Destiny And Power - Destiny and Power Part 12
Library

Destiny and Power Part 12

At the Pontchartrain after lunch, Dean Burch, the Republican wise man, came into the Bushes' room. He told Bush that Kissinger and Greenspan, among others, were meeting with the Reaganites to bring off what was being called the "dream ticket."

"It's only a rumor," Burch told Bush, "but I wouldn't discount it." Bush was puzzled. "This is crazy," Bush thought. "This'll never happen." Bush believed his speech that night was critical. A strong performance might impress Reagan; a poor one might end Bush's hopes. He had to focus.

Bush's address to the convention was scheduled for eight P.M. Beforehand he jogged on the indoor track at the Detroit Plaza, had a snack, showered, and dressed. This was it-the last thing on his schedule. It was seven P.M.; he didn't have a great deal of time. Still, the television was tuned to CBS as he got ready.

Walter Cronkite's guest was the former president of the United States, Gerald Ford.

On the nineteenth floor of the Pontchartrain, Bush was listening carefully. On the sixty-ninth floor of the Detroit Plaza, Ronald Reagan was listening, too. Neither man wanted to miss a word.

- Sitting with Cronkite and with Betty Ford in the CBS booth above Joe Louis Arena, Ford was candid about what would have to happen to get him to change his mind about joining the ticket. "I really believe that in all fairness to me, if there is to be any change, it has to be predicated on the arrangements that I would expect as a vice president in a relationship with the president. I would not go to Washington...and be a figurehead vice president. If I go to Washington, and I'm not saying that I am accepting, I have to go there with the belief that I will play a meaningful role across the board in the basic and the crucial and the important decisions that have to be made in a four-year period."

It was an honest description of his position, and, though the audience could not know it, of his team's posture in the talks at the hotel. Ford wanted substantive promises about substantive matters-nothing less. "For me to go there and go through the ceremonial aspects, it wouldn't be fair to Betty, it wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the president, and it wouldn't be right for the country," Ford told Cronkite. "So I have to, before I can even consider any revision in the firm position I have taken, I have to have responsible assurances."

Cronkite asked about the "question of pride," as much for Ford as for Reagan, who, as Cronkite said, would be taking on a vice presidential running mate "who...has said, 'It's got to be something like a co-presidency'?"

Watching, Reagan sat up straight in his chair and said, "Did you hear what he said about a co-presidency?" Richard Wirthlin, who was in the room, recalled to Jack Germond and Jules Witcover. "As far as Ronnie was concerned, that did it," recalled Nancy Reagan. In fairness, Ford's reply to Cronkite did not endorse the "co-presidency" idea-in fact, Ford seemed to say that such an arrangement would be problematic in practice-but the damage was done. All Reagan heard was the phrase "co-presidency." The public suggestion that Reagan would be sharing the sovereignty of the office with a vice president was unacceptable.

At the Pontchartrain, Bush was tying his tie as he watched the interview. He was, he said later, "stunned." He could not know how Reagan had taken the exchange: To Bush, Ford's remarks seemed to confirm the rumors beyond any doubt. Returning to the room to walk the candidate over to the convention, Burch told Bush not to worry about the Cronkite thing. "Put it out of your mind, George," Burch said. "Just concentrate on your speech."

There was nothing to do but get on with the evening, see everything through, be gracious no matter what. As Bush looked over his speech one last time before emerging onto the podium, someone he didn't know, a "backstage worker," as he recalled, approached him to shake hands. "I'm sorry, Mr. Bush, really sorry. I was pulling for you."

"Sorry about what?" Bush said.

"You mean you haven't heard? It's all over. Reagan's picked Ford as his running mate."

- A few moments later, manfully pressing on, Bush told the convention: "If anyone wants to know why Ronald Reagan is a winner, you can refer him to me. I'm an expert on the subject....His message is clear. His message is understood." Bush focused his fire on President Carter, saying that the "era of broken promises and unfulfilled commitments is drawing to a close. And the Reagan era of an America true to its promise of peace and prosperity is beginning."

He, Jeb, and Bush aide David Bates returned to the Pontchartrain, stopping in the lobby bar for a beer. Stepping into the elevator for the ride up to his suite, Bush had no reason to believe that he would come back downstairs again as anything other than an also-ran. There had been a couple of calls about Bush's willingness to endorse the whole platform if he were to be picked. From the Reagan camp, Richard V. Allen, the chief foreign policy adviser, had quietly reached out to the Bush circle just in case the Ford negotiations collapsed. Yes, of course, Bush had replied absently: He supported the platform.

