I Want to Do the Most Good I Can
God, there are so many problems out there.
-GEORGE H. W. BUSH WHEN BUSH FIRST ARRIVED in Washington in January 1967-the day he invited the moving men to stay over-he learned the ways of the capital at a time when Democrats and Republicans formed bonds that produced, if not a bipartisan Valhalla, then at least a sense of shared purpose and mutual deference. Like Prescott Bush's Senate, George H. W. Bush's House had a club-like feel. The congressional world he had known was one in which a Republican member could agree with a Democratic president, and junior members were generally respectful toward senior members of both parties.
From the White House two decades on, Bush watched as the more genial political universe he had known as a young man gave way. On the last day of May 1989, House Speaker Jim Wright, facing sixty-nine ethics charges in the House, resigned. The Democrat's fall was a victory for Newt Gingrich, who had spent years pressing for investigations into Wright's finances and other dealings. Savvy and relentless, Gingrich had cast Wright as a liberal general in a war for the American soul-a war, Gingrich had told the Heritage Foundation, that "has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars." In an hour-long farewell speech to the House, Wright had decried the "mindless cannibalism" of such reflexive personal and partisan warfare. "When vengeance becomes more desirable than vindication," Wright said, "harsh personal attacks upon one another's motives and one another's character drown out the quiet logic of serious debate on important issues."
The words could have been Bush's, and the president was gracious about the fallen Speaker. "In spite of the present situation," Bush said in a statement, "I believe the Wright tenure was one of effectiveness and dedication to the Congress of the United States." An old Bush friend, House Majority Leader Tom Foley of Washington State, was to succeed Wright.
The war raged on: Lee Atwater's Republican National Committee attacked Foley in a release that compared him to the openly gay Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank. The memo was entitled "Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet." Bush sent word that the author of the release should be fired. "Foley is a decent guy. There have been rumors floating around of being homosexual, but I'll be damned if I think the party ought to get into that sink," Bush told his diary. "Foley's a decent fellow, [a] warm human being [who has] just taken on this assignment and to get that kind of gut shot is so cheap, I can't believe it." The president understandably feared that the attack culture that had destroyed Wright was taking hold in Washington. "I am, of course, not a homosexual, been married for 21 years," Foley told CNN, calling the RNC memo "a very cheap smear."
At the White House, Bush's outrage was real, but he seems not to have confronted the fact that one reaps what one sows. Atwater's aggressive style was no secret; Bush had needed someone "tough"-a word Bush used to describe Atwater-to get through 1988, and now his own party and his own men were contributing to the growing "ugliness" (another favorite Bush word about political warfare) in Washington.
"The Democrats strike back," Bush dictated, and "Frank say[s] he'll expose homosexuals on our side, and it's everything ugly and that I detest in politics." The Foley rumors and Wright's fall, together with the failure of the Tower nomination, foreshadowed an age of stark partisanship, one in which politicians who wished to get ahead (which was to say most politicians) were more likely to confront than to compromise.
- Bush's presidency would be defined by his ability to find consensus at a moment when most domestic political forces-on the right and the left-were conspiring against the American center. The lesson of Gingrich's rise was that headlines, votes, and the dollars of devoted donors were more likely to be won on the extremes, which presented President Bush with a particular challenge: how to govern in a capital where compromise was falling rapidly out of fashion. For legislators, it was politically savvier to be a Gingrich of the 1990s than a Bush of the 1960s.
For Bush, the key to the notable domestic successes of his presidency was to discern the consensus of the country, not simply take the temperature of the capital, and join forces with the opposition party on measures that were broadly popular, always aiming to make the bills in question as conservative as possible. "I want to do the most good I can," Bush would tell his senior staffers, "and the least harm."
The national mood during the Bush administration-like Bush himself-tended to be largely conservative but open to moderately progressive measures. According to University of North Carolina political scientist James A. Stimson's "Policy Mood Index," a measure of attitudes on the liberal-conservative spectrum since 1952, the American outlook from 1989 to 1993 roughly matched that of the middle of the Eisenhower years-also a time of broad conservative feeling as well as large public-sector undertakings such as the federal interstate highway system. For Bush to be an effective president in terms of responding to the public that had elected him, then, he needed to project a conservative tone while selectively enlarging the federal role in American life.
