THIRTY-SIX.
I've Got to Do What I Think Is Right
If we didn't have this budget deficit problem hanging over my head, I would be loving this job; but with the deficit and my fears about the economy, it's an awful lot of worry right now.
-GEORGE H. W. BUSH Read My Lips: I Lied.
-New York Post headline THE LATE SPRING NIGHTS in Washington had been long and uncomfortable. "I'm tired and Bar can't sleep," Bush, who had been suffering from a sore neck, dictated on Sunday, May 13, 1990. "She thrashes around and I stay awake. My neck seems to be better, but I think it's tension-related, so with the budget problems, it will probably get worse." The budget-the deficit-was all-consuming. One of the first suggestions that Bush abandon his "Read my lips" pledge on taxes had come in the presidential transition, back in late 1988. In one meeting at the vice presidential residence, Bob Teeter, Bush's pollster, had said that he believed responsible deficit reduction would require new revenues. Dan Quayle and John Sununu objected, and Jim Baker closed off the discussion, saying: "We don't need to do that this year."
But now it was 1990, and the pressures for a long-term deal were growing. The deficit posed what was seen at the time as a vital threat to the present and future American economy. At the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan refused to lower interest rates-and lower interest rates meant more capital in the marketplace-until the administration and Congress made significant strides on controlling the imbalance between federal revenues and outlays. (Greenspan believed that lower interest rates and high levels of deficit spending would create inflation.) Bush's dilemma: Greenspan wanted a deficit reduction deal. The Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill wanted higher revenues as part of any deal. And the Republican base wanted the president to keep his word from 1988 and stand fast against higher revenues, even if it meant no deal at all.
But the absence of a budget agreement, under existing law, could lead to a government shutdown and sequestration (automatic, across-the-board spending cuts), plunging the country into economic chaos. "I know I'm going to have to bite a major bullet," Bush told his diary. The savings and loan bailout and a slowing economy meant the deficit was getting worse, not better. Given all of the factors, the best way to establish conditions for long-term growth was an agreement that showed the world the U.S. government was serious about deficit reduction.
Politically, such an agreement required more revenue. There was no practical way to move toward a balanced budget without more money coming in. The General Accounting Office had said so; so had former presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Bush had long suspected that he would probably have to break the "Read my lips" pledge. That moment was about to arrive.
What kinds of taxes might work? In the White House in the late winter of 198990, Bush listened to discussions about a value-added tax, or VAT, but he noted that "conservatives strongly oppose it, and it looks like the Europeanization of America." Other options included oil import fees or taxes on gasoline, liquor, and wine. The bottom line: "We're going to have to do something, and we're going to have to lead all these various strong-willed players to the trough."
- He had a respite from the pressures of the presidency in early May when his mother came to call. Arriving at the diplomatic entrance to the White House, Dorothy Bush, now eighty-eight, was uncertain of her whereabouts. Her son walked over from the Oval Office to greet her.
"Who's that?" Mrs. Bush said. "Who's that?"
"Mum," Bush said, "it's George." He hugged her, and then she recognized him. "I hope she'll have a good long sleep and then wake up, so we can do stuff together," Bush told his diary. "It's a joy having her here."
The visit was sweet but painful. "I thought to myself, 'Here she is, our leader, our spirit, our moral compass, and she's in and she's out.' They...tucked her in bed. She rested, then she woke up two hours later, and she was beautiful and the cheeks didn't look quite so hollow, and she knew more." Burton Lee, the White House physician, told Bush that her vital signs were troubling. "He warned me she could die any minute," Bush said. The president wanted his mother to see his world. "Mum, I want you to come to the Oval Office," Bush said. He wheeled her through the office, then from room to room in his small suite-what he called "my little private sector." At dinner Bush put in a call to Billy Graham, who sent his prayers and blessing. Bush then wheeled his mother to her room. He kissed her goodnight, but "wasn't sure she knew where she was, who I was, but I knew that she loved me."
Buffeted by his love for his mother, his gratitude to her, and his sadness at her decline, Bush went outside to walk the White House grounds in the dark. The images swirled: of the Mothers' Race at Greenwich Country Day-which Mrs. Bush won, of course-of the baseball games, of the visits to Andover. In his mind's eye he was a boy again, and his mother was the center of his world. "All the criticism, all the fighting, all the ups-and-downs, all the right-wing, the left-wing, the press, and controversy-they all mean nothing. It's Mum's words: 'Do your best; try your hardest; be kind; share; go to church'-and I think that's what really matters....I've been President a year-and-a-half, and my mother doesn't know, but she's with us now."
