Given the ingredients-a Bay of Pigs veteran; a CIA alumnus advising the vice president, himself a former CIA director; and the ubiquitous Oliver North-the Rodriguez story understandably fed speculation about Bush's role. Yet in the end, according to the final Iran-contra special prosecutor's report, "There was no credible evidence obtained that the Vice President or any member of his staff directed or actively participated in the contra-resupply effort that existed during the Boland Amendment prohibition on military aid to the contras. To the contrary, the Office of the Vice President's staff was largely excluded from...meetings where contra matters were discussed."
After investigations by the Tower Commission, Congress, and the independent counsel, no evidence was ever produced proving Bush was aware of the diversion to the contras. A 1991 internal legal memorandum by Christian J. Mixter of the special prosecutor's office found insufficient evidence to hold Bush criminally liable for his role in either side of Iran-contra-either the arms sales or the diversion. Bush would remain politically liable, however, as the vice president of an administration in which national security officials had undertaken operations to subvert the will of Congress and then sought to cover up the full extent of what they had done.
Bush's sense of duty to the president suffuses his diary. "My gut instinct is to run to the President's defense and jump into the fray," Bush dictated on Wednesday, November 19, 1986. But as Iran Contra special counsel Lawrence Walsh wrote in his memoir of the scandal, "Bush's Achilles' heel...was his split-second instinct to categorically deny anything that might be politically embarrassing. His repeated statement that he had been 'out of the loop' regarding Ronald Reagan's secret effort to sell arms to free the hostages was one such blanket-and false-denial. The phrase had been too vivid; it would stick to him forever."
For all his devotion to Reagan, Bush failed the president as a foreign policy adviser in the Iran matter. Shultz and Weinberger had been right; Bush wrong. The arms-for-hostages scheme was misguided, and Bush should have known it-as Reagan's anti-terror adviser, he rightly opposed ransom in principle. Concerned about the hostages, overoptimistic about building bridges to Iran, and generally inclined to support the president, Bush backed a doomed policy. As the scandal erupted, the vice president joined Shultz and others in wanting to get out the facts. But not before first trying to hide them.
- The tumultuous year of 1986 ended as well as it could for Bush personally. On Wednesday, December 31, 1986, Scotty Reston published a generous New York Times column about the vice president. Even amid the scandal, Reston wrote, it would "probably be wrong to discount George Bush, especially if you look at his wife. These are serious people, among the best we have, with the gifts of intelligence and friendship and compassion. Quietly, he could make a difference in the next two years, and if not, go home without regret."
Bush appreciated the piece. "January 1st, the power of the Reston column," Bush dictated. "It lifted the morale of our people....All around Hobe Sound, where they study The New York Times editorial page day-in-day-out, there was joy."
Bush called on Reagan in the White House Residence on Tuesday, January 6, 1987. Walking in, Bush found the president lying on a couch with a flower in his mouth, his bare legs sticking out from a red bathrobe, "acting like he was dead." It was an odd moment. Then Reagan "jumped up and laughed-his wonderful warm self. My heart immediately thought, 'God, why does this guy have to be taking this pounding?'"
- The future of White House chief of staff Don Regan became a consuming issue inside the administration in late 1986 and early '87. Seeking ways to move beyond the Iran-contra narrative and put her husband in a better light, Nancy Reagan was pushing Reagan, Bush, and several other allies to force Regan to resign. Mrs. Reagan's logic was that Regan's departure would show that the president was putting the White House in order after the Iran-contra disaster. The Tower Commission was readying its report on what had gone wrong in the NSC process to produce the Iran-contra operation, and Regan wanted to wait until the report was issued before stepping down. (He thought that leaving before it was released would look worse for him.) Bush agreed with Nancy, and both in person and in writing he suggested to the president that Regan go. Reagan said no. He wanted the chief of staff to stay. "He is adamantly against it," Bush told his diary. Bush's code as vice president on this score was clear. If Reagan did not want something done, then Bush would follow the president's lead. There was, however, pressure from his own team and from Nancy to go around the president and push Regan out. "Lee Atwater is all concerned," Bush dictated in December. "I think he feels it [would be] a great political strike for me if I could be seen as leading to the ouster of Don Regan. I keep telling [the political team] to concentrate on Iowa and New Hampshire and to leave the White House stuff to the White House staff and keep the politics separate."