It all seemed academic. If it were Reagan and Ford, and if the Republican ticket won in November, the big jobs-State, Treasury, probably Defense-were likely to be taken by the big men of the Nixon-Ford era: Kissinger, Greenspan, Rumsfeld, maybe Cheney. As he changed into khakis and a tennis shirt to watch the last hours of the convention session on television, George Bush believed history had passed him by. He opened another beer and let the bad news sink in. Jeb pounded his fist into his other hand. "This isn't fair, Dad," Jeb said. "This isn't fair to you."

His father cut him off. "What are you talking about, fair?" Bush said. This was politics; this was real life. "Nobody owes us a damn thing. We're going to leave this city with our heads high and I don't want to hear that anymore." Bushes didn't whine. "Do your best and don't look back"-that was the code. David Bates had a bottle of Scotch in his room. Jeb told his parents good night and went down to join him. There was nothing left to do but have a drink and go to bed.

- As the evening had worn on, Reagan's unhappiness with the Cronkite interview had deepened. At one point Reagan and Richard Allen were alone. The nominee asked, "almost rhetorically," Allen recalled, "Who else is there?"

"There's Bush," Allen said. He made the suggestion, Allen recalled, "half expecting" that Reagan would "close off the discussion" out of hand. "Instead, he paused and then said, 'I can't take him; that "voodoo economic policy" charge and his stand on abortion are wrong.'"

"If you could be assured that George Bush would support this platform in every detail," Allen asked Reagan, "would you reconsider Bush?"

"Well, if you put it that way," Reagan said, "I would agree to reconsider."

Reagan did not leave his suite as the hours ticked by. At 8:55 P.M., according to Allen, Ford and Reagan spoke on the phone; Ford told Reagan that Kissinger "now takes himself out" of consideration for secretary of state. (Kissinger had told Ed Meese that he would not accept a post as part of a Reagan-Ford power-sharing arrangement. "I thought it was absolutely untenable to have an imposed vice president and secretary of state," Kissinger recalled. "It would have led to an explosion.") Reagan said that they needed to reach a decision that night. The old actor's sense of his audience told him that a failed Ford deal on Thursday morning could damage his chances to deliver an effective acceptance speech. Better to move quickly.

By 10:45 P.M. Meese returned to report in from the ongoing talks with the Ford camp. "It's kind of hard to describe how it would work in practice," Meese said, according to Richard Allen. "The president will nominate the secretaries of State and Treasury, with the veto of the vice president. The vice president will name the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the national security adviser with the veto of the president. It boils down to a mutual veto power." The negotiators returned upstairs.

At the Pontchartrain, Jim Baker had given up hope. He sent Bush press secretary Pete Teeley down to the lobby to tell reporters covering Bush that "the lid was on"-meaning, in the vernacular of politics, that no more news was expected. In the Reagan suite, though, the atmospherics were shifting against Reagan-Ford. A source in the Reagan camp called Baker while Teeley was in the elevator going downstairs. "Hold everything," Baker told Bush. "This thing's about to come apart. Somebody's having second thoughts." Bush, exhausted, didn't react. Even if it weren't Reagan-Ford, Bush thought, "It might be Reagan-Laxalt, or even somebody who hadn't even been mentioned." Still, Baker had Teeley intercepted in the lobby before he could send the press off into the night.

By a quarter after eleven, after the roll call of states at the hall, Ronald Reagan was the nominee of the Republican Party, finally taking the prize he had first sought in 1968. At the Detroit Plaza, the negotiations dragged on inconclusively. Kissinger wanted the talks to continue into Thursday, but by this time Ford had decided it was best to take the safe path and say no to Reagan's offer. He went downstairs to speak with Reagan at 11:30 P.M.

"Ron, I've believed from the first, as I told you, this is wrong, and I feel even stronger about it, and I just don't think it's the right thing to do," Ford said, according to Reagan's recollection.

Reagan agreed. "Mr. President, I think if anything good has come out of this, I think it is that you and I have established a much closer relationship than we ever had," he said. Putting an arm around Reagan's shoulders, Ford replied, "We absolutely have. And I want you to know that I want you to win and I will do anything and everything I can to help you win." Ford returned upstairs, the drama done.