- Bush kept up his personal diplomacy with the congressional leadership. On Sunday, May 6, 1990, the Bushes hosted a White House lecture on Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough, who had written a book about TR's early years, Mornings on Horseback. McCullough's vivid descriptions of life in the White House eight decades before transfixed Bush. "Oh, to be 42 and President, and oh, to be President in those less complicated times where you could finish work at 4:00, and go for a ride," Bush told his diary. The spell of the past was soon broken. After the lecture, George Mitchell, Bob Dole, Tom Foley, and Bob Michel joined Nick Brady, Dick Darman, and John Sununu upstairs in the Residence. In Bush's study, the president offered his guests cold shrimp and popcorn as the eight men discussed the outlines of a budget deal. There was general talk about process, and later that week came a demand from Mitchell that forced Bush's doubts about the viability of "Read my lips" into public.
There must be, Mitchell said, "no preconditions" on the negotiations for a budget deal. The White House agreed to the point, issuing a press release saying so on Wednesday, May 9. The significance of the language: tax increases were now a possibility. On Air Force One for a trip to Texas after the "no preconditions" concession, Bush told reporters: "My position is I make this offer to sit down in good faith and talk with no conditions." He took the long view, adding: "So tomorrow there'll be another tidal wave. So keep your snorkel above the water level, and do what you think is right. That's exactly what my mom told me when I was about six. 'Do your best. Do your best.' I'm trying hard. Stay calm."
In the coming storm he would need all the strength she-or anyone else-had ever given him. "The big subject this morning is taxes," Bush told his diary on Thursday, May 10, 1990. He minced no words. "The shit," he told his diary, had "hit the fan."
- The conservative reaction to the "no preconditions" announcement-which was interpreted as a precursor to new tax increases-was indeed vicious. "We're getting pounded, and the right wing is the worst, much more so than the left wing, it seems to me," Bush told his diary, "or maybe it's just that when you're attacked by your own, it stings more." He struggled to remember his mother's advice to always look ahead. "There is a clump of these extreme extremists that I detest," Bush dictated, "but I can't let the bastards get us down....Push forward."
At a meeting of the Republican budget leadership with Bush in the White House on Monday, June 25, 1990, Phil Gramm, a conservative Republican senator from Texas, said: "If we can get a deal, we ought to take it. If we've got to do a little bit in taxes to get a deal, do it....Just don't break the pledge until there's a deal." Though Gramm said he could not support raising the marginal income tax rates, he was open to other options. In the same session, Dick Darman recalled that Gingrich was "conspicuously tepid" but did say, "There's no way you can deal with income tax rates." Like Gramm, Gingrich left open the possibility of accepting other tax measures. Bush sensed some flexibility on his right-implicit permission to give way on certain taxes in spite of the "Read my lips" pledge. The administration's hope was that a gas tax increase would be what Sununu called the "ransom" for a deal that cut the capital gains rate, and both Gramm and Gingrich had signaled that they could "live with" such an agreement.
The next morning, a June Tuesday, began early, with a seven A.M. White House breakfast in the Family Dining Room with the top Republican and Democratic leaders. ("My dog wasn't even awake when I left," Dole cracked.) On the Hill, the talks were stalled. The price of failure was high for both sides. Bush asked the Democrats-Foley, Mitchell, and Dick Gephardt-a straightforward question. "What do you propose?"
Foley spoke for the group. Like Bush, the House Speaker was a reasonable man. After being recently "criticized for being insufficiently partisan" by Democrats in his own caucus, Foley, Darman recalled, had replied: "Part of the time we have to worry, between elections, about the country's government." At the breakfast table, seated at the president's right, Foley now told Bush that a deal commensurate with the nation's financial problems would require "entitlement reform, defense and discretionary spending reduction, budget process reform, and tax increases."
There it was. Foley had spoken "simply, graciously, seriously," Darman recalled. These were the terms. The details were malleable, but the overarching question-would Bush agree to increase taxes?-had been put to the president face-to-face.
"Okay," Bush said, "if I can say you agreed."
With those seven words, George H. W. Bush reversed himself on the key domestic pledge of the 1988 campaign. "It did destroy me," Bush recalled years afterward. "The problem with the tax pledge was the rhetoric was so hot. Peggy Noonan, you know, 'I'm the man' and that kind of stuff. I felt uncomfortable with some of that. But it was persuasive-the convention loved it. When people ask me, as they do now, 'Did you make any mistakes?' I say, 'Yeah, one was to say no more taxes, period-I won't raise taxes.' It was a mistake, but I meant it at the time, and I meant it all through my presidency. But when you're faced with the reality, the practical reality, of shutting down the government or dealing with a hostile Congress, you get something done."
