Destiny And Power - Destiny and Power Part 21
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Destiny and Power Part 21

Bush didn't know, but he did know this: "We couldn't have a solo U.S. effort in the Middle East. We had to have our Arab allies with us, particularly those who were threatened the most-the Saudis."

- Bush headed back to Washington, landing at Andrews around 2:30 in the morning. At the White House, after only a few hours' sleep, Bush walked into the Oval Office. It was 7:45 A.M. on Friday, August 3, 1990, and the president of the United States had a more definitive view of the crisis than he had had twenty-four hours before. "The enormity of Iraq is upon me now," Bush told his diary. "The status quo is intolerable."

William Webster, the CIA director, briefed the National Security Council on Saddam that morning. "All the intelligence shows he won't pull out," Webster said. "He will stay if not challenged within the next year. This will fundamentally alter the Persian Gulf region. He would be in an inequitable position, since he would control the second- and third-largest proven oil reserves with the fourth-largest army in the world." (In 1990 terms of oil, Webster was ranking Saudi Arabia first, with Iraq and Kuwait as second and third.) The Arab reluctance Bush had sensed on Thursday, August 2, was more evident as time passed. "The Arabs don't seem to have the resolve," he told his diary on Friday, August 3. Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally of Saddam's, tried to compare Saddam's move against Kuwait to the American military action against Marxist rebellion leaders on Grenada in 1983. Bush snapped at Saleh over the analogy. "Saleh got me a little mad by mentioning Grenada."

"Let me tell you something," Bush recalled saying. "American lives were at stake then, and make very clear to your friend Saddam Hussein that any risk to American life will have serious consequences."

The Saudis were the largest worry. "Fears mount that the Saudis may acquiesce in a buy-out-Iraq withdraws and Kuwait pays [the Iraqis] off," Bush told his diary on August 3. "[We're] trying to stiffen the spine of the Saudis." Bush's roughly daylong journey on the significance of the invasion was in character. Tempered by long experience, his instinct was to do the prudent thing. From the Reagan assassination attempt to the fall of the Berlin Wall, he had learned that care went a long way in politics and in statecraft. Would the story of the Gulf War be nobler, even more Churchillian, had Bush declared his implacable will on the first morning of the crisis? Yes, it would, but it took Bush only a single day to decide that he needed to undo what had been done by Saddam.

- On Saturday, August 4, 1990, Bush convened his top military advisers at Camp David to explore how to defend Saudi Arabia and how the United States, with allies, might enforce an economic embargo. Bush still worried about King Hussein and President Mubarak. "Both of them are in the hand-wringing stage, and neither of them is being a constructive influence for positive action by the West, by the United States, or by the Arabs themselves," Bush told his diary. "The bottom line is a lot of these Arab countries are scared to death of Saddam Hussein."

Saudi Arabia remained an enigma, skeptical about the depth of American commitment. Hence dodgy, vague replies from Fahd to Bush-a dodginess whose roots had become clearer on Friday the third, when, just after eleven A.M., Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States and a member of the Saudi royal family, called on Scowcroft at the White House. A popular diplomat in Washington, the charming, cigar-smoking Bandar was a glamorous figure-a former fighter pilot who entertained grandly in America at mansions in McLean and in Aspen. After laying out the threat that the administration believed the Saudis faced, Scowcroft offered U.S. forces for the defense of the kingdom, only to find Bandar cold to the overture. "He seemed ill at ease and did not react with enthusiasm to the suggestion," recalled Scowcroft, who asked: Why the reluctance?

Bandar was candid, offering two examples where the Saudis believed America had not followed through on their word. The first was during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the United States dispatched F-15s to Saudi Arabia only to announce that the fighters were unarmed. The second came during the deployment of U.S. Marines in Beirut in the early 1980s-a deployment that ended after the 1983 terrorist attack on the marine barracks. As Scowcroft recalled Bandar's point, "Why should the King not be concerned that, if the going got tough, the United States would behave in the same manner once again?" Scowcroft tried to reassure Bandar and sent him over to Cheney and Powell at the Pentagon for a briefing on American plans, which impressively called for 150,000 to 200,000 troops. "We're serious this time," Cheney told Bandar.