The question for Bush: Could he meet the expectations of the public in terms of economic and domestic legislation without overly antagonizing his own right wing? For about two years of his presidency-in 1989 and into the autumn of 1990-Bush was largely able to defend the center against attacks from the right on legislative and budget issues. Yet his very successes at consensus leadership-particularly on the federal budget in 1990-sowed the seeds of a sustained conservative rebellion in 1991 and 1992 that, combined with economic recession, proved too much for the president. His hours of victory led to his hours of defeat.
The victories, though, did come first-on education, on the environment, on civil rights for the disabled, and, to the permanent fury of the right, on a federal budget deal that included higher taxes. His real-time acclaim for these accomplishments and bills was fleeting, in part because conservatives tended to dislike the measures and liberals did not wish to give a Republican president too much credit.
- Surveying the landscape before him early in 1990, Bush was conscious of the difficulties ahead. "God, there are so many problems out there," he dictated in January. And so he threw the White House open to Democrats and Republicans, lawmakers and activists, and businessmen and reformers, believing that personal connections enhanced the chances of policy progress. As Bush biographer Timothy Naftali observed, the president sought to apply his personal foreign policy style to the domestic realm. "People always think President Bush was just interested in global things, but those of us who were there, in the trenches, watched him work Congress as hard as he could," recalled deputy White House chief of staff Andrew Card. "The tough part, of course, was that it was a Democrat Congress, which people also forget."
Insisting that everyone deserved attention-their "place in the sun," as Bush put it-the president was constantly on the phone to congressmen and senators, seeking their opinions. Then, after hearing them out, he would ask them to be with him on a given vote. "The most important thing a president can do is not twist someone's arm but to give them a chance to twist the president's," John Sununu recalled. "If a congressman has had a chance to make his own case to the president of the United States, that congressman is much, much likelier to then say, 'But I'll support you, Mr. President.'" And Bush was happy to make as many such calls as he had to make.
Consensus and connection: Bush's understanding of Washington, especially in his first two years, brought him domestic achievements. He sought and passed increased funding and tax credits for families with children, including enhancements for Head Start. He signed the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 to bail out troubled savings and loans and create the Resolution Trust Corporation. Bush banned the importation of most semiautomatic rifles. After a veto, he signed the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1989, raising the minimum wage.
On education, in the fall of 1989 he convened a rare presidential summit with the nation's governors at Charlottesville. There had been only two similar gatherings before: one called by Theodore Roosevelt, on conservation, the other by Franklin Roosevelt, who invited the governors to meet with him following his inauguration. It was a perfect setting for Bush, a gathering where he could make his points personally and intimately. The most lasting result: Bush called for national performance goals in K12, establishing a key policy principle. Bill Clinton of Arkansas was the point man for the Democratic governors. The goals themselves were the product of talks led by the White House's Roger Porter, who negotiated them with Clinton and Carroll Campbell, the Republican governor of South Carolina. Clinton and Campbell joined Barbara Bush in the First Lady's box when the president announced the goals, approved by all the nation's governors, at the 1990 State of the Union address.
On the environment, Bush cultivated both politicians and industry in a concerted effort to pass the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, bringing market-based incentives to the legislation and engaging widespread Democratic support-including that of George Mitchell, who negotiated the complex bill with the White House's Roger Porter and Robert Grady. Mitchell credited Bush with reversing the Reagan administration's opposition to clean-air and -water bills, calling the new president's decision to reauthorize the Clean Air Act "courageous." Mitchell recalled being delighted that "the question had shifted from 'Will there be a clean air bill?' to 'What will be in the clean air bill?'"
After more than 130 hours of negotiations between the White House and Congress, Bush signed a Clean Air measure that enjoyed large bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate. The comprehensive bill established bold goals and timetables for addressing acid rain, toxic substances, and "ozone attainment"-a technical term for the smog that was bedeviling major American cities and metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago. Despite the wide-ranging legislative success, Bush got little credit with environmentalists. After reading a "report card" in the newspapers that gave him middling grades on environmental issues, Bush asked Porter what he thought of the piece. "Mr. President, that's not a report card you will want to send home," Porter said. Bush nodded. "Not a lot of gratitude there," the president replied. But Bush had done the right thing, and he knew it, even if the activists on the left chose not to acknowledge the substance of what a Republican president had done.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was a landmark bill, and Bush maneuvered between activists, Democrats, and businesses to craft legislation that would grant the disabled access to jobs and buildings without creating a regulatory nightmare. His interest in the bill was rooted in fair play. It just didn't seem right to him, he'd explain to visitors, that somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who was deaf didn't have the exact same rights-of access and of employment-as anybody else. Bob Dole, who bore the wounds of war, championed the measure. After their years of competition, Dole and Bush had come to appreciate each other. However much divided them culturally, they had been shaped by World War II and by a common Washington sensibility about the essential supremacy of governing over campaigning, and the president was grateful to Dole for the Kansas senator's skill and support throughout the administration.
