by Peter Baker
25 215 oil companies had opened: Ibid.
26 address him as “Senator”: Schweizer and Schweizer, Bushes, xv.
27 Bush bought for $9,000 in 1951: The house has been converted into a museum, the George W. Bush Childhood Home. The author toured it in April 2011.
28 “He lives in his cowboy clothes”: George Bush, All the Best, 70.
29 “Georgie aggravates the hell”: Ibid., 79.
30 “starkest memory of my childhood”: Wead, All the Presidents’ Children, 78.
31 “My mom, dad, and sister are home”: Barbara Bush, Memoir, 45.
32 “She died”: George W. Bush, Decision Points, 5–6.
33 “Why didn’t you tell me?”: George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, “A Texas Childhood: A Sister Dies, a Family Moves On,” Washington Post, July 26, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072699.htm.
34 “I can’t come over to play”: Minutaglio, First Son, 45–46.
35 “That started my cure”: Barbara Bush, Memoir, 47.
36 bought a small $15,000 house: Lynne Cheney, Blue Skies, No Fences, 181–84. The house remained in the family for years, and in fact Cheney stayed there even when he became defense secretary. The author visited the house but did not go inside in July 2011.
37 “His father had a wry sense”: Williams interview.
38 “His mom was the real ripsnorter”: Meyer interview.
39 “We had an A&W on one side”: Bernie Seebaum, author interview.
40 “too much time wasted foolishly”: Lynne Cheney, Blue Skies, No Fences, 181–84.
41 “We thought we were pretty hot stuff”: Seebaum interview.
42 “You’re kidding!”: Lynne Cheney, Blue Skies, No Fences, 259–61.
43 “like a classic fifties movie”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 23–26.
44 “We didn’t know we were poor”: Mick McMurry, author interview.
45 “to beat the crap out of each other”: Tom Fake, author interview.
46 “We went from being the big fish”: Ibid.
47 “beer was one of the essentials”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 26–28.
48 “Dick has fallen in with a group”: Ibid.
49 “She made it clear eventually”: Dick Cheney, oral history, March 17–18, 2000, Miller Center, University of Virginia.
50 “Andover was cold and distant”: George W. Bush, Charge to Keep, 19–21.
51 He called himself “Tweeds Bush”: Ibid.
52 “I knew your father”: Schweizer and Schweizer, Bushes, 166. After the incident was publicized during the 2000 campaign, Coffin wrote Bush a letter saying he did not remember making the remark but apologizing if he did. Bush accepted the apology. “But his self-righteous attitude was a foretaste of the vitriol that would emanate from many college professors during my presidency,” Bush wrote in Decision Points, 13–14.
53 “He was a guy out of water”: O’Neill interview.
54 “Why don’t you try walking”: Lanny Davis, “Farewell to Bush, the President and the Man,” Huffington Post, January 12, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lanny-davis/farewell-to-bush-the-pres_b_157135.html.
55 “I went to school with him”: Jack Morrison, author interview.
56 “If you graduate from Yale”: George W. Bush, Yale University commencement address, May 21, 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010521-2.html.
57 his “nomadic” period: George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, “At Height of Vietnam, Graduate Picks Guard,” Washington Post, July 28, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm.
58 helped by the Speaker: Ben Barnes, then the Speaker, said he was contacted by a Bush family friend, Sid Adger, who asked him to help George W. get into the unit. See Barnes interview with Dan Rather of CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-642060.html.
59 “I would guess that probably”: Charlie Younger, author interview.
60 “We went to dinner”: Pete Slover and George Kuempel, “ ‘I Was Young and Irresponsible,’ ” Dallas Morning News, November 15, 1998.
61 “I hear you’re looking for me”: Robert Draper, “Favorite Son,” GQ, September 1998. See also Laurence I. Barrett, “Junior Is His Own Bush Now,” Time, July 31, 1989, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,958244,00.html. And see Wead, Raising of a President, 303. Wead cited an interview with Neil Bush. George W. Bush downplayed it in Decision Points, saying it had been overblown. He also described Jeb blurting out his admission to Harvard on another night during dinner at a Houston restaurant. See p. 22.