The secretary of defense then underscored the point: "We didn't have time to wait while Saddam gathered strength and planned his next move"-a strike against the Saudis. The Americans wanted to deploy, and deploy quickly, to defend the kingdom, and a huge amount of the world's oil, from further Iraqi aggression. (There were also Saudi concerns about Muslim reaction to the presence of U.S. troops in a kingdom that was home to essential Islamic holy places.) The weekend was a critical moment in the crisis, and the Saudis felt themselves caught between Saddam and Bush. Had Saddam chosen to do so, he most likely could have moved into the kingdom in this period and seized control over at least some Saudi territory. "My worry is the lack of Saudi will," Bush told the National Security Council that weekend. On Saturday, August 4, 1990, Fahd agreed to receive a senior American team in Saudi Arabia for consultations. Still, the king continued to evade the question of whether the Saudis would accept U.S. troops. Such issues, he suggested, could be settled in talks with the American delegation-not before.

On the telephone, Bush took Fahd's doubts on directly. "We will get the team under way," Bush told Fahd. "Another point I want to make here involves a word of honor. The security of Saudi Arabia is vital-basically fundamental-to U.S. interests and really to the interests of the Western world. And I am determined that Saddam will not get away with all this infamy. When we work out a plan, once we are there, we will stay until we are asked to leave. You have my solemn word on this."

On Sunday morning, August 5, while Bush was at Camp David, Bandar met with Scowcroft and Haass at the White House. The Saudis, Scowcroft told Bandar, "had a choice between being defended and being liberated," Haass recalled. While Bandar was talking with the highest officials of the American government, he was also, according to Bush, working the other side of the equation: Word reached the president that Bandar had apparently asked Turkey to delay doing anything that might exacerbate the situation or antagonize Saddam. "Bandar has double-dealt us with the Turks, trying to talk them into not taking any action," Bush told his diary on that Sunday. "At the same time the King is telling me 'I agree, I agree, I agree with cracking down on [the] economic front, and on everything else.' He did stop short of saying he would close down that...[Iraqi] pipeline [through Saudi Arabia], however."

There was a wrinkle as the weekend went on: Because Cheney was slated to head the delegation to Saudi Arabia, the Americans decided to insist on prior assurance that the kingdom would accept what the secretary of defense had to offer: U.S. troops. (As Scowcroft recalled, "A Saudi rejection could trigger a crisis, in the sense that the inability of our two countries to cooperate would further encourage Saddam's aggression.") Prince Bandar, himself finally convinced, made a call home from Scowcroft's office urging that the kingdom accept the American offer. Fahd agreed: Cheney-and U.S. forces-would be welcome in Saudi Arabia.

The story of Saudi skepticism, however, was not quite over. After Cheney arrived in Saudi Arabia, with Bandar doing the interpreting, Crown Prince Abdullah, a half brother of Fahd's, argued for waiting before accepting U.S. forces even though the king had already agreed to do so as a condition of Cheney's mission. Fahd brushed Abdullah's words aside: "The Kuwaitis waited and now they are living in our hotels." He turned to Cheney and confirmed: "Okay, we'll do it. Two conditions. One, you will bring enough to do the job, and two, you will leave when it's over." On behalf of the president, Cheney agreed, and soon U.S. forces were on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

- Bush canceled a scheduled Sunday golf match with Scowcroft, Nick Brady, and Sam Nunn. Around two thirty in the afternoon, as he prepared to return to the White House from Camp David, much was uncertain. The Chinese had agreed to stop weapons sales to Iraq, but it was unclear whether Beijing would join in a total sanctions regime. There was an upcoming vote on international sanctions at the United Nations, and Bush did not know how it would turn out.