On the ADA, Bush was personally engaged. One Friday afternoon in the spring of 1990, the telephone rang in the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. It was the White House: Would Senator Harkin, who was involved in disability issues, like to join President Bush for a drink that evening?
Harkin happily accepted. He'd been locked in negotiating combat with John Sununu over elements of the ADA draft; it would be diverting to see the president socially. Arriving in the family quarters, the senator found the president making martinis for an eclectic group of guests (all male; Barbara was out of town) that included Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp and White House counsel Boyden Gray. The talk was pleasant but general. An old pilot himself, Harkin talked with Bush about flying, and the president gave everyone a tour of the private rooms, including a viewing of Millie's bed. After ninety minutes or so, the party broke up. Harkin was standing with Bush and Gray waiting for the elevator that would take them down from the Residence to a small hallway near the State Dining Room. "I thought to myself, 'I really don't want to spoil the evening, but I've got to say something about the ADA bill, which was kind of stalled at the moment,'" recalled Harkin.
"Mr. President," Harkin said, "I don't mean to bring up business, but I really hope we can get together on the disabilities act."
"Oh, yeah," Bush said, "I'm for that. We've got to get that done."
"Well, Mr. President, we're having some real problems right now," Harkin said.
"What's that?"
"I hate to say it, sir, but it's John Sununu."
Bush turned to Gray.
"Boyden," Bush said, "I want you to take this over and get it done."
"Yes, sir," Gray replied.
Gray handled Harkin's issues, the talks proceeded more smoothly, and the bill was ready for Bush's signature in the last week of July 1990. In a sunny, sparkling ceremony on the South Lawn, Bush equated the ADA with the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Even the strongest person couldn't scale the Berlin Wall to gain the elusive promise of independence that lay just beyond," Bush said. "And so, together we rejoiced when that barrier fell. And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has for too many generations separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp."
From education to the environment to civil rights for the disabled, Bush's domestic legislative achievements did not fit neatly into the traditional categories of left and right. Conservatives distrusted Bush's use of government to reach certain ends, and liberals were wary of his emphasis on limiting regulatory intrusion and, where possible, using market-based incentives. But what the president called, without irony, "sound governance" required the sensibility of the "Have-Half" Poppy Bush of distant days. Sometimes, when his political advisers would try to tell him that his compromises were difficult to sell to his own base, Bush would fix them with what one longtime aide called "the Look-you know, the one that said, politely, of course, 'If you're so smart, then why aren't you the president of the United States?'"
THIRTY-FIVE.
A Nation Reunited and a New NATO
I don't think we can be nave about history, but I don't think we need to let history and the problem with WWI and WWII control Germany's fate in the future.
-GEORGE H. W. BUSH, on German reunification THE FORTY-FIRST PRESIDENT of the United States adored the White House. Theodore Roosevelt had delighted in playing "bear" in the house with his children, being chased by what one biographer described as "young hunters, armed with umbrellas or fire irons, or any other object which was at hand." George H. W. Bush loved the mansion in the same way, with the same spirit.
The Bushes awoke most mornings around five A.M. in their bedroom in the Residence. In a king-size bed, they would drink coffee-Bush had bought cup warmers for the bedside tables-and read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, USA Today, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and the White House News Summary, a big compilation of clips and transcripts. (Coffee was critical to him: On the road as vice president and even into his White House years, he carried a special heating stick to make himself a cup of instant each morning in his hotel rooms.) If Bush were reading fast, he could rip through the pile of papers in forty-five minutes; it would take a bit longer if he wanted, as he often did, to jot down notes about what he'd seen.
Breakfast tended to be yogurt and granola. Sometimes Bush would take a few minutes in the early morning in the Residence to catch up on his diary dictations; then he would shower-occasionally with Millie-and dress for the day. His suits (42L, 38 waist) came from a Washington clothier, Arthur A. Adler; his shirts (which Bush, in a phrase that betrayed his Greenwich origins, unironically called "shirtings" in private) from Ascot Chang, a Hong Kong tailor. And yet when he was not in full presidential mode in terms of attire-he favored dark suits, straight collars, and unexceptionable neckties-he often looked a bit of a mess. To Doro's 1992 wedding at Camp David he wore white pants with a blue stripe. The president of the United States had forgotten to bring a suit. During the crisis with Panama, Colin Powell recalled meeting with Bush just after a holiday party. The president wore one sock that said "Merry" and another that said "Christmas."