62 “I had other priorities in the ’60s”: George C. Wilson, “Cheney Believes Gorbachev Sincere,” Washington Post, April 5, 1989.
63 “It was clear that we hadn’t”: Dick Cheney, speech at Hudson Institute luncheon honoring Donald Rumsfeld, May 13, 2003, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030513-9.html. Rumsfeld over the years has taken gentle issue with this account, saying the reason he rejected Cheney was that he wanted a lawyer.
64 “You’re congressional relations”: Ibid.
65 “But he stood by me”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 51–52.
66 “Here you are”: George W. Bush, Charge to Keep, 60.
67 Bush had a “rotten time”: Radcliffe, Simply Barbara Bush, 139.
68 “claustrophobic, intellectually and physically”: Minutaglio, First Son, 157.
69 “was a great turning point”: Lardner and Romano, “At Height of Vietnam.”
70 “One of you could be president”: Michael Kranish, “Hallmarks of Bush Style Were Seen at Harvard,” Boston Globe, December 28, 1999.
71 Ford considered George H. W.: The three finalists submitted to the FBI for background checks in August 1974 were Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rockefeller. Dick Cheney, author interview. See also Hartmann, Palace Politics, 353.
72 “All I really had going for me”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 71.
73 “pragmatic problem solver”: Ford, Time to Heal, 324.
74 “a war that is finished”: Gerald Ford, speech at Tulane University, April 23, 1975, http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/750208.asp.
75 “Fuck the war”: Nessen, Making the News, Taking the News, 9.
76 “somewhat to the right of Ford”: Hartmann, Palace Politics, 283.
77 “He didn’t care much for me”: Cheney interview.
78 He also thought a vice president: Cheney said in 1977 that “taking a man or woman who’s vice-president of the United States and putting him into that has an impact … on the others in the process because they react to the vice-president very differently than they do to the director of the OMB or their colleagues on the staff.” Dubose and Bernstein, Vice, 39.
79 urging Ford to stop speaking: Donald H. Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to President Ford, memo, October 24, 1975. Accessed at http://www.rumsfeld.com.
80 referring to them as “the Praetorians”: DeFrank, Write It When I’m Gone, 49.
81 “most distinguishing features”: Hartmann, Palace Politics, 283.
82 “I knew that I could ask Cheney”: Ford, Time to Heal, 324.
83 “intelligent without displaying”: Casserly, The Ford White House, 228 and 245.
84 he dubbed “Errors and No Facts”: Nessen, It Sure Looks Different from the Inside, 150.
85 “We’re going to take a dive”: Nessen, Making the News, Taking the News, 213.
86 called Cheney a “son of a bitch”: Hartmann, Palace Politics, 406. Rockefeller was also mad that his microphone had been turned down during a speech, which he seemed to blame on Cheney.
87 “Gentlemen,” he proclaimed: Ibid., 233.
88 “Mr. President, we lost”: Hayes, Cheney, 116–17.
89 “it would be very hard for me to govern”: Baker, “Work Hard, Study … and Keep out of Politics!,” 70–71.
90 “Governor, my voice is gone”: Hayes, Cheney, 116–17.
91 “
One of the things he would say”: Donald Rumsfeld, author interview.
92 “A lot of the things around Watergate”: Dick Cheney, roundtable with reporters, aboard Air Force Two en route to Muscat, Oman, December 20, 2005, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051220-9.html.
93 “toxic waste dump”: Younger interview.
94 “So, what’s sex like after fifty”: Schweizer and Schweizer, Bushes, 305. Bemiss got her revenge later. After Bush passed the half-century mark, she asked him, “So, George, how is it after fifty?” He smiled and said, “Quite good, thank you.”
95 “He always lived on the edge”: Younger interview.
CHAPTER 2: “TO BE WHERE THE ACTION IS”
1 “Son, you can’t win”: George W. Bush, Charge to Keep, 37–39.
2 “I listened to him”: Koch, My Father, My President, 145–46.
3 “Dick, if you run for Senate”: Dick Cheney, commencement address, Natrona County High School, May 29, 2006. In his memoir, Cheney rendered it slightly less G-rated, remembering the quote as “kick your butt.”