Stu Spencer, the old Reagan adviser and a Nancy ally, called on Bush. "He is urging me to go see Don Regan," Bush dictated. Bush declined; Reagan did not want Regan to leave, and so Bush believed that he would be undermining the president "if I went behind his back and against his will and told Don Regan to leave." The next day, at a White House Christmas party, Nancy pulled Bush aside. "I'll deny it if you ever say it, but it is essential that you do what Stu Spencer said," Nancy said.
"Nancy, I've got some hang-ups on that, based on my relationship with the President."
"Well, I do it all the time," Nancy said, "and it is important that you do it."
Bush understood the stakes. The longer the White House appeared to be in chaos, the worse his own chances two years hence. "I suppose that one could say that...if it continues like this it would make it extremely difficult to get the nomination," he dictated in late December 1986. Bush lunched with Nancy, and she described an incident in which Don Regan had hung up on her. ("Ann tells me I made a real mistake and I'm sorry," Regan, quoting his wife, told Nancy in a later call. "Never make that mistake again," Nancy had replied.) She pressed Bush on Regan. "I told her that I simply could not talk to Don Regan, having told the President in writing and three different times in person that I felt Don Regan should leave," Bush said. "I had not in six years betrayed the trust of the President."
The president finally agreed that Regan should go after stories appeared in the paper saying, accurately, that Nancy was the force behind the anti-Regan push. As early as December 1986, The Washington Post had reported that a frustrated Reagan had told Nancy to "get off my goddamn back" about Regan.*
On a snowy Monday the morning after a White House dinner for the nation's governors in February 1987, Reagan told Bush, "George, I'm going to have to do something about Don....If I won't stand up for my wife, who will? A certain honor is at stake." Reagan had apparently come to see the Regan matter in terms of its relation to Nancy, who was being depicted in the press as "obsessed" with the question. (The Washington Post ran a representative piece headlined "Nancy Reagan's Private Obsession: A Tenacious Struggle to Oust Donald Regan from the President's Team.") She brought in Robert Strauss, the former Democratic chairman, to advise her husband, and the papers were full of stories about how the chief of staff and the First Lady were no longer speaking.
Bush arranged the conversation between Reagan and Regan. "The President wants to see you," Bush told Regan. The president and the chief of staff spoke, and Regan agreed to resign the following week, after the Tower report was released on Thursday, February 26, 1987. Mrs. Reagan objected to the plan, telling both Bush and Jim Baker that she believed Regan should leave before the political talk shows on Sunday. Regan was a proud man coming to the end of six years of service to Reagan, four at Treasury and two in the White House. As he recalled, the president had promised him a "dignified departure....Naturally I had taken him at his word, and I was heartened by the thought that he would thank me publicly for my service."
That was not to be. Shortly there was a leak, and the news was on CNN: Don Regan was out, and Howard Baker, the former Senate Republican leader, was taking over as chief of staff. Bush was distraught over Regan's humiliation. Because Mrs. Reagan wanted the chief of staff out of the White House "before the Sunday shows," Bush recalled, "what would have been a nice peaceful way of getting everything done that Reagan wanted, getting Don to move on, just flared up-it was a disaster." He was uncomfortable with the tone of the post-resignation commentary about Regan. "The stories are full of Nancy Reagan and her strength in getting Don out," Bush dictated. "I just have a funny feeling that this is going to backfire."
Bush's instincts were right. From exile, Regan, much to the Reagans' embarrassment, published a memoir that detailed how Mrs. Reagan consulted an astrologer to set the presidential schedule. "You don't kick a man when he is down," Bush dictated. "You don't revel in his demise. You don't pile on in life."