On working mornings in the White House, Bush would grab his briefcase and make his way over to the Oval Office suite, taking the elevator from the Residence down to the Diplomatic Reception Room and then walking toward the Oval Office. He usually reached the West Wing about six thirty. Bush tended to start his office workday in his small study, working at an electric typewriter which he used on a hideaway desk he had asked the White House carpenters to build for him: He thought the typewriter, when not in use, unsightly. A world map hung above the specially crafted desk; the president would swap in new ones as global boundaries changed in 1989 and beyond. Bush could make and receive calls from the study and would record the caller, the date, time, and subject on a special yellow pad. He would frequently ring a cabinet member or staffer who may have taken a hit in the papers that morning, telling them to keep their chin up.
He was a generous but subtly demanding boss. Advisers grew to fear the tapping of his thumb on his desk during briefings or explanations-a sign of impatience that said: Got it. Let's move it along here. Brent Scowcroft would be anxious every morning that the president, with his voracious reading habits, would have a question about a newspaper story that the national security adviser had not had time to get to. (It was, Scowcroft recalled, a "mortal fear.") If Bush were angry about something, he would rarely show it: He would, rather, grow quiet.
He always had time for visiting athletes. When he received the golf legend Sam Snead, Bush asked Snead for advice on hitting a sand wedge. Practicing a shot, the president, as he put it, nearly drilled his photographer, David Valdez, "in the testicles with the screaming shank." Domingo Quicho, a veteran of the White House's household staff since the Kennedy years, would cook for Bush in the tiny kitchen off the Oval Office, often serving intimate meals in a small presidential dining room. If Bush were alone at lunchtime-a rare thing, but it happened now and again-he would sometimes use a treadmill the Bushes had installed in a cabana on the grounds. If he were watching his weight-which was most of the time-he would drink a protein shake (he called them "Lendls," after the tennis professional Ivan Lendl, who had introduced him to them). After a quick sauna and a jump in the White House pool, Bush would emerge, as he put it, feeling "like a million dollars."
The Bushes' two liver-and-white springer spaniels-Millie had been joined by Ranger, one of her puppies-patrolled the White House grounds with the breed's boundless energy. The president ordered the construction of a horseshoe pit and organized complicated tournament brackets. (One afternoon he watched the Air Force One team play the White House electricians.) It was a way to take a break from the pressures of the office, but there was another purpose, too: The horseshoe pit enabled the president to make most of those who worked for him, for his family, and for the White House feel included. Families came to tournaments; you might see the Leader of the Free World competing against a maintenance man.
Though mocked for saying he liked country music-critics thought it an affectation to appear more populist than preppy-Bush truly did enjoy the genre. "It's a great mix of music, lyrics, barrooms, Mother, the flag and good-looking large women," Bush told his diary. "There is something earthy and strong about it all." Among his favorite artists: Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, the Gatlin Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Anne Murray. A similar charge of cultural hypocrisy was leveled at Bush's alleged fondness for pork rinds, but that, too, was genuine. His staff supplied his hotel rooms with pork rinds and Dr Pepper.
Motion was everything. There were the wild rides in Maine aboard the Fidelity, his cigarette boat; lightning-quick rounds of golf; and spur-of-the-moment meals at favorite spots such as Peking Gourmet Inn in northern Virginia, Otto's barbecue in Houston, and Mabel's Lobster Claw in Kennebunkport. On the weekends at Camp David, life "was nonstop," recalled Tim McBride, Bush's personal aide. After arriving on Friday afternoons, Bush would go for a jog, greet guests, have supper, and usually watch a movie. On Saturday mornings he would work from eight to about noon, run again or work out with weights, throw horseshoes, and play tennis or "Wallyball," a game he played on the compound's volleyball court. (Players were encouraged to spike the ball off the wall of the enclosed court-hence the name.) Sunday mornings there were ecumenical church services (a chapel at Camp David was completed and dedicated about halfway through Bush's presidency).
He disliked being alone. One summer weekend early in his presidency at Camp David was typical. He hosted a rolling house party-friends from Houston and beyond with their children, Senator John Heinz, and the tennis professional Pam Shriver, among others. "I find that having young people around makes me feel young-not tired-but young," Bush told his diary.
