At every stop, George trumpeted his résumé as if his presidential appointments had imbued him with experience that no one else could match. In fact, those appointments, each lasting only a year or so, merely testified to the kindness of mentors. George was a professional protégé who blacked the King’s boots, and whether the King was Nixon or Ford, George was compensated accordingly. His list of appointments sounded so dazzling that no one bothered to question whether he had accomplished anything in his various posts. Just having received the appointments seemed to be enough, but upon examination his résumé was far more impressive than his record. The conservative commentator John Podhoretz dismissed George as nothing more than a glorified clerk.
“He had been an unmemorable UN ambassador, a faceless and powerless ambassador to China, [and] a tentative director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” wrote Podhoretz in his book
Hell of a Ride
.
The record shows that as Ambassador to the United Nations, George socialized constantly and made many friends but did nothing substantive in foreign policy, especially with regard to China, the major issue at the time. Nixon and Kissinger made all the important policy decisions and rarely bothered to inform Bush, who admitted he had to read
The New York Times
to find out what was happening.
As chairman of the Republican National Committee, George traveled the country meeting party potentates while supporting the President on Watergate and at the same time trying to get Republicans elected to office. To an extent he succeeded on the former—his support was unwavering until the end, although Watergate eventually brought Nixon down—but he failed woefully on the latter. Shortly after Election Day 1973, George wrote in his diary: “Right now after the November elections there are a wide number of comments that the Republican Party has had it—that we are in for a disaster.”
Six weeks after he left the RNC, the Republicans lost forty-eight House seats and four Senate seats in the 1974 elections.
As head of the U.S. mission in Peking, George played a lot of tennis and entertained constantly. “There was nothing for him to do but hold down the fort,” said the mission’s political counselor. “He went to all the parties hosted by other missions . . . He was great at that kind of thing. Just great.”
As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George was a benign custodian who made no waves, which was a relief to all who worked there. Unlike his predecessor, William Colby, George did not ruffle feathers. For that reason, he received great agency support when he ran for President. “Spooks for Bush” raised thousands of dollars for George in the early primaries.
In May 1980, Texas held its first presidential primary, and the two Republican front-runners debated on television from separate locations, but once again Houston’s favorite son folded. “He just melts under pressure,” Reagan said of Bush, who suffered a humiliating defeat in the primary. He lost his own state to Reagan, and that was the knockout blow. By then the Bush campaign had run out of money and momentum and Jim Baker wanted to pull the plug, but George was like a punch-drunk boxer. He didn’t want to quit.
“Jim Baker was beside himself,” recalled Susan King, a former television journalist, now with the Carnegie Corporation of New York. “He and Bush have a complicated relationship because they’re such close friends. Baker told him he had to drop out then to have a chance to become Reagan’s Vice President. If he didn’t drop out, he’d cause so much divisiveness that he’d split the party and probably reelect Jimmy Carter. George wouldn’t listen. He wanted to charge ahead into the California primary, which was sheer lunacy, because the campaign was broke, but George was determined, and his wife and kids pushed him hard not to give up. So when Bush was on the road, Baker called a press conference and told all of us that George’s time as a presidential candidate was over. Baker folded up the troops and headed them all back home, forcing Bush to concede.”
George limped back to Texas and spent the weekend licking his wounds. Then he did the math: he had 400 delegates; Ronald Reagan had more than 1,000; only 998 were needed for the nomination. Reluctantly, Bush approved the concession statement that Baker had drafted, and on Monday morning George agreed to formally withdraw from the race. He sent a telegram of congratulations to Reagan and pledged his “whole-hearted support in a united party this fall to defeat Jimmy Carter.”
By the time of the convention in July, George had released his delegates to Reagan and felt that he was entitled to be named as Reagan’s running mate. George had been passed over three times since 1968, once by Nixon and twice by Ford, and now he wanted nothing more than to run with Ronald Reagan. “If this doesn’t work out,” he told the writer Michael Kramer, “I’m gonna be the pissedest-off guy around.”