- Except Reagan still needed a running mate. It was 11:35 on the penultimate night of the convention, and virtually everyone in the political universe was expecting a Reagan-Ford announcement. Reagan's question to his team was straightforward.

"Well, what do we do now?" All was quiet. "There was no immediate response," recalled Richard Allen. "No one offered an alternate plan. No one tossed out a name. Expecting instant opposition, I ventured, 'We call Bush.'"

No one had anything to say. Everything had been invested in the Ford talks; Bush had emerged by default. Reagan had placed a call to Stu Spencer that night. "Do you still feel the same way about Bush?" Reagan asked. "Yes, I do," Spencer replied, recalling later that "pragmatism always prevailed with Reagan." There had been enough chaos. Reagan knew the caricature he had to defeat. His opponents, he said, wanted Americans to think of him as "a combination of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Mad Bomber." Whatever reservations he had about Bush, Reagan also knew that no one would ever mistake Bush for an extremist of any kind. He was the safe pick, popular with moderates and popular enough with most conservatives. Reagan seems to have become convinced that if he could not have Ford it was still a good idea to have someone politically close to the Ford constituency.

"Well," Reagan said, "let's get Bush on the phone."

At 11:37 P.M., the telephone in Room 1912 of the Hotel Pontchartrain rang. Jim Baker picked it up; Drew Lewis, a Reagan adviser, was on the line.

"Is George Bush there?"

"Yes," Baker said. "Who's calling?"

"Governor Reagan."

"Just a moment," Baker said.

Bush took the receiver from Baker and put the phone to his ear.

"Hello, George," Reagan said, "this is Ron Reagan. I'd like to go over to the convention and announce that you're my choice for Vice President...if that's all right with you." ("You pray that George will say yes," Baker whispered to Barbara, who came into the room just as Bush was beginning to speak with Reagan.) Bush turned to the others in the room, flashing a thumbs-up sign. "I'd be honored, Governor," Bush said.

"Out of a clear blue sky, the phone rang," Bush recalled. "Out of a clear blue sky. I thought we were done, out of it, just gone."

"George, is there anything at all...about the platform or anything else...anything that might make you uncomfortable down the road?" Reagan mentioned abortion in particular.

As Bush recalled it, "I told him that I had no serious problem with either the platform or his position on any of the issues, that I was sure we could work together, and that the important thing was that he win the election in November."

"Fine," Reagan said. "I'll head over to the convention, then we'll get together in the morning."

As Bush hung up, he was a saved man.

- Walter Cronkite had to regroup. "Well," he said, "let's see what George Bush would bring to the ticket."

In the Bushes' suite, now full of well-wishers-in politics nothing succeeds like success-Barbara was still virtually speechless from the chaos of the day. "The politics of it all were amazing," she wrote. "Kissinger-Greenspan and other Ford aides urging him to do this foolish thing....All with selfish interests. Why not? That's the name of the game!"

Bush took a few questions from the press at his hotel. What had he told Reagan? That he would "enthusiastically support the platform" and that he would "work, work, work" to win in November. "How did this happen?" a reporter asked. Bush had no idea. "I have no indication....It was a total surprise to me," he said.

At the hall, Reagan addressed the convention at a quarter after midnight. Yes, Reagan told the delegates, he and Ford had discussed the vice presidency. They had, Reagan said, "gone over this and over this and over this," but now "he and I" had reached the conclusion that Ford would confine his role to campaigning for the ticket as a former president.

Then came the rest of the news. "And I talked to a man we all know, and a man who was a candidate, a man who has great experience in government, and a man who told me that he can enthusiastically support the platform across the board," Reagan said. "I have asked and I am recommending to this convention that tomorrow when the session reconvenes that George Bush be nominated."

- The Bushes met the Reagans for coffee the next morning. In the interval between his withdrawal from the presidential race in May and the late telephone call the evening before, Bush had thought that any issues between him and Reagan could be put aside if the two men could just spend some time together.

With Reagan that morning there was "no hint of any tension," Bush recalled. Reagan aide Michael Deaver remembered Barbara's parting words to Reagan at that first coffee. "You're not going to be sorry," Barbara told Reagan. "We're going to work our tails off for you." As Deaver recalled it, "And they did. It was the greatest thing anyone could have said to him then."