4 “He stayed almost past midnight”: Joe O’Neill, author interview.
5 “Laura stays in her own space”: George W. Bush, Charge to Keep, 80–85.
6 “This guy doesn’t give a speech”: Pete Williams, author interview.
7 “run as Jerry Ford’s guy”: Dick Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.
8 “That was devastating to them”: Joe Meyer, author interview.
9 “Look, hard work never killed anybody”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 119–24.
10 Cheney won the primary: Witzenburger came in second with 31 percent and Gage third with 27 percent. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=417083.
11 A “feisty fighter”: George Bush, All the Best, 571.
12 “I don’t think he’s ever been”: Minutaglio, First Son, 188–91.
13 Bush was trying “to ride the coattails”: Ibid., 191–93.
14 “He went to Greenwich Country Day School”: George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, “Tragedy Created Bush Mother-Son Bond,” Washington Post, July 26, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072699.htm.
15 “I won’t be persuaded by anyone”: Ibid., 188–91.
16 Hance beat Bush with 53 percent: U.S. House Clerk’s Office, http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1978election.pdf.
17 “He allowed Hance to define him”: O’Neill interview.
18 “We talked on more than”: Dick Cheney, author interview.
19 from television while dining: Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart, 103.
20 it ranked 993rd in oil production: Minutaglio, First Son, 204.
21 Nearly half of the ninety-five holes: Mitchell, W, 194. By comparison, George H. W. Bush hit oil in all 127 wells he drilled in the 1950s.
22 with a $75,000-a-year salary: Ibid., 205.
23 Cheney supported tax cuts: Matthew Vita and Dan Morgan, “A Hard-Liner with a Soft Touch,” Washington Post, August 5, 2000; and Richard T. Cooper, “Cheney a Man of Big but Limited Ambitions—the Perfect No. 2,” Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/oct/19/news/mn-38884.
24 “never met a weapons system”: Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 201.
25 “I had no idea he was that conservative”: Cooper, “Cheney a Man of Big but Limited Ambitions.”
26 “Nobody ever checked the voting record”: Cheney interview.
27 cross out the word “bureaucrat”: Williams interview.
28 “The deficit isn’t the worst”: Reeves, President Reagan, 92.
29 “You can’t expect them to accept”: Dubose and Bernstein, Vice, 53.
30 regular participant in a secret program: Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 138–45.
31 “the most effective and impressive witness”: Dubose and Bernstein, Vice, 78.
32 wrote a book, Kings of the Hill: Cheney and Cheney, Kings of the Hill.
33 “Dick, what in the hell”: Meyer interview.
34 “Go get George”: Former aide, author interview.
35 “How do we know we can trust”: George W. Bush, Decision Points, 43–44.
36 “If someone throws a grenade”: Ibid.
37 “planted a seed in my heart”: Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr., “Bush’s Life-Changing Year,” Washington Post, July 25, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072599.htm. Some have cast doubt on this story. Jacob Weisberg points out that there is not much of a beach on the rocky shore at Walker’s Point and notes that an earlier account did not mention a walk on the beach, only a discussion in the house. See Bush Tragedy, 75–78.
38 “I want to talk to you”: Arthur Blessitt, “The Day I Prayed With George W. Bush to Receive Jesus!” from his diary, April 3, 1984, http://www.blessitt.com/Inspiration_Witness/PrayingWithGeorgeWBush/Praying_With_Bush_Page1.html.
39 “I’m all name and no money”: Robert Reinhold, “In Troubled Oil Business, It Matters Little If Your Name Is Bush, Sons Find,” New York Times, April 30, 1986.
40 gave him $600,000 in shares: Minutaglio, First Son, 207.
41 “You no good fucking sonofabitch”: Ibid., 208–9. After Minutaglio asked about the incident during research for his book years later, Bush called Hunt to apologize.
42 “Can you remember the last day”: George W. Bush, Decision Points, 1.
43 repeated the same toast: Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart, 118.
44 “We made a little noise in the dining room”: O’Neill interview.