The only problem was that Reagan did not want George as his running mate. He did not like him personally and had no regard for him politically. On top of that, Nancy Reagan could not abide him. But Reagan’s polls showed that Bush would help unify the party.
“I remember flying with Reagan from L.A. back to the convention [in Detroit],” recalled the political consultant Stuart K. Spencer. “We were having a conversation when he brought up George Bush. He was still angry about the stuff Bush had said about him in the primaries. Anyway, I listened and listened and listened, and finally he stopped complaining about Bush and said, ‘What do you think?’
“I laughed and said, ‘I think you’re gonna pick George Bush.’ He said, ‘Why should I?’ And I said, ‘Because you’re flying back to a convention that’s locked you into a lot of right-wing stuff, and this guy has the reputation as a moderate, that’s why.’”
Reagan would have far preferred sharing the ticket with former President Jerry Ford, and for a few hours there was a tentative plan in place for such a dream ticket—it was being negotiated in the back rooms by Ed Meese for Reagan and Henry Kissinger for Ford. Ford was demanding everything but the rights to the Lincoln Bedroom and “Hail to the Chief.” During the convention Walter Cronkite interviewed Ford about the startling proposal of a former President’s running for Vice President. As the interview progressed, Ford described his role as one of equal responsibility in which he would have jurisdiction over the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget.
Watching the interview in his suite, Reagan jumped off the couch and pointed to the television.
“Did you hear what he said about his role?” he said to his pollster Richard Wirthlin. “Sounds like he wants to be a co-president.” Reagan told Ed Meese to immediately call off the negotiations.
A few hours later, Ford went to Reagan’s suite dressed in a navy blue blazer and gray slacks. He and Reagan went into a private room, where they talked: Ford said that he did not think his serving as Vice President would be of value, but he agreed to help in every other way to elect Reagan and defeat Jimmy Carter.
Still Reagan did not want to pick Bush, who also had watched the Cronkite interview and now assumed the worst: a Reagan-Ford ticket. “He was padding around the nineteenth-floor hallway in tan khakis and a red polo shirt,” reported Michael Kramer. “He was pulling on a Stroh’s beer, and I was his only company . . . The deal had been cut: Ford was going to be ‘co-president,’ although no one knew what that meant.”
“It’s the second time Ford has screwed you, isn’t it?” Kramer asked. Mellowed by a few beers, George smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. But you know, it builds character.”
Reagan longed to make his good friend Paul Laxalt, the senator from Nevada, his running mate, but Reagan’s campaign strategists objected.
“Why can’t I pick someone I like?” Reagan asked plaintively. His aides explained that an ideological soul mate would not help the ticket, and Laxalt’s ties to casino owners in Las Vegas might be problematic. Bush was the most logical choice, they said, but Reagan resisted, harking back to New Hampshire.
“I’m wary of a man who freezes under pressure,” he said. “George froze that night. That haunts me.”
He conferred with his pollster, and again the consensus was Bush. Reagan called Stuart Spencer.
“You still feel the same way about Bush?”
“Yeah. Nothing’s changed.”
Reagan grimaced and nodded toward the phone. The call was placed to Bush’s suite; Jim Baker answered and handed George the receiver while Barbara ushered everyone out of the room.
“George, it seems to me that [out of all the other candidates] the fellow who came the closest and got the most votes for president ought to be the logical choice for vice-president,” said Reagan. “Will you take it?”
George jumped at the offer.
“He didn’t have a moment’s hesitation,” Reagan wrote in his memoir.
The cartoonist Pat Oliphant captured the essence of the evening by showing Reagan, pompadour piled high on his head, talking to Ford, who was pulling clubs out of his golf bag: “Well,” says Reagan, “I guess I’m stuck with him . . . However, he does understand the role of a Vice President.”
Splayed on the ground with his arms locked around Reagan’s feet and his face scraping the sidewalk is George Bush, panting, “I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”
When Reagan announced his choice to the convention, everyone cheered, with the sole exception of his wife, Nancy, standing next to him at the lectern. She hated the thought of George Bush on her husband’s ticket and was unable to hold back her tears.