- As Bush faced Dole, Robertson, Kemp, duPont and Haig, the Democratic field was taking shape. Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator who had run a great race against Walter Mondale in 1984, was the front-runner. Other contenders included Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt, Tennessee senator Al Gore, Delaware senator Joe Biden, and, in April 1987, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Bush's first reaction to Dukakis's run was that his many "liberal biases" would not travel well outside Massachusetts; the vice president believed Hart would prove the most formidable Democrat.
In early May, The Miami Herald published a long story raising questions about Hart's alleged womanizing. "I must confess, I am rooting for Hart," Bush told his diary. "I think the journalists have gone way too far this time." The Hart saga, which led to his dropping out of the race, gave life to rumors about Bush-chiefly that he had been romantically involved with Jennifer Fitzgerald, a longtime aide. When word of a possible news story about the alleged affair reached the Bush campaign headquarters in Washington, Lee Atwater rushed down the hall to Roger Ailes's office. "They have something on the old man," Atwater said. It fell to Ailes to take the matter to Bush, whom he met in the vice president's Old Executive Office Building suite. There was a storm coming, and the campaign-and the family-needed to be ready. "Mr. Vice President," Ailes said, "they've got a story about you, Jennifer Fitzgerald, and an affair." Bush never flinched. "They haven't got shit," he replied.
By now Ailes was an old hand at taking bad news to clients and gauging how much trouble was really at hand. "And I don't know if it was the fighter pilot in him, or the CIA director, or what, but I'm telling you this was a man with no fear," Ailes recalled. "I'd seen a lot of guys in similar situations, and none of them were ever as steady and certain as Bush was that day. If he'd strayed, he sure as hell wasn't worried, and the message I got was that he was clean on this."
The divorced Fitzgerald had worked for Bush in China, at the CIA, and in the office of the vice president. She was said to be a stern gatekeeper, and her style failed to endear her to the larger Bush universe. "I was very close to her for a while," Bush recalled in retirement. "And liked her. I knew she was difficult, and knew other people didn't like her. She was hard to work with for other people around her." In separate interviews with the author, Bush and Fitzgerald denied the rumors of an affair. "No," Bush said when asked if he had had an extramarital relationship with Fitzgerald. For her part, Fitzgerald replied: "It simply didn't happen. I have nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for the entire Bush family." Hers was not the only name to be speculatively linked to Bush's in gossipy political circles-a possible result of his cheerful flirting and overt fondness for attractive women. "From time to time he would let things go on too long and almost-almost-too far," a longtime Bush adviser recalled. "I really don't believe he ever crossed the line, but he got right up to it."
In June 1987, the New York tabloids-the Post and the Daily News-were reportedly chasing rumors that Bush had been robbed of his wedding ring after ducking the Secret Service on a trip to New York to see Fitzgerald. (One problem with the account: Bush did not wear a wedding ring, which meant there was no wedding ring to be stolen.) It was a false tale reminiscent, in a way, of the 1981 story that had Bush being shot outside Janet Steiger's house in Georgetown.
On the evening of Thursday, June 18, 1987, there was what Bush called "a whole new rash of rumors on the sex front." A reporter called in saying that "he'd heard" Bush had had affairs with four different women-all family friends and supporters. "It goes right around in circles." Bush was told that Dole and Kemp people were spreading the stories. "There are no facts," he dictated, "there is no evidence." The toll on Barbara was acute. "I talked to Bar this morning and she was telling me that her friends all had heard these ugly rumors," Bush told his diary. "Someone had called from Connecticut to say, 'I'd heard your marriage was on the rocks.' It's just awful."
On Monday, June 22, 1987, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report published pieces alluding to the Fitzgerald rumors. "It's ugly," Bush dictated on Tuesday, June 23. "You feel people are looking at you differently. It's humiliating for Barbara." Jim Baker called in with the latest, a rumor that Bush had been "shacked up" with a certain woman. Bush was both angry and amused: "The truth is I [have] never met" the woman in question. "This is a sick town with sick people and a sick climate," Bush added. "It makes you want to totally get out of it....I called Vermont to ask the guy to head the campaign and he says, 'What's with this adultery bit?' Ugly, nasty and the first time in twenty years of having your integrity questioned. But it's a sign of the times. Tomorrow it will be someone else, I'm sure." Bush believed Dole's aides were partly responsible for spreading the stories. That evening, he put in a call.