Most urgently, "I don't know whether the Iraqis are going to move across the border into Saudi Arabia," he told his diary at midafternoon on August 5. "If they did, they'd have a free run. Saudi forces are not at the border, and of course, Iraq has overwhelming superiority. The Saudis have some air power and the Kuwaiti airplanes flew to Saudi Arabia. But God knows whether they'll even use them. Whether they'll stand up." As Marine One flew from Camp David back to the White House that Sunday, Bush was thinking of past and present. "It's been probably the most hectic forty-eight hours since I have been President in terms of serious national security interests," he dictated. "I have been on the phone incessantly, and have written down a long collection of names. The bottom line is that the West is together."

Aboard the helicopter, bound for the South Lawn, Bush had a moment of clarity, an instant in which the stakes of the hour were sharply, even scarily, defined. "This is a terribly serious problem, it's perhaps the most serious problem that I have faced as President because the downside is so enormous," Bush dictated on Marine One. "If indeed the Iraqis went in and got a hold of Saudi Arabia, and our objective then was to free Saudi Arabia, we would really be involved in something that could have the magnitude of a new world war, with so many countries involved."

A new world war. With this thought in his mind-the thought that failure to confront Saddam now, in Kuwait, could lead to a wider, bloodier, and chaotic cataclysm-Bush stepped off the helicopter and walked down the steps to the White House lawn. He was met by Richard Haass, who handed him an update on the most recent diplomatic moves-a report that included a series of wishy-washy quotations from different Arab governments about what should happen next.

Bush knew what should happen next. Saddam Hussein had challenged Bush's universe, a postCold War world of order and balance, and the president of the United States was not interested in allowing a dictator to destroy a unique historical moment. Confront the aggression now, Bush thought, or else a world that had thought itself finally free of the threat of nuclear conflict could face a disastrous war in the Middle East-and wars of any size, Bush knew, could become bigger wars.

To the press on the South Lawn he described, in general terms, the diplomatic activity of recent hours, and then, in response to a question about protecting Americans in Kuwait, all the drive and all the determination that had been building over the previous eighty or so hours came tumbling out in a clear, heartfelt paragraph of spoken prose: I'm not going to discuss what we're doing in terms of moving of forces, anything of that nature. But I view it very seriously, not just that but any threat to any other countries, as well as I view very seriously our determination to reverse out this aggression. And please believe me, there are an awful lot of countries that are in total accord with what I've just said, and I salute them. They are staunch friends and allies, and we will be working with them all for collective action. This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.

The last two sentences of Bush's remarks endure in popular memory. Revealing, too, were his parting words: "I've got to go. I have to go to work. I've got to go to work."

THIRTY-EIGHT.

No Blood for Oil

I can't see how we can get out of it without punishing Iraq.

-GEORGE H. W. BUSH AFTER SPEAKING WITH THE PRESS, Bush walked into the West Wing to prepare for a five P.M. National Security Council meeting. His own men had been surprised by the certitude of their chief's words on the South Lawn. They had not been privy to his musings on Marine One; no one except Bush himself quite understood the thinking that had led him to his resolution.

"How'd I do?" Bush asked Quayle and Scowcroft, who were with him in the Oval Office before the NSC meeting. His lieutenants praised him. Then Scowcroft asked the question on everyone's mind: "Where'd you get that 'This will not stand'?"

"That's mine....That's what I feel."

In the world outside the White House walls, "This will not stand" was being played on CNN and parsed around the globe. "It was a very, very definitive line," Quayle recalled. The president's statement, Quayle added, had "caught everybody off guard a little bit because it was so definite and so dramatic."

Colin Powell, who had been watching Bush's arrival at the White House from home before leaving for the National Security Council session, sat straight up when he heard Bush's declaration. "I just got a new mission," Powell thought.