On reflection, Bush did not minimize his decision. He saw the reversal on "Read my lips" not simply as a discarded campaign pledge but as an actual breach of his word-a breach undertaken for the larger good of the country, to be sure, but still a breach. "I paid a big price for that," Bush recalled in retirement. "And I can understand people saying, 'He broke his word, he went back on his word,' particularly the right-wingers."
In historical terms, Bush's chosen field of endeavor-politics-was a world in which reversals of opinion are the rule, not the exception. Admirers see such moments as hours of noble compromise in pursuing the art of the possible; critics as craven capitulations. Sometimes leaders must pay for their departures from dogma with scorn and defeat; sometimes they are lauded and forgiven. (And sometimes, in the fullness of time, the former gives way to the latter.) That is the nature, and the price, of power.
In the summer of 1990, Bush changed his mind because of political and policy realities. The Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress, and they wanted more revenue. There was no way to move toward a balanced budget without spending caps, and the Democrats were going to give Bush spending caps only if he raised taxes. He was, therefore, willing to surrender on taxes in order to get systemic reforms that put future administrations and Congresses on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning increases in spending had to be offset by cuts elsewhere or by raising taxes. All of that was to come in the next few months of negotiations. After Bush and Foley agreed on the inclusion of a tax increase, the conversation moved on. "The mood was good," Darman recalled. "There seemed to be procedural agreement. Everything was private. No significant harm had been done."
Then Nick Brady spoke up. Darman thought of Brady, the old Dillon, Read chairman, as "a successful investment banker, with well-developed instincts for closing a deal." Foley and Bush had come to new terms. Shouldn't there be some memorialization of the agreement about what was on the table-including taxes? "Where are we," Brady asked, "on the Speaker and the President's statement?"
Instead of killing the idea or at least redirecting the conversation, Darman, acting out of what he himself later described as "some stupid reflex," said, "It would be easy to draft." He wrote a statement that captured Foley's language. Seeing the phrase "tax increases" sitting there so starkly on the page, Darman realized that it "looked like trouble if released." He handed the pad to Sununu, who, like Darman, prided himself on his smarts. Wisely, Sununu added the phrase "growth incentives"-code for capital gains tax cuts, which Bush had long favored-and changed the phrase "tax increases" to "tax revenue increases." Sununu hoped the alteration "would allow the conversation on revenue to begin without the breaking of the pledge being an absolutely definite outcome," he recalled, thinking of alternatives such as closing loopholes or gaining higher revenue from a lower capital gains rate. "It was a weak reed," Sununu admitted, "but it was all I could come up with in thirty seconds of editing."
"It is clear to me," the Bush statement read, "that both the size of the deficit problem and the need for a package that can be enacted require all of the following: entitlement and mandatory program reform, tax revenue increases, growth incentives, discretionary spending reductions, orderly reductions in defense expenditures, and budget process reform to assure that any bipartisan agreement is enforceable and that the deficit problem is brought under responsible control."
The promise was broken.
- Newt Gingrich learned about the taxes concession when a reporter called to ask for his reaction. Gingrich tried for a time to be a team player, participating in the ensuing negotiations, but eventually could not bring himself to support the president. "In my mind," Gingrich recalled, "it was a betrayal of his pledge and a betrayal of Reaganism."
When Gingrich ally Vin Weber, the Minnesota congressman, heard the news, he thought that Bush had, in a way, warned them about such an eventuality with his "sound governance" versus "idealism" remark over the beer in the White House the year before. Now Weber could sense what was coming. "A lot of us were really committed supply-siders," Weber recalled. "We were of the belief that tax cutting was an indispensable element of our platform if we were going to win a Republican majority in the House. So there was just no way we were going to vote to raise taxes, even for a Republican president."
Across the continent and three hours behind, Dan Quayle, who was on a political trip in California, was in the shower when an aide came into the bathroom with the latest: "It's on CNN. The president just agreed to a tax increase!"
"You're kidding," Quayle said through the curtain.
"No," the aide said. "It really happened. They reached an agreement with the leadership on the Hill." As Quayle recalled the moment, "I probably should have looked at the drain, because that's where the Republican Party's best issue-the one that had gotten us elected in 1980, 1984, and 1988; the one that had, more than any other, made the Reagan Revolution possible-was headed." Reaching Sununu by telephone, the vice president said: "You need to roll this damn thing back." But it was too late. At the White House, asked by reporters whether Bush "regretted" the 1988 pledge, Marlin Fitzwater said: "We feel he said the right thing then. He's saying the right thing now."
Later in the day, during a meeting in the White House, Baker and Bush exchanged notes about the morning's news. "What's happening re 'tax revenue increases'?" Baker wrote on a piece of White House notepaper.