45 “It’s either Jim Beam or me”: Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart, 118.
46 “He said one day I might be”: O’Neill interview.
47 “He was a big, booming personality”: Debra Dunn, author interview.
48 driver named Payne was nicknamed: Steve Atkiss, author interview.
49 He learned that by showing: Woodward, Bush at War, 235.
50 “Yeah, I killed them in Atlanta”: Richard Ben Cramer, author interview.
51 “You’ve heard the rumors”: Un-bylined “Periscope” item in Newsweek by Howard Fineman, “Bush and the ‘Big A Question,’ ” June 29, 1987.
52 “Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor’ ”: Margaret Warner, Newsweek, October 19, 1987.
53 Bush was “red hot”: George W. Bush, Decision Points, 43–44.
54 gotten over his “self-pity”: George W. Bush said this in a 1986 interview with Walt Harrington, a staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine who at the time was writing a profile of Bush’s father. The quotation did not make the piece, but Harrington later provided it to his Post colleagues Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr. for their enduring 1999 biographical series on the younger Bush. They cited it in “Bush: So-So Student but a Campus Mover,” Washington Post, July 27, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072799.htm.
55 “If there was any sort of”: Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr., “Bush’s Move Up to the Majors,” Washington Post, July 31, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush073199.htm.
56 “I got married and gave up”: Dick Cheney, In My Time, 152–58.
57 “My instinct is to cut him off”: Woodward, Commanders, 44–47.
58 “General Welch was freelancing”: Dick Cheney, news conference, Pentagon, March 24, 1989.
59 Welch “got a bit of a bum rap”: Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.
60 “a stroke of genius”: Ibid.
61 “a cerebral Wyoming cowboy”: Powell, My American Journey, 412.
62 “That’s because they’re all right-wing nuts”: Ibid., 526.
63 From the plane, Scowcroft: Brent Scowcroft, oral history, Miller Center, University of Virginia, November 12–13, 1999. Neither Cheney nor Quayle mentioned this dispute in his memoirs. Powell wrote that Cheney was sick but that he suspected he preferred not to deal with Quayle.
64 “George, everybody
likes you”: Gerhart, Perfect Wife, 83–84.
65 put in just $606,000 of the $86 million: Juan B. Elizondo Jr., “Bush Earns $14.9 Million from Team Sale,” Associated Press, June 18, 1998.
66 “How cool is this?”: Draper, Dead Certain, 42–43.
67 “I can’t tell you how many”: Israel Hernandez, author interview.
68 went from a losing team: From 1989 to 1998, the Rangers had seven winning seasons and three losing ones. In the previous decade, the team had three winning seasons and seven losing ones. Total season attendance increased from 1,581,901 before Bush and his partners bought the team to 2,927,409 the year it was sold. (Bush and his partners sold the team in the middle of the 1998 season.) http://mlb.mlb.com/tex/history/year_by_year_results.jsp.
69 “solved my biggest political problem”: Time, July 31, 1999.
70 “Did the president have the balls”: Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.
71 “It sent a hell of a message”: Ibid.
72 Powell later had the study destroyed: Ibid.
73 “Lawyers running a war?”: Powell, My American Journey, 483.
74 “The unanimous view of those of us”: Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.
75 just 148 American battle deaths: Anne Leland and Mari-Jana “M-J” Oboroceanu, “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics,” Congressional Research Service, February 26, 2010, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf. The report actually gives two different statistics, 147 and 148, on different pages. The more commonly used figure seems to be 148.
76 “simple solutionists”: Powell, My American Journey, 511.
77 “Once we had rounded him up”: Dick Cheney, speech to Discovery Institute, Seattle, August 14, 1992, Federal News Service transcript.
78 “I still think we made the right decision”: Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.
79 “Smart guy, arrogant, didn’t know”: Ibid.
80 “You know,” he told Sununu: Duffy and Goodgame, Marching in Place, 127–28.
81 acknowledged that he “blew it”: Parmet, George Bush, 349. According to Parmet, Bush wrote in his diary at the end of the Republican National Convention week in 1988, “It was my decision, and I blew it, but I’m not about to say that I blew it.”