After lunch Bush took a nap. The afternoon in the mountains had turned cool. "I put a big comforter on, laid out on my bed, and slept to sleep with the dead," he dictated. "I woke aching and feeling great and rested....I just have to have people around and action around."
- In the breaching of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Bush had been strong by being largely silent. Throughout his presidency he projected power in the climactic chapter of the Cold War through acts of restraint rather than through the more traditional means of force of arms or of rhetoric. It was unglamorous, perhaps, and difficult to appreciate, but it was the right thing to do in the service of America's national interests and of the promotion of American values abroad. He took a much more active hand in what came after the wall collapsed: the reunification of Germany, a complicated diplomatic episode that required convincing both the Soviets and the other Western powers-chiefly Britain and France-to allow a unified Germany to take its place in the heart of Europe.
At Yalta in the waning hours of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt had acknowledged military and political reality by agreeing to a division of Europe. Forty-five years on, "German reunification had a very personal meaning to me," Bush recalled. To bring East Germany and West Germany together, he believed, would mark the true end of World War II, and was an important step in ratifying the march of the forces of freedom as the last decade of the twentieth century began. Had Bush not pressed for a reunified Germany, Europe might well have entered the 1990s and the twenty-first century still divided, less prosperous, and a source of instability for the region and for the world. As it was, Bush's insistent diplomatic work on reunification and bringing the rejoined nation into NATO immeasurably strengthened the West.
Thatcher and Mitterrand were skeptical of reunification, fearing that, as Thatcher put it, if "we are not careful, the Germans will get in peace what Hitler couldn't get in the war." (Another aphorism of Thatcher's, borrowing from Lord Ismay, NATO's first secretary-general: "The purpose of NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.") Bush was less alarmist about the prospect of a newly resurgent Germany, telling his diary in February 1990: "I don't think we can be nave about history, but I don't think we need to let history and the problem with WWI and WWII control Germany's fate in the future. Perhaps it's different when we're this far away, but there is a certain insult to the Germans suggesting that they will give up democracy and give way to some new Hitler once they're unified, or that they will immediately want to expand their borders."
Everything seemed new. In February 1990, Bush received an early morning call from South Africa. After twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela was to be freed. In private, Bush linked the Mandela release with the collapse of Communism. "Change-the amazing change," he told his diary.
- For Bush, managing a shifting world was a question of balance and of order. Briefing European allies on the morning after Malta, Bush had been clear about his sense of things. NATO, he said, had been created "to provide the basis for precisely the extraordinary evolution which is occurring in Eastern Europe today....The task before us is to consolidate the fruits of this peaceful revolution and provide the architecture for continued peaceful change....The people of every nation have the right to determine their own way of life in freedom."
Though Bush could seem the most old-fashioned of men, he was not captive to the past, and his views on German reunification offer a clear example of how he could break free from conventional thinking. The leadership of Britain and France believed that Germany was inherently atavistic, but Bush liked to look forward rather than back. "I hold no rancor in my heart towards Germany or Japan, none at all," Bush would tell the fiftieth anniversary gathering at Pearl Harbor in 1991. "I can still see the faces of the fallen comrades, and I'll bet you see the faces of your fallen comrades too...but don't you think they are saying, 'fifty years have passed; our country is the undisputed leader of the free world, and we are at peace'? Don't you think each one is saying, 'I did not die in vain'?"
There was a direct American interest in a unified Germany within NATO, too. Far from seeing the end of the Cold War as a chance to relax national defense, Bush realized that threats to American security were growing more diffuse but were no less real. "Who's the enemy?" Bush dictated to his diary in February 1990. "I keep getting asked that. It's apathy; it's the inability to predict accurately; it's dramatic change that can't be foreseen....There's all kinds of events that we can't foresee that require a strong NATO, and there's all kinds of potential instability that requires a strong U.S. presence." Bush had two diplomatic goals in the first half of 1990: the reunification of Germany as an ally of the United States and ongoing support for Mikhail Gorbachev. Even Thatcher agreed with the latter, telling Bush: "Destabilize him and we lose the possibility of democracy in the Soviet Union."