At a press conference, Reagan and Bush were besieged by questions about the Ford deal. Asked whether Bush was the second choice, Reagan replied, "I think the situation is so unique that a former President-and this is the way many party leaders viewed it-that the possibility that he might do this on the ticket-rejoin a ticket having been President of the United States-was such that I think it is a little more unique and a different situation than having a first or a second choice."

A reporter pressed Bush, asking him whether being "the number two choice for the number two spot" was "a problem for you in this campaign." Bush was dismissive. "Absolutely not. The fact that Governor Reagan had discussions with President Ford as he said is unique, the very unique standing that President Ford has," Bush said.

Then Bush made a point that came directly from the heart of his character. "And what difference does it make?" he asked. "It's irrelevant. I'm here." Why look back, when there was so much to look forward to?

But how, Bush was asked, could he support a platform that did not endorse the Equal Rights Amendment and called for a constitutional amendment on abortion when he had supported the ERA and opposed such an amendment in his own campaign?

"My view is that the big issues, the major issues in the fall, will be the questions of unemployment and the economy and there are going to be the questions of foreign affairs," Bush said. "I oppose abortion. I favor equal rights for women. I'm not going to say I haven't had differences at some point with Governor Reagan and everybody else, many other people. But what I will be doing is emphasizing the common ground. I will be enthusiastically supporting this Republican platform. That's the way it's going to be. I'm not going to get nickel-and-dimed to death with detail."

What about Reagan's supply-side views, which Bush had consistently opposed?

"Listen, let me enthusiastically support the proposal that Governor Reagan made in terms of taxes," Bush said. "We both recognize that cutting taxes is the way to help people and to stimulate production is the important thing. And please do not try to keep reminding me of differences I had. I want to get there on the same wavelength and go forward together."

There were two criteria for a good vice president, Bush said: the ability to support the president "in conscience" and to be prepared to take over in the event of calamity. "I expect that Governor Reagan concluded that I measured up...and I hope and will strive to fit those two criteria."

What about Bush's "repeated insistence" during the primaries that he didn't want to be vice president?

"Can you ever imagine a person running for President saying he was running because he wanted to be vice president?" Bush replied. "I can't. And I have no regrets about that. I ran hard, and as I've said over and over again, got beaten fair and square and I have absolutely no qualms about accepting this."

Working overnight and into Thursday, the Reagan campaign made sure the Bush pick appeared fully sanctioned by the right. Bob Dole was asked, and agreed, to deliver the nominating speech for Bush. Seven seconders were lined up, including conservative heroes such as Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and Senator Roger Jepsen of Iowa as well as the more moderate Congressman William Goodling of Pennsylvania and former secretary of labor Arthur Fletcher. "We found no bad feeling-no bad vibes," wrote Barbara. During an introductory film for Reagan, an image of a young Nancy flashed by. "That must be the first Mrs. Reagan," said Dorothy Bush-but, as Barbara noted, "fortunately no one heard."

- On Friday morning the Reagans and the Bushes traveled from Detroit to Houston. They lunched at the Bushes' house on Indian Trail then went to the Galleria for a rally. "If Texas and California can't do it," Reagan told the crowd, "it can't be done."

For Bush, life was good. "He is a serious, able, and likable man," The New York Times editorialized after Bush's nomination. "Ronald Reagan's second choice is not second-rate." Bush was delighted. "Life is now hectic-pushed here & there," he wrote a friend. "I think we're going to win it."

A telling shift from the "Bush for President" days: It was now "we," not "I"-the price of resurrection from the politically dead. But Bush was back where he wanted to be: alive, and on the move.

TWENTY-TWO.

Well, What Do We Do Now?

Call me if I can lighten the burden. If you need someone to meet people on your behalf, or to turn off overly-eager office seekers, or simply someone to bounce ideas off of-please holler.

-GEORGE H. W. BUSH to Nancy and Ronald Reagan THE BUSHES HAD FEW PROBLEMS shifting to the Reagan cause. The transfer of allegiances from "Bush for President" to "Reagan for President" was made easier by the Bush worldview of looking ahead, and his decade of service to Nixon and to Ford had prepared him well for a supporting role. "It was a cliffhanger," Richard Nixon wrote Bush of the vice presidential selection, "but you won and I am convinced it was best for November." At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Bush spoke and took questions from a large audience. Barbara was seated next to Caspar Weinberger, one of Reagan's longtime California supporters, and he told her "lots of top Reagan people were not sure about G.B. and had questioned his loyalty. Now they were thrilled with the choice."