The Washington Post
reported: “She looked like a little girl who had just lost her favorite Raggedy Ann doll: sad, disappointed, almost crushed.”
The next day the Reagans and the Bushes appeared at a press conference, which Mary McGrory described in the
Washington Star
as awkward for everyone. “The new foursome looked like the parents of the bride and bridegroom, who are determined to put a good face on a marriage of convenience.”
George berated the press for asking about his past political differences with Reagan. “I’m not going to be nickeled and dimed to death about that sort of thing,” he said heatedly. To underscore the point, he dropped his support of the Equal Rights Amendment, vehemently changed his position on abortion, modified his stand on school busing, and proclaimed himself in favor of school prayer, all of which proved he was a man with the soul of a Vice President.
George and Barbara campaigned relentlessly for the ticket, praising the Reagans at every stop.
“I think Nancy is ravishingly beautiful,” gushed Barbara. “When we were with them, I could hardly take my eyes off her.”
“Ronald Reagan is a man of principle,” said George. “He will be a stabilizing force for America.”
Even the Bush children fell in line. “Dad likes Reagan,” young George W. told the press. “His liking . . . is strong and it amazed me. He [Reagan] is not an uptight guy. He’s not paranoid. He’s reasonable and he’s intelligent.”
As Reagan’s running mate, Bush blistered Carter for double-digit inflation, a gasoline shortage that reminded Americans of their dependence on foreign oil, and the lingering hostage crisis in Iran, where fifty-two Americans had been held in captivity since November 4, 1979. Bush warned of an ominous “October Surprise,” stoking speculation that Carter might strike a deal with Iran to get the hostages home before the election. After the election, the Carter camp accused the Reaganites of making a secret pact with the Iranians not to release the hostages before the election. Carter believed Reagan had promised, in exchange, to resume the sale of U.S. arms to Iran. This “October Surprise” has never been proved, but Carter’s former CIA Director Stansfield Turner believed it had transpired.
“No question about it,” said Carter’s White House press secretary Jody Powell. “My theory is that the Reagan campaign made an overture to Iran regarding the release of the hostages; they cut a deal. I don’t know that for a fact, but I would bet my life on it.”
By Election Day, November 4, 1980, the hostages had not been released, and Americans had become sick of sitting impotently in front of their television sets watching their flag be set afire by Shiite Muslims.
“I believe that this administration’s foreign policy helped create the entire situation,” said Reagan. “And I think the fact that the hostages have been held there that long is a humiliation and disgrace to this country.”
The American people agreed, and the landslide they gave Reagan was staggering. He carried forty-four of fifty states and received more votes (43,901,812) than Carter (35,483,820) and the Independent, John Anderson (5,719,722), combined. The election was over hours before the polls closed in California, but Reagan was reluctant to declare victory. “I’m too superstitious,” he said. In Texas, George Bush was crowing. “The ticket is in like a burglar.”
That was the last bit of public boasting George would do for many years. After the election, he made a concerted effort to become the perfect Vice President—loyal, self-effacing, even fawning. It was a natural role for someone who strove to please his benefactors and who had played a similar part frequently in the past. He instructed his staff to follow his lead and never oppose the President’s staff. George was so determined to be deferential that he claimed to have deliberately chosen a “weak” staff for the first term so as not to compete with the President’s. He also instructed Barbara never to compete with Nancy.
His preoccupation with maintaining secondary status even influenced the way he dressed. When he went into Arthur Adler, a D.C. men’s clothing store, before the 1981 inauguration to buy a suit, an Adler salesman recalled, the Vice President–elect looked through the Southwick swatches and mulled over a light brown plaid.
“I don’t know about that,” George said. “It doesn’t look vice-presidential.”
“No, it looks presidential,” said the salesman.
George dropped the swatch and selected something less prepossessing.
Through Jim Baker, who had been named White House chief of staff because Nancy Reagan was so impressed by his smooth demeanor, Bush was able to negotiate the same prerogatives that Vice President Walter Mondale had held under Jimmy Carter—access to the Oval Office, his own office in the West Wing, intelligence briefings, and a weekly lunch with the President.