"Bob, let's just quiet this whole thing down," Bush said. "It's gone crazy."
Dole, Bush recalled, agreed and said that he had given orders that he wanted his campaign to stay out of the rumor business. "Bob," Bush said, "it's damned ugly for me and my family." News of the call leaked from the Dole camp to the New York Post, infuriating Bush.
Finally, George W. Bush, newly installed as the family enforcer at the campaign, took it upon himself to question his father.
"You've heard the rumors," George W. said to Bush. "What about it?"
"They're just not true," Bush replied.
George W. called two Newsweek reporters and issued a denial: "The answer to the Big A question is N.O." The son had gone public without authority from his father, and Barbara was upset with George W., telling him that his response had given the rumors credence. "Mother said, 'This is a disgrace,' but I did it because I was just furious [about the allegations]," George W. recalled. "It was an emotional reaction." His father sensed his son's anxiety. "George is very nervous, feeling he's made a big mistake in being quoted on 'adultery,'" Bush dictated on Friday, June 26, 1987. "In my view, it did admit the story to get more credibility. But I was proud of him for standing up for the truth." George W.'s intervention worked. "Rumor died down and gone," Bush told his diary. "But only after agony for the family."
- As the official announcement of his presidential campaign approached in October 1987, Bush agreed to grant the reporter Margaret Warner of Newsweek access to him and to the family, including his mother, for a profile. Everything seemed fine in the course of the interviews-Warner trying to get to the essence of Bush, seeking anecdotes and telling details to try to capture the character of the man.
Warner's draft was handed over to Evan Thomas, the magazine's Washington bureau chief and a deft writer. The editorial consensus inside Newsweek's New York headquarters was that a frontal assault on Bush's main weakness-his inability to project his own identity in Reagan's shadow-was the best bet for a memorable cover and piece. "Bush, who formally declares his candidacy this week, enters the nomination fight with enviable advantages-high name recognition and stronger voter ratings for experience and competence," Thomas wrote. "Other candidates can spend an entire primary season trying to match those assets. Yet Bush suffers from a potentially crippling handicap-a perception that he isn't strong enough or tough enough for the challenges of the Oval Office. That he is, in a single mean word, a wimp."
The cover itself featured a handsome-enough image of Bush on his cigarette boat in Maine. The language was stark: "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor.'"
"Ugly, nasty, pure political shot," Bush told his diary. "But what can you do? How can you defend yourself?" He had opened up to the press about the true George Bush, the man who had flown through flak and lived through the death of a child. He had revealed more than he was really comfortable talking about, risking his mother's disapproval of the "Great I Am." And now the mocking Newsweek cover and the questions that followed-he was repeatedly asked about the line-appear to have given him fresh resolve. "Had to shoot down the 'wimp' question by saying, 'My combat comrades didn't think so; my business friends didn't think so; the people at the CIA didn't think so; so why should I be concerned[?]," he dictated. "The American people won't think so." How to make sure of that? By taking the fight to his foes.
* When the "get off my goddamn back" anecdote was published, Bush dictated to his diary: "David Hoffman [of the Post] told [Bush chief of staff Craig] Fuller that this came from a family member. There was some talk of demanding a retraction. So I then walked down alone and told the President on the morning of the 9th that Hoffman had told this to Fuller. He was shocked. He said, 'The only person that could be is Maureen [Reagan, the president's daughter from his first marriage, who was spending a lot of time in the White House].... I don't believe that at all. She is close to Nancy now and I just don't believe the bastards.'" Bush said, "Well, I just wanted you to know this. It is unpleasant, but if you go to [Washington Post executive editor Ben] Bradlee, I wouldn't want that to come out as their source or something to further embarrass your family." Mrs. Reagan denied the "get off my...back" episode had taken place.
TWENTY-SEVEN.
