Months later, when Lithuania unilaterally declared its independence from the Soviet Union, the President barely responded. Later he told reporters: “I don’t want to make—you know, remember Yogi Berra: ‘What happened? Why did you lose the ball game?’ He said, ‘We made the wrong mistake.’ You got to think about that one. And I don’t want to make the wrong mistake.”
When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Bush’s response was so unimaginative as to be a national embarrassment. “I am very pleased with this development,” he told the press. Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame wrote in
Time
that when he appeared before the TV cameras in the Oval Office, he looked as if he had just seen his dog run over by a truck. Even his lyricist felt shortchanged. Years later Peggy Noonan tried to explain what made George Bush so tone-deaf to the harmonics of history.
“Bush had a high character,” she said. “What he lacked, however, was a kind of historical imagination—the kind of big-sweep imagination that helps you apprehend and understand the great forces of your time. The day the Berlin Wall fell was a huge moment in history, one of the high points of the twentieth century—Soviet expansionist Communism, the great peace disturber of the twentieth century, was ending. We ended it. Remember what Bush said? Nothing. He told Lesley Stahl [CBS-TV] he didn’t want to ‘rub it in.’ What would Reagan have done? He would have called his speechwriters in and told us to get to work on a speech in which we mark this moment well and indelibly, in which he thanked the people of the West and of America for half a century of blood and treasure that they put toward this day. He would have thanked them. He would have thanked God. He would have told schoolchildren what this day meant, what lessons they could draw from it. He would have captured its meaning. He had a historical imagination. George Bush did not.”
The President tried to defend his reticence in an interview with David Frost. “My restraint, or prudence, if you will, was misunderstood, certainly by some in the Congress. Senator Mitchell, the leading Democrat in the Senate . . . Dick Gephardt, the leader in the House, were saying: ‘Our President doesn’t get it. He ought to go to Berlin, stand on the Wall, dance with the young people to show the joy that we all feel.’ I still feel that would have been the stupidest thing an American president could do because we were very concerned about how the troops would react. We were very concerned about the nationalistic elements in the Soviet Union maybe putting Gorbachev out. I think if we’d have misplayed our hand and had a heavy-handed overkill, you know, gloating, ‘We won, Mr. Gorbachev, you’ve lost, you’re out,’ I think it could have been a very different ending to this very happy chapter in history when the wall came down.”
Whether or not Bush was rationalizing his tepid reaction to a historic convulsion, he showed utter disregard for the emotional component of the presidency and the rapport that binds a leader to his people when he speaks to it in times of joy and tragedy. Yet at the end of his first year the President’s popular approval far exceeded that of the Great Communicator himself at the end of Ronald Reagan’s first year. In fact, Bush’s poll numbers were higher than those of any post–World War II President except John F. Kennedy.
On August 1, 1991, the President visited Kiev and lectured the Ukrainian independence movement on its “suicidal nationalism” in trying to break free from the Soviet Union. He urged them to stay with Moscow. Three weeks later Ukraine declared its independence, and the
New York Times
columnist William Safire needled the President for his “chicken Kiev” speech. Safire accused Bush of being blind to the forces of history. Bush was so incensed he never spoke to the columnist again.
The dramatic developments in the Soviet Union led the President to make an epic decision to reduce the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. He made this titantic announcement in a prime-time speech that was totally devoid of eloquence. His dry recitation buried the historic import of what he was doing to make the world a less dangerous place than ever before in the nuclear age.
On Christmas Day, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President. President Bush was at Camp David, but he returned to the White House that evening to address the nation from the Oval Office. He announced that the Cold War was over and the Commonwealth of Independent States had emerged from the wreckage of the USSR. He saluted Gorbachev for his revolutionary policies and committed the United States to supporting the liberation of the Russian people. It was a short, serviceable statement, but it lacked the ringing cadence and soaring spirit people wanted from the leader of the free world.
In the beginning of his presidency, Bush seemed timid and unsure of himself on the world stage. “I don’t want to make any early term mistakes like Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs,” he said. Yet George Bush was as fixated on eliminating Manuel Noriega of Panama as John F. Kennedy had been on eliminating Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Unlike Kennedy, Bush personally knew his nemesis, having met with Noriega twice. Bush had paid him $110,000 a year as a CIA operative, which may have accounted for the strongman’s boast “I have Bush by the balls.” From February through May 1988, the Reagan administration had tried to find a way to remove Noriega from power without sending in troops. The White House and Noriega negotiated through the papal nuncio in Panama. As Vice President, Bush had objected to these negotiations in favor of force, but, according to Secretary of State George Shultz, President Reagan stood firm. “I’m not giving in,” Shultz quoted Reagan as saying. “This deal is better than going in and counting our dead. I just think you [Bush] are wrong as hell on this.” Once he became President, Bush took up the cudgels against the drug-dealing dictator. In November 1989 the administration authorized a $3 million plan to topple Noriega by recruiting members of the Panamanian armed forces to stage a coup. But before the coup could be pulled off, the plan became public. The next month Panama declared war on the United States and installed Noriega as the maximum leader. The United States launched Operation Just Cause and invaded Panama on December 20, 1989; twenty-three Americans and five hundred Panamanians lost their lives before Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990.
“Panamanians, Americans—both have sacrificed much to restore democracy to Panama,” said the President in his remarks announcing the surrender of Noriega. “Their sacrifice has been a noble cause and will never be forgotten. A free and prosperous Panama will be an enduring tribute.”
Noriega was brought to trial in Miami for eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. He was convicted and sentenced to forty years in prison, becoming eligible for parole in 2006. Bush was presented with the handcuffs used to transport Noriega from Panama to the United States, which he proudly displayed in his presidential library next to a cardboard target of himself, complete with bullet holes, that was found in Noriega’s quarters.