"Firestorm on 'Right' [and] in Press re Read Lips break of word," Bush wrote back.
In a conference call with Bush and Darman, Roger Ailes, the communications guru based in New York, advised-too late-against breaking the pledge. "You're not known for much, but you are known for character," Ailes told Bush. "Don't do it-don't break your word." Voters, Ailes added, "can't identify a lot about you or anybody, but they do identify you as a man of your word. Don't break it."
"It was two years ago," Bush replied, "and they understand that politics changes." Ailes was unconvinced. "He was rationalizing it," Ailes recalled.
Bush's immediate task was to explain the shift on taxes to the country. Yet for three days-an eternity in politics in the modern age-the president did not appear in public to talk about what was going on, or why he had done what he had done. "I'll let the statement speak for itself," Bush told the press at a Rose Garden event that afternoon. On the evening of the Tuesday, June 26th, statement, the Bushes hosted a barbecue for the Congress on the South Lawn, with entertainment by Glen Campbell. He then failed to explain himself on either Wednesday the twenty-seventh or Thursday the twenty-eighth. He was reading the news; he knew that all hell was breaking loose. "Our people were running and screaming, and I can understand why," Bush told his diary. "I guess this is the biggest test of my Presidency. Time will tell."
At last, on Friday, June 29, 1990, just before he left for a trip to Maine, Bush walked into the briefing room for a press conference. Having failed to present the tax news as part of a finished deal-the preferred political option, for then he could have pointed to what he had gained as well as what he had given up-Bush belatedly shared his thinking with the country. "Look, I knew I'd catch some flak on this decision," Bush told reporters, "but I've got to do what I think is right, and then I'll ask the people for support. But more important than posturing now or even negotiating is the result. Do we continue to provide jobs for the American people, and do we continue to provide economic growth, and do we try to stop saddling the generations on the way up, the young people, with absolutely unacceptable deficits?"
This was the crux of the matter. Bush was more interested in the result, which he defined as responsible governance and sound financial stewardship, than he was in the political work of educating the country about the situation at hand. He was willing to concede some ground on taxes-or "tax-revenue increases"-in order to get the Democrats to agree to spending constraints. Because of existing law, that spending, if left unchecked, could one day lead to draconian automatic cuts or ruinously higher taxes (or both) that might damage an economy and a culture accustomed to a larger federal role in the life of the nation.
So why not say so, explicitly and dramatically, to the American people, beyond the context of a hastily called news conference at nine thirty on a Friday morning in summer just before the Fourth of July holiday? Partly because, in the furor over the 1990 budget, the president fell prey to a tendency to assume that other people were living inside his head with him and understood what he was doing and why he was doing it. He governed by making the decisions he felt were right and then moving on to the next item of business. He was no Coolidge, to be sure, but neither was he an FDR, who used the radio to educate the public, or a Reagan, who believed speeches mattered. Bush really did not-at his peril. "He truly believed that the country was going to judge him on results-what he did and how it turned out-not on what he said in a speech," Dan Quayle recalled. "I'd go in and urge him to take a case to the country, and he'd say it over and over-'Dan, what people want is results. That's what matters.'"
Bush's discomfort with the rhetorical requirements of his office was one of his cardinal weaknesses as a president. He had worked hard, devilishly hard, to earn the privilege to manage the affairs of the age, but then he wanted to go back to work, not deliver a grand address or present a consistent message. Why? One reason may be his belief, expressed in private, that he was no Reagan, and Reagan was known as something Bush would never be: the Great Communicator. Instead of learning from the president he served for eight years, Bush appears to have become intimidated by the Reagan rhetorical legacy. He therefore preferred the press conference format, where he could jump around from topic to topic in a way that matched his personal hyperdrive.
Another reason had to do with the media environment itself. The president read so many newspapers and summaries of political talk shows that he could work himself up into barely controlled rages. Perhaps part of Bush's blind spot on the role of sustained rhetoric and disciplined messaging was that he believed most journalists tended to ignore his arguments in favor of details about political winners and losers, or, as Bush liked to say, "who's in and who's out." This is not to excuse him for failing to use the communicative powers of the presidency more fully, but it may help explain his reluctance to do more to sell his programs to the American public.
As he saw it, he had the nation's best interests at heart. He had signed up to serve America since his eighteenth birthday. He lived by the code of "duty, honor, country." He took for granted-perhaps subconsciously, and surely unwisely-that everyone else, or most everyone else, saw him the way he saw himself, as a public servant trying to serve the public as best he could. To govern was to choose, and in the tax decision he had made the most responsible and plausible choice available to him in an imperfect world. The May 5 announcement of "no preconditions" and the June 26 press release seemed clear enough to him. Why make a bigger deal out of what he had once described to Gingrich and Vin Weber as "sound governance" when he knew it was bad politics?