Like You've Been Hit in the Stomach
It's really gloomy. Our pros don't have any answers. Just discouragement, desolation. I thrash all night.
-GEORGE H. W. BUSH, on losing the 1988 Iowa caucuses LEE ATWATER HAD A BAD FEELING about Iowa. Eight years earlier, the caucuses had propelled Bush to presidential plausibility with the victory over Reagan, but it had been a long eight years. The farm states were in a prolonged economic slump, the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson was well organized in the state, and Bush's chief mainstream challenger for the 1988 nomination, Bob Dole, was from neighboring Kansas. It was Dole, not Bush, who could say "I'm one of you" to the people of Iowa.
Dole and Bush were old rivals. They had been bright young men together in the Age of Nixon, overlapping for a term in the House. (Dole moved up to the Senate in 1968.) Dole had not been happy to give up the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee to Bush in 1973, but had saluted. In Dole's mind, that was the way of the world when it came to Bushes and Doles. The rich kids always won. To Dole, Bush was a comfortable navy flyboy from Greenwich, Connecticut, who had been dining on steaks and strawberries off silver at sea while he, a striving poor infantryman from Russell, Kansas, had been grievously wounded in ground combat in Italy during World War II.
Dole enjoyed taunting Bush on the trail. He liked to talk about how he, unlike some unnamed others, was offering "a record, not a resume." He liked to talk about how he, unlike some unnamed others, was "tough. I understand you have to be tough to make tough choices." And he liked to talk about how he, unlike some unnamed others, had risen not on connections but on grit. "I got here the old-fashioned way. I earned it. Nobody gave it to me."
Dole even managed to tweak Bush on the vice president's own turf: inside the White House, where Bush was finding the 198788 Howard Baker era as chief of staff difficult. The vice president had felt comfortable with Jim Baker and with Don Regan but saw Howard Baker as a potential rival for power, either on his own account or as an ally of Dole's and of Bill Brock's, the former RNC chairman who had signed on as Dole's campaign manager. (Brock and Howard Baker had served together as senators from Tennessee in the 1970s.) "It is almost like I don't exist," Bush dictated. Tom Griscom, a Howard Baker aide, was quoted to Bush as having said that "there may be a fall-out plan in which the Republican convention would deadlock and they would turn to Howard Baker"-the last thing George Bush wanted to hear. On one galling occasion, Dole was granted a coveted joint appearance with Reagan to announce Dole's support for an intermediate-range nuclear treaty with the Soviets-a treaty Bush had supported all along.
To himself, Bush mused about the challenge Dole posed. "He's what they call a tough guy, and yet I wonder how really tough he is," Bush told his diary. "I don't like to equate meanness with toughness, ugliness with toughness. They accuse me of being too nice...not tough enough. But I believe I've got more inner fiber and more strength than Bob Dole will ever have. Time will tell."
- Time, and Iowa. In the fall of 1987 Dole was leading Bush 42 to 26 percent in Iowa polling. All Bush could do was what he had always done: Keep things steady.
In mid-October the vice president was at the White House for a state visit with India's Rajiv Gandhi when word came that the stock market was in free fall, crashing 508 points during the trading day. There were suggestions that the president close the exchange, but Bush advised against it, believing the move overly dramatic. When Bush heard about the idea, he broke off from Gandhi to tell Reagan what he thought.
The president accepted Bush's counsel and declined to step in. "During this so-called crisis, there was a lot of near-panic," Bush dictated. "People rushing around, wringing their hands-a lot of politicians jumping in....My view is that you don't just jump out there and make a statement when there is a hurricane raging outside unless you have something intelligent to say."
- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, arrived in Washington in early December 1987 for a summit with Reagan. When Gorbachev stepped out of the car at the White House, Barbara was struck that he had a face "like Daddy's, smiling eyes and teeth of iron." Later, at a dinner at the Soviet embassy, Barbara took roll in her mind: "The Doles were not there, probably in New Hampshire or Iowa blasting George."