No President ever needed great speechwriters more than George Herbert Walker Bush, and yet one of the first things he did upon becoming President was to reduce their importance by revoking their White House mess privileges, something Ronald Reagan would never have done. Having deprived his speechwriters of the prized White House perquisite, the President extended mess privileges to all his children.
“Bush didn’t enjoy giving speeches,” said Vice President Dan Quayle. “He tended to prepare for them very quickly, to give his notes a once-over, and then go out and get them over with.”
“Reagan and Bush were so different,” said Peggy Noonan. “I was more in line philosophically with Reagan, and responded in some way to his personality and character that left me thinking more deeply about him than anyone else I ever worked with. I thought him such a fine man, and such a good one . . . He was so emotionally responsive to history, he felt its tug and force in a personal and imaginative way; and yet to many around him on a daily basis he was not so responsive. Bush lacked a deep responsiveness and connection to history, and yet when he spoke of those he loved, his children and friends and family, his eyes filled with real tears. They were different men.”
The President became extremely emotional in 1989 as he tried to cope with the public furor over his third son’s involvement in the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal. He watched people gather in Lafayette Park across from the White House waving placards that said, “Jail Neil Bush.” And he railed against them for wrapping the scandals of the S&L industry around Neil’s neck. The First Lady said she could barely contain her distress as she watched her son “get devoured by the press.”
“The thing that’s bothered George the most, what he likes least about politics, is that our children are—I can’t think of a bad enough word; there’s no privacy. It’s been terrible for our children,” Barbara told a writer for
The New Republic
with tears in her eyes.
“It kills you—just devastates you—the S&L thing. Considering there must have been a hundred thousand outside board of directors, and all Americans know only one—Neil Bush—who happens to be the most honest, decent, fabulous young man, who has really had his whole life changed. Amazing . . . He’s gonna be just fine. But it is not easy for him. Nor his wife. Nor his children. They know he’s never done anything wrong in his life, so that’s OK.”
In the beginning, Neil enjoyed going on television and seeing his picture in the paper, but he compounded his problems every time he talked to the press. The family warned him about speaking out, but he claimed he had done nothing wrong so he had nothing to hide.
“When I flew to Denver to interview Neil, a call came in from the White House,” said Martin Tolchin of
The New York Times
. “I could only hear Neil’s side of the conversation, but when he hung up he said, ‘That was my dad. He said I shouldn’t be talking to you’ . . . He laughed and we went on with the interview.”
Soon each of Neil’s brothers weighed in on “Project Shut Up,” but Neil persisted in proclaiming his innocence. Then George W. called. He told his younger brother that every time he opened his mouth, he harmed his father’s presidency and that in turn diminished the family name. Neil finally got the point and stopped giving interviews.
More than anyone else in the family, George W. grasped the value of the Bush brand name. As the son of the Vice President, he had been a star in Midland, Texas, but as the son of the President he was suddenly propelled into another stratosphere. Doors that might have been closed to him now flew open, and multimillionaires stepped forward to invest in any enterprise that carried his name.
Shortly after his father’s election, George received a call that the Texas Rangers might be for sale. He immediately moved his family from Washington, D.C., to Dallas, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, “I . . . pursued the purchase like a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity.” He managed to scrape up $500,000 as his initial share of the $86 million price, borrowing the money from the United Bank of Midland, where he had served on the board of directors. On April 21, 1989, despite his minuscule investment, he was made the co–managing partner of the team and paid $200,000 a year to be the front man. “A lifelong baseball fan, I was about to own a baseball team,” he wrote in his memoir. “I remember thinking, ‘This is as good as it gets. Life cannot be better than this.’”
Each year on opening day, George made sure his father was in Dallas to throw out the first ball. Having the President at the ballpark brought the Texas Rangers international publicity and more than justified Junior as a name, if not a moneyed, owner of the team. At the time the team was sold in 1998, George’s share in the sale was 12 percent, which earned him $15 million.
At the same time George W. Bush was living his fantasy of owning a baseball team like his great-uncle Herbie Walker, Jeb Bush received a similar offer in Florida to buy a limited partnership in the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team. Jeb needed $450,000, so he borrowed the amount from SunBank, where he was on the board of directors. It was not difficult to raise money—or be on a board of directors—if you were a son of the President of the United States.
One of the Bush children definitely not profiting from her father’s presidency was thirty-year-old Doro, who was about to bring the family its first—but not last—divorce. Growing up in a family geared to boys, Dorothy Walker Bush almost got lost in the macho shuffle. With her parents constantly traveling, she attended schools in Texas, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Then she was sent to board at Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut, the alma mater of her grandmother Dorothy Walker Bush and her aunt Nancy Bush Ellis. Doro graduated from Boston College with a C average and a degree in sociology. She did not have a boyfriend until her sophomore summer, when she met William LeBlond, who attended Boston University. Like Doro, he was the youngest in a large, hard-charging family. Shy and quiet, the couple married after college graduation and moved to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where they had two children.
“I remember when I worked for Vice President Bush, Doro called him all the time,” recalled an aide. “She was much closer to her father than her mother . . . Bush treated her like a little girl. She could get anything she wanted out of him, but she was pathetic, because she was an adult who couldn’t make a decision about anything without first calling Daddy. Sad, really. I think Bush was always compensating with her because he wasn’t there for her growing up, but then he’s the kind of father who acts differently with girl children . . . There were no expectations for her, other than to get married and have kids . . . The family was relieved when she married, but they didn’t like her husband. They called him ‘the golfer’ because that’s about all he did.”
Doro recognized the problems her husband faced as a Bush in-law. “My family is a hard family to marry into,” she said. “I’m sure it can be highly intimidating, especially my brothers—as much as I love them. But it is not easy. They’re all power kind of guys.”