Best, Bush thought, to move ahead and get a deal. He often believed that once a point was made it had therefore been understood, internalized, and appreciated. If he gave a speech on a subject, or answered a question in a press conference, Bush was prone to think that the message had been delivered, even if it hadn't-hence his "I think the statement speaks for itself" remark in the Rose Garden on the afternoon of the day that his own vice president believed had sent the Bush administration's political future down a shower drain.
Watching the taxes fight from the Residence, Barbara hoped for the best. "Everyone wants to pile on, but I don't worry," she wrote in her diary. "George IS doing the right thing. We just have to get the deficit down. I find myself in the funniest mood. I truly feel that George is doing what is responsible and right for the country and to heck with politics. There is a life after the White House and both of us are looking forward to it."
- In early July 1990, Bush faced an array of domestic issues small and large, and one very significant one within the family: the political controversy over Neil Bush's involvement in a savings and loan in Colorado that had required a federal bailout. Neil, who lived in Denver, had served on the board of Silverado, a failed S&L. From the first hint of trouble about Neil-whom the family called, without irony, "Mr. Perfect" for his good cheer and generosity-President Bush had blamed himself for the pain the allegations must have been causing his son. The president's grief about the investigation and the headlines was of such scope that he mused to his diary about abandoning a 1992 reelection race in order to end the pressure on Neil. "[I'm]...worried about Neil...wondering in my heart of hearts, given what's happened to Neil, whether I really want to do this after I serve this term," Bush dictated on Wednesday, July 11, 1990. Not wanting to burden his son further, Bush never let Neil know the depth of his distress about Silverado. (He did share his dire thoughts about giving up reelection with George W., but not with Neil.) "We never had a direct conversation about it," Neil recalled. "I knew he was worried, but if we talked about it, it was more about him reassuring me-'I know it's tough, we love you,' that kind of thing. Nothing about the politics or the details."
On Saturday morning, July 21, Bush met at the White House with Sununu, Boyden Gray, and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to discuss possible nominees to fill the Supreme Court seat of the liberal lion William J. Brennan, who had announced his retirement. Three names were under consideration: Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Court of Appeals; Edith Jones, who had been a partner at Jim Baker's old firm, Andrews Kurth, before going on the federal bench; and David Souter, a judge from New Hampshire who had been championed for the Supreme Court by New Hampshire senator Warren Rudman in the Reagan years.
Jones was the most interesting choice, yet she was young (forty-one) and "considered a little explosive," Bush dictated. Souter emerged in the conversations as "the one who has the best disposition for the court," Bush told his diary. In handwritten notes of his own conversation with Souter, the president observed that the judge "seemed to be right on key points-'interpret' vs. legislating from Bench." Souter was also "safer than Jones" and "more readily confirmable."
His largest concern: "I don't want to put Souter on the bench and be surprised though-an Earl Warren type of discovery-after he's on the bench. Those who know him tell Sununu this is not the case." (Nearly two decades later, in 2009, after Souter proved a reliable liberal vote on the court, Bush remarked that the appointment had indeed been "a huge mistake.") The failure to nominate Jones, an avowedly pro-life judge, gave the right even more to work with in this summer of protest against the Bush White House. His defense of Lithuania against Soviet aggression had been secret and subtle, which meant the old cold warriors and other critics could rail on about the man in the White House not knowing that he had quietly pressured Gorbachev to do the right thing. Then there had been the "no preconditions" on the budget talks. And then came the June 26 "tax revenue increases" press release. "The right-wingers," Bush told his diary, "are very upset with me."
He awoke on Wednesday, August 1, 1990, and read the papers in bed as usual. He noted that Nolan Ryan had won his pitching outing the day before, but the rest of the news seemed bad. "All in all, it's a wonder the world wakes up (around Washington anyway) with anything other than 'gloom and doom' on their mind," Bush told his diary at seven o'clock that morning.
Late in the day, Bush took a break to hit a bucket of golf balls. Even that had its complications: His shoulders were now sore, and at twenty after eight in the evening the president walked down to the Medical Unit on the ground floor of the White House for a deep-heat treatment. Bush was in a T-shirt, on the edge of an exam table, when he looked up to see Scowcroft and Richard Haass, the National Security Council's senior Middle East hand, arrive. The president put on a dress shirt and was buttoning it as he stepped into the hall.
"Mr. President, it looks very bad," Scowcroft said. "Iraq may be about to invade Kuwait."
THIRTY-SEVEN.