- On Thursday, May 31, 1990, Gorbachev arrived in Washington to a splendid military welcome. The president of the United States and the president of the USSR jointly reviewed American troops, including soldiers from Fort Myer wearing Revolutionary War uniforms. Bush noticed that Gorbachev was in a better frame of mind than he had been at Malta. "Gorbachev looked well and seemed confident as he greeted me with a smile and a strong handshake, not at all tired," Bush recalled. In the Oval Office they took the traditional seats before the fireplace. The conversation was wide ranging, even, in Bush's term, "philosophical." Gorbachev needed a grain and trade agreement-and for his country to be elevated to "most favored nation" trade status by the United States. The "old suspicions" between the two superpowers had to go, Gorbachev said. Building on Malta, both nations had to learn how to thrive in a multipolar world.
Matters at hand included German reunification, which the Soviets opposed, and the issue of Lithuania. One of the Baltic states absorbed into the Soviet Union during World War II, Lithuania had been seeking independence. Moscow, however, had cracked down, resisted the demands, and instituted an energy embargo. Bush was under great pressure both abroad and at home to force Gorbachev to ease Soviet opposition to Lithuania's push for freedom.
In a larger meeting at four thirty in the Cabinet Room, the subject of Germany dominated. Gorbachev believed that a united Germany within NATO would strategically isolate the Soviet Union. He proposed, instead, that the new Germany belong either to no alliance or to NATO while simultaneously being in alliance with the Soviets.
Bush intervened with a technical point. The Helsinki Final Act, nonbinding accords reached between Moscow and the West in 1975, said "all countries had the right to choose their alliances. To me," Bush recalled saying, "that meant Germany should be able to decide for itself what it wanted. Did [Gorbachev] agree?" "Shrugging," Bush recalled, Gorbachev made a historic remark.
"Yes," Gorbachev told Bush.
As Bush recalled it, the Cabinet Room went quiet. The Soviet officials around Gorbachev appeared stunned and dismayed. There was heated back-and-forth on the Soviet side and a few attempts to get Gorbachev to amend his remarks. Like the Americans, the other Soviets did not quite believe that they had just heard the leader of the USSR concede that a united Germany could become part of a military alliance that had been the Soviets' mortal enemy.
Gorbachev may have been accepting the inevitable and perhaps hoped that by conceding the point on a favorite project of the president's he might make progress on his key summit goal-a trade agreement. That evening, Gorbachev "buttonholed" Bush after a state dinner. "He told me that if we did not have a trade agreement, it would be a disaster," Bush recalled. "It would make or break the summit for him. He was very agitated." Bush went upstairs but slept poorly. The United States could not reward Gorbachev with a trade deal at the same time the Soviet regime was acting like the Soviets of old in Lithuania, which remained under a strict energy embargo ordered by Moscow. Was there any way out?
Sometime in the overnight or early morning hours, the "Have-Half" Bush of childhood thought he had formulated a compromise. Bush took Jim Baker into his confidence. "The deal I suggested would have an open or publicized side, as well as a secret, stricter one," Bush recalled. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would openly sign the trade agreements, but the documents would not go to Congress for ratification until the Soviets had fulfilled all of the demands necessary for MFN status. There was a further secret condition before Bush would ask Congress to vote on the deal: "We would not send the package up for approval until negotiations with the Lithuanians had begun and Moscow lifted the [energy] embargo."
It was an effective diplomatic solution. "We could hand Gorbachev a tangible success in the form of a signed agreement with public stipulations that he had a chance of meeting, but we made sure the agreement would not be implemented until there was substantive progress on Lithuania," Bush recalled. "There would be no embarrassment for Gorbachev at home, and we would get the conditions we wanted."
The next morning Bush and Gorbachev boarded Marine One for the short trip to Camp David. Both presidents, Bush realized, were joined for the flight by military aides carrying the competing codes that would enable either nation to launch nuclear missiles at each other-emblems of an older era, transposed to a new one. Looking down at the houses below in the thickly developed suburbs of Maryland, Gorbachev asked Bush about American real estate. "How do you buy and sell a house?" he asked. "Who loans the money? Who owns the house?"
Camp David was everything that Bush had hoped it would be. The formal Gorbachev took off his coat and tie and sat happily with Bush at a glass-topped table beneath an umbrella on a beautiful June morning. Bush remembered the "warm sun and crystal-clear sky," and the tone of the conversation matched the weather. To Bush's astonishment, Gorbachev threw a ringer on his first try at horseshoes. ("Talk about beginner's luck!" Bush recalled.) They discussed a number of subjects with varying degrees of candor, but Bush felt the exchanges helpful. "We developed a feeling of give-and-take; what we could do and what we could not do," Bush recalled. There were odder moments. "I've heard some report that you'd used laser weapons against people in Panama," Gorbachev said. Bush was puzzled, recalling, "There was no rancor in his voice-an inquiry." Bush then replied, "Well, I don't know, but let me tell you this-I don't think we have laser weapons to use against people, and secondly, I'd like to ask Cheney and Powell, [who] are up here."
