vice president, and became a beloved and historic president. As veep Bush earned the Gipper’s trust, crucial to his own presidential election victory in 1988. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  9. After being sworn in as president, Bush delivered his January 20, 1989, inaugural address. The new president paraphrased from Saint Augustine: “In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all things, generosity.” GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

  10. Amid rain in Budapest, Bush tore up author’s speech and briefly ad-libbed on July 11, 1989. Listening by intercom in DC, Curt Smith did not know the reason for his public flogging. Back home, Bush sent him this photo, signed, “It’s raining in Budapest, I’ll wing it, George Bush.” REUTERS