In the summit meetings, Bush, eager to play a larger role, thought Reagan deferred "an awful lot" to George Shultz. While he maintained his dignified reticence, he thought of the future: "I am confident that I could more than hold my own with Gorbachev." Bush had a long talk with Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, who "made distinct sounds that he and the others wanted me to be elected President." Bush was appreciative. "Well, I would like to talk to [the] General Secretary about what my priorities would be if I were elected President," he told Shevardnadze.
Bush's opportunity came during a limousine ride with Gorbachev on Thursday, December 10, 1987, from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base. In the motorcade Bush and Gorbachev talked, rather obliquely, of American politics. "I told him that in my view, [a] Democratic or a Republican president would want to continue the improved relationship," Bush recalled. "But I reminded him that it was Nixon who went to China, and it is Reagan who will get this INF Treaty through the Senate, and in my view a Republican President would be easier in the long run to work with." Gorbachev "did not comment, but he took it on board."
Bush spoke candidly, if optimistically, about his own prospects. "Dole looks pretty dangerous right now, but I think I'll get the Republican nomination," Bush said. "If I'm elected-and I think I will be-you should understand that I want to improve our relations." Bush made something else clear, too. "I told Gorbachev not to be concerned about the 'empty cannons of rhetoric' he would hear booming during the campaign, and explained what the expression meant," Bush recalled. It was an old favorite phrase of Mao's that Bush had adopted, not only in foreign affairs but in domestic politics as well. "'Don't worry about excessive bombast,' they would say," Bush recalled of the Chinese. "Look at deeds and actions instead." Bush was telling Gorbachev that political necessity might require him to say tough things about the Soviet Union in the coming campaign. "He should not take them too seriously," Bush recalled saying. In that motorcade, moving through the streets of Washington toward Andrews, Bush had mentioned one obstacle, though, by name: Bob Dole. He still had to defeat the senator from Kansas before the world could be his.
- The first sign of trouble in Iowa had come in September 1987 at the Ames straw poll-the pre-caucuses contest Bush had won over Reagan to such great effect in 1979. During the event at the Iowa State Center on the campus of Iowa State, Lee Atwater and Rich Bond, the 1980 Iowa veteran who was now Bush's national deputy manager, were sitting high in the arena. They watched as the Dole people marched in, followed by the Robertson people. "There were thousands of them," Bond recalled.
"Where are our people?" Atwater drawled, angrily.
Bond could only roll his eyes. He knew what was coming, and it wasn't good. Bush finished third, behind Pat Robertson, who was rallying religious conservatives, and Dole, who placed second. "It was," Bush told his diary, "the first hit that we've really taken."
On the gloomy flight on Air Force Two back to Washington from Ames, Bond sat alone and depressed in the back of the plane, knowing, he recalled, "the shitstorm that was coming and knowing what this portended for the future-finishing third on caucus night." Bond was called up to the vice president's cabin mid-flight. Bush was there with Barbara, Atwater, and a few staffers. Bush greeted Bond cheerfully, and Mrs. Bush delivered the message. "So, Rich, when are you going back to Iowa?"
"Immediately, Mrs. Bush," replied Bond, who had not yet had time to sit down. He left Washington the next day to take charge of the Iowa caucus campaign.
Bush pressed on. It had only been a straw poll. There was world enough and time to make his stand. "Pick up the pieces," he told himself. "There aren't that many to pick up...work hard...correct what was wrong and just go forward."
- At the end of the first week of January 1988, Dole attacked Bush over the arms-for-hostages initiative with Iran-arms sales that Dole said ran "against the grain of everything we stand for in America."
Led by Dole, Bush's primary opponents were trying to make an issue of Bush's judgment. Exhibit A on the eve of Iowa and New Hampshire: Iran. The political issue in the Republican primary race, though, was less about what Bush had known and more about what he had thought. What had he advised the president?