- Half a world away, on Monday, August 6, 1990, Dick Cheney paid his call on King Fahd, who, as arranged, invited the offered U.S. forces and aircraft to Saudi Arabian soil. "Dick, you are authorized to go ahead and execute," Bush told the secretary of defense by telephone.

It was a momentous hour. "I feel great pressure, but I also feel a certain calmness when we talk about these matters," Bush told his diary on Monday, August 6. "I know I am doing the right thing. I know that the United States not only has to take a stand, but has to lead the rest of the world." The same day brought Saddam's first direct words to the United States since the invasion. The American embassy in Baghdad cabled Saddam's threats back to Washington. "Convey to President Bush," Saddam said, "that he should regard the Kuwaiti Emir and Crown Prince as history....We will never leave Kuwait for someone else to take....We would fight on....We will never capitulate."

Watching Bush from London and taking in "This will not stand" and the permission to deploy to Saudi Arabia, Margaret Thatcher was impressed.

"Thanks for your leadership," Bush said to Thatcher at the end of a call on Thursday, August 9.

"It was your leadership," Thatcher replied. "I was just a chum."

Brian Mulroney of Canada came down to dine at the White House with the president. Bush, who enjoyed Mulroney's company, overindulged, drinking two martinis and a big dinner with four popovers. "I pay the price at night," Bush told his diary. "The gut [is] ripped up."

- Around a quarter till three on the morning of Tuesday, August 7, 1990, Bush, his stomach churning from dinner and drink, woke to place a call to Francois Mitterrand. The previous afternoon, Manfred Wrner, the secretary-general of NATO, had warned Bush that the French might not support the use of NATO outside of Europe. After hearing Bush out, Mitterrand simply said, "We will be there." To his diary, Bush confided: "Mitterrand surprises a lot of times. I still feel the visit I had with him in Kennebunkport, and the respect I have tried to show him personally, pay off in diplomacy. I know some differ with this personal diplomacy, but I think when you can talk from a basis of friendship, it does help; and I think he knows I respect him."

Next was a call to Mubarak in Cairo at 2:55 A.M. Washington time. Would the Egyptian president receive the Cheney delegation after it left Saudi Arabia? Mubarak, who was now in sync with Bush, said "of course," and he and the president shared their mutual unhappiness with King Hussein of Jordan. "He thought King Hussein wanted money from Saddam Hussein and the same for Saleh of Yemen," Bush dictated.

Bush's diplomatic calls were done by 3:30 A.M., and he wondered whether he could fall back asleep. He was, as ever, annoyed by the press. Everybody had an opinion, everybody thought they could do things better than Bush and his team. "I'm saying to myself: What do these guys know? We're doing our best, working hard, trying to lead the whole world in facing an enormous crisis and you get sniped at." In earlier years Bush thought the press criticism would have been "deeply disturbing" to him; now he found it "irritating" rather than worrying. "I get p.o.'d rather than deeply angered," he noted. "I guess any President has to get used to that, has to know that he has to take the criticism. Then, too, you [are] always reminded of the 'pack,' and how the 'pack' works. They write the same things, say the same things, rub their hands in the same concerned way, yell the same way now on these talk shows. Enough of that-3:30 in the morning."

The worries he had turned over in his mind on Marine One on the previous Sunday-about a possible world war-were still with him as the forces he had dispatched moved into the region. The first Americans were about to enter Saudi Arabia to begin Desert Shield, a military operation designed to protect the Saudis from Saddam. "The troops are under way," Bush told his diary. It was, he added, "the biggest step of my Presidency."

- Just before nine o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, August 8, 1990, Bush addressed the nation formally for the first time on the Persian Gulf. To check his nerves, he held out his arm. "I did this to see if I was steady, and I was pleased that it did not shake," he told his diary. "I know I'm not near as good as President Reagan on these situations, but I felt it was important to do a good job....I made a few last minute changes, tightened up the language to make it a little more like the Rhineland in the '30s"-a historical reference that would resonate with his own generation.