This Will Not Stand
I feel tension in the stomach and in the neck...but I also feel a certain calmness when we talk about these matters. I know I am doing the right thing.
-GEORGE H. W. BUSH, on Iraq If Iraq wins, no small state is safe. They won't stop here. They see a chance to take a major share of oil. It's got to be stopped.
-MARGARET THATCHER to Bush RICHARD HAASS BRIEFED THE PRESIDENT on the little that was known. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Iraqi troop movements were a bluff or an attempt to establish a stronger bargaining position in conflicts with neighboring Kuwait over oil and territory. On this humid Washington night, Haass, Scowcroft, and Bush discussed whether a call from the president might persuade Saddam Hussein to stand down from full-scale military action. Then the State Department reported there was shooting in Kuwait City. "So much for calling Saddam," Bush remarked. The invasion had begun. Three divisions of Saddam's elite Republican Guard-the Medina, the Hammurabi, and the Tawakalna-had seized Kuwait City, occupied inland oil fields, and taken up posts along the Saudi border. Iraqi forces were within eight-tenths of a mile of Saudi Arabia.
Saddam Hussein had controlled Iraq since 1979 through police state tactics and an unflinching willingness to exert force over his own people with brutality and finality. Political rivals were shot; rebellious ethnic populations gassed. A June 1990 cover story in U.S. News & World Report had declared Saddam "The Most Dangerous Man in the World." The Iraqi dictator had an old-fashioned view of power, believing that the world respected only strength, and in the summer of 1990 he saw invasion as the best means to avoid having to repay Kuwait large debts Iraq had incurred in the war against Iran and to resolve a long-standing argument over the Rumaila oil fields. (The Iraqis accused the Kuwaitis of "stealing" oil that rightly belonged to Iraq.) By turning the small Persian Gulf emirate into what he called the "19th province, an eternal part of Iraq," Saddam hoped to transform himself and his nation into more significant players in the Arab world and beyond. If Saddam were to hold on to Kuwait, he would be the keeper of 20 percent of the world's oil reserves. And if he were to use Kuwait as a staging area for a successful strike against neighboring Saudi Arabia, then Saddam could control over 45 percent. It was an untenable prospect for a global economy so dependent on petroleum. The possibility, moreover, of such a wealthy, powerful Saddam was inherently destabilizing, given his proven capacities to use weapons of mass destruction (against Iraq's Kurdish population and against Iran) and to wage war on his neighbors (Iran and now Kuwait).
Iraq-Kuwait relations had been churning in the summer of 1990. Saddam had issued threats against Kuwait and moved troops toward the Kuwaiti border; the State Department had sent instructions to its diplomats in the region reiterating that the United States had an interest in the "free flow of oil" and that the possibility of the "use of force" by Iraq was "contrary to UN-Charter principles." In late July, Saddam had summoned the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, who told Saddam that Bush had a "strong desire" for "peace and stability in the Mideast." She also asked what Saddam intended by moving heavy divisions to the border-a question that Saddam allowed was a "reasonable" one.
"He acknowledged," Glaspie reported, "that we should be concerned for regional peace, in fact it is our duty as a superpower." Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia were trying to broker a deal, and Mubarak was encouraging the United States to take a lower profile. (Glaspie was later criticized for saying that the United States "took no position" on intra-Arab border disputes, a comment that administration foes argued had sent the wrong signal to Saddam. A full reading of the relevant documents, however, shows that Saddam left the meeting with Glaspie promising to pursue diplomatic, not military, avenues, and that he recognized the United States had a clear interest in a peaceful resolution to the Iraq-Kuwait tensions.) Bush's view of the crisis as one with critical implications for the security of the United States had deep roots. As early as 1943, during World War II, Franklin Roosevelt had reached out to Saudi Arabia, believing the kingdom's oil potentially important to the American future. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, threatening to project force and influence into the Middle East, including the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which so much of the world's oil moved, President Carter announced that any attempt by "outside" forces to dominate the Persian Gulf would be considered a threat to U.S. national security and risked an American military response. Then, in October 1981, President Reagan announced that the United States "would not allow Saudi Arabia to fall into the hands of any internal or external forces threatening to cut off oil supplies for the West." Reagan added: "There's no way that we could stand by and see that taken over by anyone that would shut off that oil."
Word of the invasion of Kuwait, then, did not reach Bush in a historical or policy vacuum. He well knew the importance of preserving and protecting American interests in the Persian Gulf; an impulsive Saddam had chosen to bring new chaos to a complicated and crucial region. Now the business of restoring order fell to Bush.
At ten P.M. or so on August 1, 1990, Scowcroft rang with confirmation on the invasion. "It's clear," he told Bush. "They're across the border."