For a man running on his experience, it was a fair question. On the eve of a Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Bush wanted to be calm under fire, and he was, more or less. At his hotel, preparing for the debate, "I spend a couple of nervous hours going over...day care, homelessness, women's issues, long-term health care, etc.," Bush told his diary. "I am weak on those, not that I don't care, because I do, but because I don't have the expertise in these fields." That morning The Des Moines Register had done a big article on Iran-contra, raising questions about Bush's role. "Tension City," Bush dictated. "Tension City." He expected the worst.
Jim Gannon, the editor of the Register, moderated the debate. "Mr. Bush, you've been Vice President for seven years," Gannon said, working from notes in his lap. "But it is hard to assess your role in the Reagan Administration, what your judgment was on key issues and what role you played in shaping policy....You seem to be telling the American people, in effect, 'Trust me; I did the right thing, but I can't tell you what I did.' How can you expect their trust if you won't tell them plainly what you thought, what you said, what you did at that time on those key issues?"
Bush assumed a stern look. "Jim, contrary to the hypothesis of your question, I have answered every question put to me save one," he said, gesturing with both hands. "And the one question is, 'What did you tell the President of the United States?' and I shouldn't do that."
Yet Bush had already signaled what he had told the president. "But what troubled me-and I expressed these misgivings-was that the United States was involved in a major foreign-policy initiative with only limited control over how it was carried out," Bush had written in his 1987 campaign autobiography, Looking Forward. "True, we were working with a loyal ally, Israel; but at times even the Israelis indicated they were at a loss to understand the volatile political situation in Iran." In February 1987, he had also publicly said that he had "expressed certain reservations on certain aspects," and in March 1987, President Reagan had issued a statement saying that Bush "had expressed reservations throughout the process but had supported the decision and the policy."
Here, in Des Moines, the complicated public character of George H. W. Bush-an often confusing combination of political calculation and personal honor-was on vivid display. On the overall issue of whether he understood the sales to be trading arms for hostages, he carefully obfuscated, emphasizing the "strategic" effort over the "tactical" hostages element. (Put that one down to political calculation.) On the question of what he advised the president, he steadfastly refused to distance himself from Reagan in debates or interviews when it might have helped him politically. (Put that one down to personal honor.) And, finally, he was demonstrating loyalty to a president who remained popular with the Republican base. (Another for political calculation.) In sum, Bush was trying to have it all kinds of ways. True, he had raised concerns about working through Israel to transfer arms to Iran, but he had gone along with the basic policy of arms for hostages. Decades later, asked if he had ever disagreed with Reagan on the issue, Bush answered elliptically. "No, but I probably disagreed with the handling of it. If you mean reaching out to Iran, I didn't have any problem with that."
A few days after the Des Moines debate in 1988, his personal honor led to a politically useful moment. Amid the speculation about Bush and Iran, Don Regan, whom Bush had treated with grace, publicly said that he recalled Bush's expressing reservations about the arms sales in a meeting with the president. "The moral of this," Bush told his diary, "is don't kick someone when they're down"-an instance of Bush's decency having the effect of serving his ambition. Regan's supportive words aside, the news from Iowa in the middle of January was discouraging. With the caucuses approaching, Bush trailed Dole by fourteen to fifteen points.
Bush lunched with Reagan on Wednesday, January 20, 1988. The atmosphere was warm. Three days earlier, on January 17, Lou Cannon of The Washington Post had published a piece reporting Reagan's support for his vice president: "Reagan...is said to believe that the election of a Republican president and Bush in particular would be a ratification of his 'legacy' on basic issues of foreign and domestic policy."
- On the evening of Reagan's 1988 State of the Union address in late January, Bush flew from New Hampshire to Washington in a snowstorm to attend the joint session of Congress and to sit for a remote interview with anchor Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News.
The network had set up in Bush's Capitol office; Barbara brought a change of clothes from the residence. Roger Ailes met Bush at Andrews and rode to the Hill with him. Though CBS had said the piece was a political profile, Ailes had heard that the network was planning an ambush on Iran-contra and warned Bush about what was coming. "You've either got to go in there and go toe-to-toe with this guy," he told Bush, "or you're going back to Kennebunkport."