As he got the signal to begin, Bush looked into the camera from behind his desk in the Oval Office and spoke steadily yet urgently. "Appeasement does not work," he said. "As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors." To Bush, the secret of diplomacy was what he believed to be the secret to a happy life: friends, relationships, reaching out, not pushing away. To the nation he spoke of coalition building and of international opinion. The deployment of American troops to Saudi Arabia was no imperial adventure; it was, rather, the result of assiduous work over the previous six days-for Bush, six of the most crowded days in a crowded life. The president made clear that American warriors were touching down in a faraway kingdom with the support and sanction of a symphony of nations: In the end, thirty-five countries would join the Bush-led coalition by contributing militarily: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Soviet Union and China were diplomatically supportive.

Resisting advice that he remain in Washington, Bush took off for his annual vacation in Maine. On the Gulf, the public was with Bush-for now. "The press are sniping away at the cost, and the 'support is shaky, and it could turn against the President, and it could be the end of him,'" Bush told his diary on Saturday, August 11, 1990. Saddam seemed a strong and resilient foe. With a large army, a proven willingness to use chemical weapons, and worries that he might develop nuclear arms, Iraq posed significant threats on the ground, and many critics warned, ominously, of a disaster in the desert.

Still, Bush was in his element. "I like wrestling with the foreign policy agenda," he told his diary. "I don't like the negotiations on the budget. I like dealing with world leaders on a positive plane, even in difficult situations."

- The busiest of days at Walker's Point began in sadness. Dr. John Walker-Dorothy's brother, the president's uncle-died in the hospital at Biddeford, Maine, about six thirty in the morning on Thursday, August 16, 1990. A distinguished surgeon who had long battled polio, Walker had been the doctor who urged the Bushes to seek treatment for Robin, and he had inspired Bush all his life.

Later that morning King Hussein of Jordan, whom Bush thought was too close to Saddam, arrived by helicopter. Bush sat down with him, and the exchanges were frank. The king pressed for an accommodation with Iraq, but Bush refused to compromise. "There isn't any" middle ground, Bush told the king. "It's got to be withdrawal and restoration of the Kuwaiti regime. There cannot be any middle ground, because tomorrow, it will be somebody else's aggression." There was nothing either man could say to move the other. "Hussein refuses to admit that this is a madman," Bush dictated, and for Bush that recognition was becoming a threshold question. "This is not just a U.S. prob[lem]," Bush told King Hussein. "The world is outraged by what [Saddam] has done." The Jordanian king left about two thirty, to be followed by Prince Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, and Bandar. The Saudis now wanted rapid military action. "God knows it may come to that," Bush told his diary.

The taking of American hostages was among Bush's most persistent fears. "I am determined that I could not be a Jimmy Carter-an impotent, flicking U.S. impotence in the eyes of the world," he told his diary on Thursday, August 16. Then, at a quarter to ten on the evening of Friday, August 17, Bush received a call at Walker's Point: The Iraqis had announced they were detaining foreigners to serve as what were known as "human shields" near "strategic sites" such as chemical plants. The news was infuriating. "Blatant hostage holding," Bush told his diary. "Another blatant disregard of international law by a cruel and ruthless dictator. I cannot tolerate, nor will I, another 'Tehran.' I am determined in that."

Soon Bush had to make a real-time military call amid reports that the Iraqis had sent five tankers to Yemen in defiance of the UN embargo against Iraq. The president wanted the U.S. Navy to open fire on the vessels, but the French and the Soviets wanted to hold off until there could be an explicit UN Security Council vote to authorize "all appropriate measures," which would include lethal action.