The president asked Scowcroft to arrange a National Security Council meeting for the next morning and then called Thomas Pickering, the American ambassador to the United Nations. Bush's instinctive reaction was to seek global support for any U.S. move while preserving America's option to act alone. He instructed Pickering to request an emergency session of the UN Security Council for a resolution denouncing Saddam's aggression. The president retired for the evening, leaving his aides to prepare options for consideration at dawn.
In an interagency teleconference from the Situation Room from eleven P.M. to two A.M., Scowcroft and others agreed to recommend, pending Saudi approval, the deployment of American F-15s to Saudi Arabia and the freezing of Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets in the United States. Boyden Gray drafted the executive orders on the financial freeze, and Scowcroft woke the president for his signature at four thirty in the morning. Bush also ordered American warships at Diego Garcia, a naval installation in the Indian Ocean, to move toward the Persian Gulf.
After a quick shower on Thursday morning, Bush walked over to the West Wing and got to work in the small study off the Oval Office. In these early hours, Bush read a Washington Post piece claiming the White House is "in disarray" on the budget. Particularly infuriating to Bush as he looked over the paper was a comment from Democratic National Committee chairman Ron Brown saying, as Bush read it, that "what's happening is the unraveling of the Bush Presidency." Bush was still focused on his own poor handling of the tax question. "It is not a pretty sight-not a pretty sight at all," Bush told his diary.
On Iraq, Bush had good news from Tom Pickering, who reported a 14 to 0 vote denouncing Iraq by the UN Security Council, with "only Yemen abstaining." Perhaps the best news of all: The Soviet Union, a longtime ally of Iraq's, voted with the United States, the result of good diplomatic work by Jim Baker, who had happened to be with Shevardnadze in Irktusk, Siberia. Bush spoke with Baker at 7:35 A.M. Half an hour later, at 8:05 A.M. on Thursday, August 2, 1990-not quite twelve hours since Bush was first informed of the invasion-the president joined the National Security Council in the Cabinet Room. The press pool was invited in. "We call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all the Iraqi forces," Bush told the reporters.
Helen Thomas of UPI asked the first question. "Do you contemplate intervention as one of your options?"
"We're not discussing intervention," Bush said. "I would not discuss any military options even if we'd agreed upon them. But one of the things I want to do at this meeting is hear from our Secretary of Defense, our Chairman, and others. But I'm not contemplating such action."
Thomas pressed again. "You're not contemplating any intervention or sending troops?"
"I'm not contemplating such action," Bush replied, "and I again would not discuss it if I were."
A classic Bush answer: He claimed he wasn't doing something, but that if he were he wouldn't admit it. Still, by twice saying that he was not contemplating intervention, Bush signaled that the United States might not be fully committed to reversing the Iraqi aggression.
Why did Bush say what he said? "The truth is, at that moment I had no idea what our options were," Bush recalled later. "What I hoped to convey was an open mind about how we might handle the situation until I learned all the facts."
Some evidence of Bush's evolution on Iraq can be found in his diary from Thursday, August 2, through Sunday, August 5. In it, Bush records several of the dozens of calls he made to countries around the Persian Gulf region and around the world. In those conversations, particularly with the Saudis, the president believed he detected an Arab openness to an accommodation with Saddam that would expand Iraq's power and reward Iraq's military strike. The source of a key percentage of the world's oil reserves, the world's largest exporter of oil, and an essential American ally, Saudi Arabia was a vital U.S. national interest. Part of Bush's determination to liberate Kuwait from Saddam was connected to his view that perhaps Saudi Arabia needed protection from its own potential willingness to coexist with an expanded Iraq. As Bush put it to Margaret Thatcher, "My fear is of hand-wringing by offering a payoff to Saddam Hussein."
- After the press left, the National Security Council meeting on the morning of August 2, was, Bush and Scowcroft recalled, "a bit chaotic." It was also unwieldy: There were twenty-nine participants at the meeting across eleven different executive departments or agencies.
The implications of the invasion were only slowly becoming apparent. "It was a big thing that had happened, and people needed time to digest it," Richard Haass recalled. "The people who were in the room hadn't quite realized that this was not business as usual. It was a rambling conversation." Much of the talk seemed to assume that an Iraqi-controlled Kuwait was "a fait accompli," recalled a more hawkish Scowcroft, who described himself as "appalled" by those who saw the invasion as simply a "crisis du jour" rather than as perhaps "the major crisis of our time." Bush later captured the initial prevailing view from the meeting in a diary entry: "It's halfway around the world; U.S. options are limited; and all in all it is a highly complicated situation."
"That was one of the worst meetings I've ever sat through," Haass told Scowcroft.