Rather ran a set-up piece detailing questions about Bush and Iran-contra, then homed in on the vice president in the interview segment. The exchange produced more heat than light, with the two men clashing and often speaking over each other. Bush refused to give any ground. As the two men battled it out, Ailes grabbed a piece of paper, wrote "WALKED OFF THE AIR!!" in large capitals, and held the sign under the camera for Bush. The note reminded the vice president of a line of attack Ailes had prepared for him: judging Bush's career on the scandal, Ailes had said, was like judging Rather's on an embarrassing moment when the anchor had stalked off his set in September 1987 to protest his broadcast being delayed for a tennis match, only to have the network go dark for a few minutes.
"I don't think it's fair to judge a whole career, it's not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran," Bush said. "How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?" (Rather had actually walked off a temporary set in Miami.) A startled Rather tried to get back on track. "Mr. Vice President, I think you'll agree that your qualifications for president and what kind of leadership you'd bring the country, what kind of government you'd have...is much more important than what you just referred to."
As time ran out, Rather abruptly cut off the segment-so abruptly that to many viewers he appeared to have been rude to the vice president. The interview over, Bush sat in Washington, steaming. His microphone still on, he turned to the CBS producer in the room. "Tell your goddamned network that if they want to talk to me, to raise their hands at a press conference. No more Mr. Inside Stuff after that." Rather, he went on, made CBS's Lesley Stahl, a tough interviewer, "look like a pussy." ("People were taking that as a sexist remark," Bush told his diary, "but I meant pussycat, the way he came on like a tiger.") Concerned about how it had gone over, he reached for the telephone to call George W.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"Man, you knocked it out of the park," George W. replied. "Dad, this is awesome. You stood your ground, you didn't let him bully you, and the American people are going to appreciate this."
George W. was right. Many viewers thought Rather had been ungenerous toward the vice president, and the coverage of the interview cast Bush in a heroic light as a man who gave no quarter. Even Ronald Reagan approved, remarking that Rather had "'stepped on his own dick,'" Bush dictated. People could mock Bush as much as they liked-as a wimp, as a rich kid, as an opportunist. He had heard it all before, many times. Yet he had built a life after electoral defeats and political setbacks, remaining viable, and here he stood, the vice president of the United States and one of a handful of men with a shot at the top job. If he lost, it would not be for lack of spirit or guts or cold-bloodedness. A lesson of his life was never to surrender when under fire or facing challenge. He would do what it took to meet the tests that presented themselves, and make his peace with it later.
- Yet the Rather showdown could not turn things around in Iowa. With two weeks to go before the caucuses, Rich Bond met Bush in Cedar Rapids, joining the vice president in the motorcade with Atwater and the local campaign chairman.
"So, Rich, how are we doing?" a good-spirited Bush asked.
Bond paused, then answered honestly. "You're going to finish third."
Bush was taken aback. "So what am I doing here?" he asked-or "snapped," as Bond recalled it.
"You have no choice," Bond replied.
Bush said nothing for the rest of the ride. "Atwater sat there blazing daggers at me, trying to make my head explode," Bond recalled. "Our local chairman looked like he just ate a dead frog. The whole thing sucked, but the VP needed to hear the truth."
- Bond's predictions about the caucuses had been accurate. On Monday, February 8, 1988, Bush lost to a triumphant Dole and a well-organized Pat Robertson. "It feels like you've been just hit in the stomach," Bush told his diary. "It's really gloomy. Our pros don't have any answers. Just discouragement, desolation. I thrash all night. No sleep. I couldn't get the room cooled down, for one thing. If I could just figure what went wrong."
Credit 27.1 Lee Atwater brought a sharp edge to Bush's 1988 campaign and was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. Atwater would die of complications from a brain tumor in 1991.
The action moved to New Hampshire. He needed to win here, and win now. "I just go about my business," he dictated. "Work hard, and get the job done. I hate the negative things that are said about me, but I know nothing to do but to fight back in this state." Time marched on. "But there is always a tomorrow," Bush told his diary. "Remember that-always a tomorrow."
TWENTY-EIGHT.
We Came Out of the Dead