The president, Scowcroft, Cheney, and Bob Gates pushed to act unilaterally without going back to the United Nations. Baker, concerned about keeping the Soviets in the coalition, argued for waiting. Bush heard Baker out and reluctantly agreed. It fell to Bush to call Margaret Thatcher and tell her his decision. Hawkish as ever, Thatcher thought the French and Soviet reservations were manifestations of a weakness that had no place in a sturdy alliance against Saddam. Bush admitted that he "wasn't looking forward to" the call, but he made it. Reached in the middle of the night London time, Thatcher heard the president out and replied, "Well, all right, George, but this is no time to go wobbly." (Bush thought it a "marvelous expression.") The UN Security Council quickly passed the enforcement resolution. By waiting, Baker had successfully addressed the French and Soviet concerns while winning the authority Bush and Thatcher wanted. ("In the meantime, the tankers had reached Yemen," Bush biographer Timothy Naftali observed, "but with its broader objective achieved, Washington no longer cared.") As Bush saw it, Saddam Hussein was an unreliable actor-a liar. The Iraqi had lied about his intentions toward Kuwait and had taken American hostages. As someone who believed one's word was fundamental to relations between men and nations, Bush believed that he was dealing with an uncontrollable force. "The more I think of this on this beautiful morning...I can't see how we can get out of it without punishing Iraq," he dictated on Wednesday, August 22, 1990. "What they are doing is unprincipled."

- Bush called the Situation Room in the White House every morning at five or five thirty to check the overnight news. He was never out of contact as he managed the Persian Gulf from Kennebunkport. Nevertheless, there were stories that Bush was, as he put it when describing the conventional wisdom, golfing, fishing, and "playing while Rome burns."

On a fishing excursion for bluefish on the Atlantic, Bush and Scowcroft had one of the more important conversations of the Gulf crisis. After zooming out from the dock at Walker's Point, Bush stopped Fidelity and the two men tried their luck. For four hours, cooled by ocean breezes, they discussed the particular and the general. Bush made clear that he was farther down the road toward the use of force than other top American officials. "I asked impatiently when we could strike," Bush recalled.

The broader conversation touched on what kind of era the world was entering. Absent a compelling superpower rivalry, had Franklin Roosevelt's old vision of an effective UN Security Council come into being? Perhaps a "new world order" was at hand, or at least one that would protect small states from larger ones.

For the moment, on the gentle Atlantic, the boat rocking quietly, there was hope, great hope, that George H. W. Bush could shape a better world than the one in which he had lived all his life.

- Summer was ending. Ronald Reagan, who was about to travel to Germany, wrote Bush a note of condolence about the death of John Walker, and Bush called the former president to thank him. "He's looking forward to his trip to Berlin-about the Wall, etc.," Bush told his diary. "He will be gone for about 10 days. He and Nancy went to Nassau for two weeks. I said, 'How was it?' and he said, 'It was unusual to put on your trunks and sit in the sun for two weeks.'"

Bush himself was refreshed and sleeping well. "When I was younger, I'd wake up all night long worrying, but now once asleep, I'm asleep; and when I wake up, it comes flashing back in all detail," Bush told his diary on Monday, August 27. "But for some reason, maybe it's I'm getting older, I can put matters out of mind when I'm asleep. It's quite different than in the Zapata days, when I'd thrash around all night long, and I would get an ulcer. My gut has been behaving very well, and I guess it boils right back down to 'do your best.'" At sixty-six years old, the commander in chief of a nation headed for war, he had yet to find any advice that trumped the counsel that his mother had given him as he grew up.

- On Wednesday, August 29, 1990, the president woke to news from the Situation Room that the Iraqis appeared to be "realigning their troops." This was promising: Iraq might give U.S. forces a pretext for action. "The more I think of it," Bush told his diary, "the more I would love to have an incident so we could execute a devastating attack against Iraqi armor and Iraqi air." Bush's view of Saddam was now set in black and white. "It has been personalized," Bush dictated. "He is the epitome of evil."

In September, Bush traveled to Helsinki for a meeting with Gorbachev on the Persian Gulf crisis. Bush had a clear message: The Soviets needed to stay with the United States on Iraq. The Soviets were wary of striking Saddam; Iraq was a longtime client state of Moscow's in the Middle East. "I think it's important to Gorby that he seem to be with us in all of this," Bush told his diary.