Where there were differences between Reagan and Bush, the Bushes either denied they existed (the path Bush favored) or minimized them (the Barbara technique). Asked to predict Bush's role in a Reagan administration, both Bushes demurred. "George lost the election," Barbara told interviewers. His job now was to back Reagan.

In August 1980, Bush, finding a role in the campaign as an international envoy from Reagan to the world, made a trip to Japan and to China. His mission: to reassure foreign capitals that the GOP presidential nominee was not a Cold War cowboy. Before Bush even left for Asia, though, he faced questions about Reagan's apparent suggestion that the United States should establish government relations with Taiwan, thus enraging China and endangering nearly a decade of diplomacy.

It fell to Bush to reassure Beijing that Reagan, despite his pro-Taiwan remarks, intended no major shifts in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. When the Bushes arrived in Beijing, the first major official with whom they met started in on Taiwan. Bush spent an hour on it, clarifying the Reagan position. One sign of how upset the Chinese were came when Barbara was harangued by an official "about the R.R. policy. He got very excited-loud voice-much gesturing-etc. First time that has ever happened to me. The word is out because we got the same lecture from everyone we saw! I have never had business mentioned to me before." After the journey, the GOP ticket met the press in Los Angeles, and Reagan supported the position that Bush had articulated in China. Though Reagan was sentimentally attached to the old Cold War romance of supporting Taiwan against the mainland, he was realistic enough to see that the world had moved on, and that he must move on with it. The press conference was arduous, with Reagan answering question after question.

Sitting with Barbara in their suite afterward, waiting to leave for the airport, Bush said, "The governor is such a nice fellow." In her diary, Barbara agreed. "He is sincerely nice," she wrote. "The questions were nit-picking and he kept answering. I couldn't help but contrast George's saying that to what he said once as we came home from a White House dinner years ago during those trying Nixon days. George said, 'I wish I could like Nixon better.' He-at this time-respected him-he just wasn't likable-now here we (maybe I should say I and not we) are worrying about R.R.'s ability-but really liking him. Crazy world."

- It was a wild fall, pitting Reagan against Carter against John Anderson, the Illinois Republican who was running as an independent candidate. The race between Reagan and Carter was close through much of the autumn. Reagan promised "a new beginning" to a country weakened by recession and by the image of American impotence in the face of the Iranian hostage crisis and of the Soviets in Afghanistan. Carter portrayed Reagan as coldhearted and trigger-happy.

Given Reagan's tendency to tell inaccurate anecdotes, misstate statistics, and issue inexact statements of policy, the Bushes, as part of the campaign, faced questions about the head of the ticket's grasp of detail. Barbara privately called them "Reagan's glitches."

On Sunday, September 7, 1980, Bush appeared on Meet the Press. At one point Bush was asked whether he agreed with Reagan's view that the theory of evolution was perhaps flawed. Bush refused to answer, calling the question "peripheral."

"We've been sitting here for twenty-two minutes," Bush told the panel of questioners in the NBC Washington bureau studios on Nebraska Avenue NW. "You know what the number one issue in this campaign is? It isn't evolution. It's the economy."

Reagan and Carter met in a single debate, in Cleveland on Tuesday, October 28. The Bushes flew in for the occasion and sat with Nancy in the auditorium. When the candidates appeared on the stage, Reagan walked over and shook Carter's hand-a gesture that left Carter looking "taken aback," Barbara wrote. Barbara leaned over to Nancy and said, "I think [Reagan] looks so much better than Carter. His makeup is better."

"Ronnie never wears makeup," Nancy said.

A group of big-dollar Republican donors passed along concerns in the middle of the fall. "They tell us that Jimmy Carter's underground campaign is working," Barbara wrote. "'R.R. is going to do away with Social Security'; 'R.R. hates blacks,' etc." The race was touch-and-go from week to week. Billy Graham was so worried that he told Barbara "that if it looks like we're losing in the end of October he will come out publicly for R.R. & G.B." Presenting Reagan in a moderate light to moderate voters was part of Bush's brief in the final days. "Governor Reagan is a decent, compassionate man," he said at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He repeated the message over and over.