The president consulted his military chiefs in a quick conversation in the presidential cabin, and they "said there was no such thing, except use of lasers for radar on tanks." Within twenty minutes of Gorbachev's raising the question, Bush "told him I could categorically deny it. He thanked me and said, 'Well, it's probably some crazy rumor.'" They strolled the wood-chip trails and spent some time tramping through the woods. (Gorbachev was especially wary of poison ivy.) There was a friendly supper, and Gorbachev confided in Bush, president to president. "He explained that he did not want to raise the question of needing money from the United States in front of his own team"-the kind of political reality Bush understood. Trade with the Soviets was one thing; direct economic aid another. Bush was honest with his guest. American political pressures were such that if the Soviets could show progress on cutting aid to Cuba, on fully following up on supporting a reunited Germany that was free to join NATO if it chose, and on the Soviets' own internal market reforms, then Bush would be in a much stronger position to help. It was a candid conversation-the kind, perhaps, that could have taken place only between leaders who were building a relationship of trust.
- They returned to Washington, landing on the South Lawn. Bush brought Gorbachev up to the Residence and showed him where Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The history lesson over, Bush eagerly took his guest into his study to show off his five-screen television cabinet and his personal computer.
Like so many guests before him (and after him), Gorbachev loved the intimacy of the Bush tour-few modern presidents had ever been so open with the Residence-and Gorbachev had other reasons to be cheerful as well. There was good news on the economic front, with Chevron agreeing to an oil exploration deal, among other developments. "He was thrilled about those things," Bush recalled.
They went downstairs and over to the Oval Office, where Gorbachev was surprised to note the detail of Bush's printed daily schedule. "I've got to get my office modernized," Gorbachev said. "I don't have this kind of thing." Bush rummaged around and found his entire monthly schedule for May, which had just ended, and handed it to Gorbachev to take home as a possible model. Gorbachev wondered if he might send his own chief of staff over to Washington for a tutorial. Bush volunteered John Sununu for a trip to Moscow if that might be easier. The message: Whatever Gorbachev needed (within reason) he had only to ask.
- Barbara was enduring a generational controversy during the Gorbachevs' visit. Invited by Wellesley College to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree, the First Lady was being criticized by Wellesley's young women, as Bush put it to his diary, "because she hasn't made it on her own-she's where she is because she's her husband's wife. What's wrong with the fact that she's a good mother, a good wife, great volunteer, great leader for literacy and other fine causes? Nothing, but to listen to these elitist kids there is."
Mrs. Bush invited Raisa Gorbachev along with her to Wellesley. There, the American First Lady confronted the issues of work versus family and the role of women head-on, delivering a well-received commencement address. "Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe we should adjust slower," she told the graduates. "But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children-they must come first. You must read to your children, and you must hug your children, and you must love your children. Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house."
She received her most sustained applause when she remarked that perhaps there was someone in the audience who would, like her, one day preside over the White House as the president's spouse. "And I wish him well," she said, to cheers from the crowd. It was characteristic Barbara Bush: politically skillful, balanced-and good for George Bush, for she successfully presented herself as at once reasonable and reasonably conservative, which was the essence of her husband's own political persona.
Mrs. Bush was a popular figure as First Lady. As commentators observed at the time, the country seemed to appreciate her undyed hair and fake pearls after the excess of the Nancy Reagan era. Barbara's image as a kind of national grandmother, though, was just that: an image that did not fully capture her complexity. When the celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley published a harsh book about Nancy Reagan, Barbara read it-but only after disguising it with another dust jacket. As Newsweek's Ann McDaniel reported, the First Lady was "a funny, sometimes acerbic woman who is genuinely caring-and always in control."
Savvy and strong, Barbara was a dominant but not domineering figure within the Bush clan. "She really is the leader of the family in the sense, 'You're not going to do this,' or 'You've got to do this,' and I just kind of float above it all," George H. W. Bush recalled of her. "She has absolutely no self-importance of any kind." She was remarkably steady, in public and in private. "She never becomes cross or irritable with me, and there are plenty of occasions she should, but she doesn't," Bush said.