In Helsinki, Bush reflected on the nature of American leadership on his watch. Gregarious and inclusive by nature, he conducted the presidency in keeping with these essential elements of his own character. The man who could almost never be alone was creating a coalition out of disparate nations-including the Soviet Union-through frenetic yet effective personal diplomacy. "All countries in the West clearly have to turn to us," he told his diary, "but it is my theory that the more they are included on the take-off, the more we get their opinion, the more we reach out, no matter what is involved in terms of time involved, the better it is. Everyone is proud. Everyone has his place in the sun-large country or small, they should be consulted, their opinions considered. And then when the United States makes a move and I make a decision, we are more apt to have solid support."

For the moment, Bush was enjoying something rare for him in public life: wide acclaim. He talked about it in his diary with a kind of wonder. "The hard-hats charge out from their trailers or from the building projects, the waiters, the people in the stores, and you hear, 'Go for it, George.' 'Give 'em hell, George.' From parking attendants, the airplane service people. It is strong support."

But he remained attuned to the vicissitudes of public and congressional will: "You know how I feel about polls, dear diary. I think they come and go, and we can be up and down. And, yes, I am pleased with the amount of support that I'm getting, but I know it can change fast." As if on cue, The New York Times published a story on Thursday, September 20, 1990, headlined "Criticism of U.S. Policy in Gulf Growing Louder in Congress." It detailed opposition to a Cheney effort to allow him to spend allied funds "as the Secretary deems appropriate," without the approval of Congress. Other lawmakers protested the administration's proposal to forgive $7 billion in debt to Egypt on the grounds that it looked as though the United States "were buying Cairo's support." The largest question of all was whether the administration would come to Congress for approval to undertake military action. The Times quoted Representative Les Aspin, a Wisconsin Democrat, saying that Bush "has no mandate yet to go to war."

Antiwar sentiment grew apace, driven in large measure by the cry "No Blood for Oil." Such demonstrations created an uneasy atmosphere as Bush imposed sanctions and prepared for the possibility-even the likelihood-of war.

Fears about war were not confined to the press or to street demonstrations. The innately cautious Jim Baker felt a duty to raise profound concerns with his old friend. "Jim Baker is worried that we will get bogged down in another Vietnam," Bush had told his diary in mid-August, "and lose the support of the people, and have the Bush presidency destroyed." After a meeting on Iraq at Camp David, Baker and Dan Quayle shared a golf cart to the helicopter pad. "Jim," Quayle asked, "what do you really think about it?"

"I don't know," Baker said. "It's a big gamble."

"Would you put your presidency on the line for this?" Quayle asked. Recalling the exchange, Quayle concluded: "Neither one of us had an answer to that."

These doubts and concerns were coming as Bush was reading an intelligence report on Saturday, September 22 about Iraqi abuses in occupied Kuwait: "Shooting citizens when they are stopped in their cars; exporting what little food there is; brutalizing the homes." He was clear in his own mind about what had to happen. "This just hardens my resolve," he dictated in the fourth week of September, "and I am wondering if we need to speed up the timetable."

- The president had addressed Congress on the evening of Tuesday, September 11, 1990, on the spiraling crises of the Gulf and of the budget. "It is said of me that I much prefer to work on international affairs," Bush told his diary that afternoon. "Well, I am fully engrossed in this international crisis, and I must say I enjoy working all the parts of it and I get into much more detail than I do on the domestic scene. So I think the answer is I do prefer this, but I see a budget deficit as very important-something essential to solve."

In the midst of preparations for the largest and most complex American military operation in a generation, Bush, the leader of a global coalition attempting to bend a faraway dictator to his will, had first to put his own nation's fiscal house in order.

THIRTY-NINE.

Read My Hips

I can't do this. It breaks your word, and it's a mistake, and I won't do it.