- On the last day of campaigning before the election, Reagan and Bush sat together for a television taping. It was early-seven or eight in the morning-and Reagan was off his game. The spot was for broadcast that night, and it opened with a wide shot of Reagan and Bush side by side in chairs before focusing on Reagan, who was to give a half-hour appeal. Reagan advisers Mike Deaver and Stu Spencer were watching and were surprised at Reagan's performance. "God, he's awful," they said to each other. Never a morning person, Reagan knew he was flailing a bit.

"I'm awful," he volunteered. "This chair's too soft; I want to go to sleep." Deaver and Spencer fixed the chair, and started again.

"Then Reagan just nailed it-a half hour without a hitch," Spencer recalled. "And the whole time, Bush watched him do it with a look of awe-just awe-on his face." He knew he had much to learn.

- On Tuesday, November 4, 1980, the Bushes voted in Houston. Feeling confident, Bush told reporters that he thought the Republican ticket was "in like a burglar." The numbers were looking good-very good. Sitting on the floor of a suite at the Houston Oaks Hotel before a bank of three televisions, Bush roughhoused with the family, then mock-remembered his new dignity. "Respectful, respectful," he intoned, according to a New York Times story by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. "We didn't imagine a sweep like this," Bush told Sulzberger.

Ronald Reagan and George Bush had defeated Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale in a landslide. (Carter called Reagan to concede so early in the evening that he caught the president-elect in the shower.) Reagan-Bush won the popular vote over Carter-Mondale and Anderson, 50.75 to 41 percent (John Anderson polled 6.6 percent). The electoral college margin was even more impressive, 489 for Reagan to 49 for Carter.

Bush was ebullient. The exhaustion of the mad months of the post-Detroit campaign-the trip to Asia and the punishing tours of September and October-disappeared in the excitement of victory. "Well done, sir, well done," Bush said to Reagan, pumping the president-elect's hand as they met in Los Angeles on the day after the election. "Well, what do we do now?"

The first order of business was a press conference at the Century Plaza Hotel announcing the transition team. During the campaign, when Bush was asked about his role in a Reagan administration, he answered candidly. If he won Reagan's confidence, there would be "tons to do"; if he didn't, well, in that case Bush said he would be "going to a lot of funerals." At the press conference on Wednesday, November 5, 1980, a reporter quoted Bush's remark and observed that Bush seemed to be winning Reagan's confidence. Was that the case, the reporter asked? And if so, was George Bush to play a substantive role in the new administration?

Of Bush, who stood to his left on the stage, Reagan said, "...[H]e's not going to be going to a lot of funerals. Maybe we'll take turns."

To his defeated rival, Walter Mondale, Bush wrote: "I'd love to sit down with you. Thank you for your wire, your call, your just plain decency. I've lost-plenty-I know it's no fun." To Reagan, he pledged affection and loyalty. "Please know that we both want to help you in every way possible," Bush wrote the Reagans on Monday, November 10, 1980. "I will never do anything to embarrass you politically. I have strong views on issues and people, but once you decide a matter that's it for me, and you'll see no leaks in Evans and Novak bitching about life-at least you'll see none out of me....Call me if I can lighten the burden. If you need someone to meet people on your behalf, or to turn off overly-eager office seekers, or simply someone to bounce ideas off of-please holler."

Before November 1980 was over, the administrative details of the Reagan-Bush relationship were set. Ed Meese, who was to be counselor to the president, and Dean Burch, who had been working for Bush, worked out four ground rules that were memorialized in a memorandum from Burch to Bush dated November 21, 1980. "1) You and the President will have a scheduled weekly luncheon-no staff, no agenda; 2) You will automatically be invited to all presidential meetings; 3) You will receive a copy of all memoranda going to the President; 4) You will have the present Vice-President's [West Wing] office."

"I like it," Bush wrote in a quick note to Jim Baker. Bush was delighted with the arrangements-and even more delighted that Baker, whom Reagan had asked to run the general election campaign, would be White House chief of staff, giving the vice president a friend at court. "My presence [will] hopefully limit staff conflicts that tend to result in VP being cut out," Baker wrote in notes he kept during the transition.

Bush dismissed the fashionable talk that the vice presidency didn't mean anything. If it were such a terrible black hole, Bush asked rhetorically, "then why do so many people want it?" He answered his own question: "Because with a 70-year-old president, you could become president at any time."

TWENTY-THREE.