She was also a fierce, if understated, protector of her husband's interests. "She's very perceptive; kept her opinion to herself with others a lot-not with me she didn't-and she was a good judge of character," Bush recalled. "If she felt somebody wasn't totally committed to the course of action we had agreed on, or to me personally, why, she would let it be known, but subtly. And to me she wouldn't be subtle about it."*
- In East Berlin on Friday, June 22, 1990, in a meeting with Jim Baker, Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze presented a surprisingly hard-line set of proposals on German reunification, demanding, among other things, that Germany remain divided for another five years. Baker saw that the new Soviet document was designed more to assuage opinion at home rather than to be taken seriously at the negotiating table.
The Soviets needed some reassurance that a reunified Germany was not about to join a hawkish NATO, thus increasing the military pressure on Moscow at just the moment the Cold War appeared to be coming to a close. Bush understood Gorbachev's position. With Scowcroft and others, the president drafted a new declaration for NATO to be discussed and, if all went well, issued during a July summit in London. The key provisions of Bush's proposal: NATO would shift its emphasis from a military alliance to a political one; shift its defense posture from "forward" positions to more mobile units; open up conventional arms negotiations; and outline a "new NATO nuclear strategy."
From London, Thatcher (with some support on this point from Mitterrand) objected to the shift in nuclear strategy. NATO had long operated under what was known as "flexible response," which in practice meant that the alliance reserved the right to use nuclear weapons early in a conflict in order to deter a larger enemy military operation.
Thatcher wanted to start over with a new document, but Bush refused. He was leading the alliance now, and debate would take place on his terms. When the NATO leaders gathered in London, Jim Baker found common ground without giving away the essence of what his president wanted. The first-strike nuclear option was preserved, though it was hoped that such weapons would one day become "truly weapons of last resort." In the same spirit of compromise, Bush recalled, NATO announced that it was "moving away" from "forward defense." The leaders affirmed the newly political nature of NATO, a major signal to Gorbachev-and to the reunification skeptics within the Soviet Union-that the Western powers believed the Cold War to be ending. "It was a landmark shift for the alliance," Bush recalled.
The president made his intentions plain to Gorbachev. "As you read the NATO declaration," Bush wrote Gorbachev, "I want you to know that it was written with you importantly in mind....I hope today's NATO declaration will persuade you that NATO can and will serve the security interests of Europe as a whole." Gorbachev got the message. It was a good few days. The situation in Lithuania moved toward resolution, and Gorbachev kept his word to Bush by lifting the embargo. In the early weeks of July, Gorbachev faced a tumultuous Communist Party conference, but emerged with a large margin of support for his reelection as general secretary.
The man Bush had decided to trust had proven worthy of that confidence. In mid-July, Helmut Kohl went to the Soviet Union for long talks with Gorbachev on reunification, offering generous financial assistance to cash-strapped Moscow and volunteering to underwrite the cost of Soviet troops who were to remain in East Germany for a transition period. It was a deal Gorbachev felt he could not decline. He closed the conversations with Kohl at Stavropol by publicly saying: "Whether we like it or not, the time will come when a united Germany will be in NATO, if that is its choice. Then, if that is the choice, to some degree and in some form, it can work together with the Soviet Union."
Watching from Washington, Bush called Gorbachev. "This showed great statesmanship on your part, and we feel good about it," Bush told Gorbachev, who in turn credited the Bush-led coalition of diplomacy for the peaceful resolution of what, beginning the previous autumn, could have been at best chaotic and at worst extremely violent. It was the kind of message Bush lived to receive: a vindication of personal diplomacy with the expectation of an orderly result. In midsummer 1990, the world beyond America's shores was moving Bush's way, on Bush's terms. He was instrumental in determining the fates of millions in Europe and in the ever-creakier Soviet Union.
At home, though, he was about to learn that he was master of very little.
* She was perennially useful to her husband in large and small ways. A decade later, after listening to Michael Beschloss's audiobook of Taking Charge, a collection of the LBJ White House tapes, Barbara noted: "Lyndon has one thing in common with George Bush beside being a President and a Texan. He manages to pass off the phone caller by saying, 'Lady Bird wants to talk to you.' How many times has GB finished what he wants to say and then passed the phone to me....I remember at the White House that I would get a phone call from GB asking me what I was doing and telling me that he was sending so-and-so over for a tour. He just wanted to get rid of them so he could get on with his work."