"I agree," Scowcroft said. "Write me a memo about why we have to act."
Bush's shift from the confusion of the first NSC meeting to a more determined view that the aggression against Kuwait had to be undone, not accommodated, appears to have begun aboard a government C-20 Gulfstream jet heading west from Washington to Aspen, Colorado, later on the morning of August 2. (The usual Air Force One was too large to land at Aspen.) Bush left at 9:50 A.M. to fly out for a meeting with Thatcher and a previously scheduled speech on military strategy in a postCold War world. With Scowcroft on board with him, Bush worked the telephones from the plane. What he was hearing from the Arab world was not reassuring. King Hussein of Jordan asked for more time to work things out with Saddam ("I really implore you, sir, to keep calm," Hussein said), as did President Mubarak of Egypt ("George, give us two days to find a solution," Mubarak said).
Meanwhile, the American intelligence and policy apparatus was painting a grimmer portrait of the consequences of leaving Saddam with an Iraq that included Kuwait. As Bush and Scowcroft flew to Colorado, Haass was back in his office drafting the case for a vigorous response. "I am aware as you are of just how costly and risky such a conflict would prove to be," Haass wrote. "But so too would be accepting this new status quo. We would be setting a terrible precedent-one that would only accelerate violent centrifugal tendencies-in this emerging 'postCold War' era." At the Pentagon that same afternoon, Dick Cheney was musing on a yellow legal pad. "Shouldn't our objective be to get him out of Kuwait?" Cheney wrote in notes to himself. "Isn't that the best short and long term strategy?" Sanctions, which had been discussed at the NSC meeting, were unlikely to be enough. "No non-military option is likely to produce any positive result," Cheney wrote. "The key," he added, was "U.S. military power-the only thing Hussein fears."
In Colorado, Bush sat down with Thatcher at the Aspen home of Henry Catto, Jr., the American ambassador to Britain. Bush told Thatcher that Baker and Shevardnadze were working on a U.S.-Soviet statement to denounce Saddam's aggression, and briefed her on his conversations with King Hussein and Mubarak. "I said we couldn't accept the status quo," Bush told Thatcher. "It had to be withdrawal and the restoration of the Kuwaiti government." Bush also told the prime minister that a carrier group was en route to the Persian Gulf from Diego Garcia.
"If Iraq wins, no small state is safe," Thatcher told Bush. "They won't stop here. They see a chance to take a major share of oil. It's got to be stopped. We must do everything possible." They discussed international sanctions, especially on oil sales. Perhaps the combination of an oil embargo and a naval blockade would be sufficient.
Then they met the press. Bush said that he and Thatcher were "concerned about this naked aggression, condemning it, and hoping that a peaceful solution will be found that will result in the restoration of the Kuwaiti leaders to their rightful place and, prior to that, a withdrawal of Iraqi forces."
Thatcher echoed the point in stentorian tones. "Iraq has violated and taken over the territory of a country which is a full member of the United Nations. That is totally unacceptable, and if it were allowed to endure, then there would be many other small countries that could never feel safe."
In the joint appearance with Thatcher, Bush gave the answer to the military question that he should have given that morning in Washington. "And we're not ruling any options in," Bush said, "but we're not ruling any options out."
Later in the afternoon, in a large tent at the Aspen Institute, Bush spoke newly relevant words-some of which had been drafted and redrafted on the flight from Washington. "Even in a world where democracy and freedom have made great gains, threats remain," Bush said. "Terrorism, hostage taking, renegade regimes and unpredictable rulers, new sources of instability-all require a strong and an engaged America." After the speech Bush returned to the Cattos' and adjourned to their bedroom for a telephone call with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Fahd was "emotional," Bush recalled, and furious with Saddam. "He doesn't realize that the implications of his actions are upsetting the world order," Fahd told Bush. "He seems to think only of himself. He is following Hitler in creating world problems....I believe nothing will work with Saddam but the use of force."
Tough words, yet when Bush offered Fahd a squadron of American F-15s, Fahd asked for more time before accepting. He "held back a little bit," Bush told his diary, "and I worry that somehow they'll try to buy a solution, or they will accept the status quo with guarantees that nothing happen to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, the Iraqi forces are going south." As Bush recalled, "King Fahd's hesitation rang alarm bells in my head. I began to worry that the Saudis might be considering compromise, that they might accept the new status quo on their northern border if there were guarantees from Iraq." There was, Bush knew, "a historical Arab propensity to try to work out 'deals.'...In these early hours of the crisis, with so much going on, I had to wonder if, under pressure, they might be inclined to strike some kind of behind-the-scenes arrangement with Saddam."