-NEWT GINGRICH to Bush on the 1990 budget agreement They can pontificate, but somebody has to compromise, and someone has to make a deal.

-BUSH, on the Gingrich-led conservative revolt over taxes BUSH HAD CONVENED closed-door negotiations over the 1991 federal budget at Andrews Air Force Base on the same day he'd flown to Helsinki to see Gorbachev. "I just hope that Iraq and the country's unity can now be parlayed into support for the budget agreement," Bush told his diary. His major concerns: a government shutdown if no deal was reached by October and the fear that the absence of a budget would roil the markets and exacerbate a recession, which was being predicted for later in 1990-all weakening the United States at an hour it needed to show the world that it was strong and united at home.

No deal meant chaos-and Bush, a man of order, hated chaos. He was less interested in the political price of breaking "Read my lips" than he was in passing a budget that would attack the deficit and be credible to the Federal Reserve and to the markets. "Lord, I've got two years to recover from this grief, and the main thing is to get the job done," Bush had told House Speaker Tom Foley during a private lunch in August.

In his address to the joint session on September 11, Bush had explained that "I want to be able to tell the American people that we have truly solved the deficit problem. And for me to do that, a budget agreement must meet these tests: It must include the measures I've recommended to increase economic growth and reduce dependence on foreign oil. It must be fair. All should contribute, but the burden should not be excessive for any one group of programs or people. It must address the growth of government's hidden liabilities. It must reform the budget process and, further, it must be real." His "tests" were: "growth-oriented tax measures," especially a capital gains tax cut; a long-term defense budget plan; and a five-year debt and deficit reduction plan amounting to $500 billion.

On Sunday, September 30, 1990, three weeks after the Andrews talks opened, the administration and the congressional leadership came to agreement. In New York for the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the president returned to Washington. The deal was not perfect, but it had its virtues-among them bipartisan support from the mainstreams of both parties. The agreement would have cut the projected deficit by $500 billion over five years, with money to be found in Medicare savings and other federal entitlement programs. The proposal left marginal income tax rates unchanged, but increased taxes on gas, tobacco, and alcohol-thus violating "Read my lips." Most important, perhaps, the agreement established pay-as-you-go rules that required future administrations and Congresses to ensure that new appropriations were paid for rather than simply being funded by deficit-increasing borrowing.

Though he had been part of the talks, Newt Gingrich could not abide the deal and rebelled against the president. In the session with Bush in the Cabinet Room just before the agreement was to be made public in the Rose Garden on September 30, Gingrich told the president: "I can't do this. It breaks your word, and it's a mistake, and I won't do it." He "had to give his pitch," Bush dictated to his diary. "He has no plan of his own. He just criticizes."

Gingrich represented a conservative worldview in which Ronald Reagan, the rightful king, had been replaced by Bush, a pale usurper who was betraying the tax-cutting principles on which the Republican presidential ascendancy of the 1980s had been built. "Bush was a Connecticut moderate Republican translated to Texas," Gingrich recalled. "He was probably a Ford Republican, really. I was a conservative Reaganite who wanted to take on the welfare state and defeat the Soviet Union. Bush was not viscerally opposed to the welfare state and had been more for managing the Soviet threat in the Cold War than he had been for rolling it back. Those are profound differences."

The shifting means of politics helped make the break with Bush possible. Because of talk radio and cable TV and sophisticated direct mail, Gingrich and his allies no longer needed the classic party apparatus in the way they once had. They could reach conservatives on their own, and many conservatives were responsive to populist messaging, even if that populist messaging targeted not just Democrats but establishment Republicans-including the most establishment Republican of them all, the president of the United States.

As Bush, Dole, and the other negotiators prepared to go outside with the president to announce the package, Gingrich declined to join them. "This annoyed me very much," Bush dictated, "but you gotta keep cool." The drive for a House majority through supply-side purity and populist appeals was more important to Gingrich and his colleagues than supporting their president-or even what was, arguably, good public policy. "What is good for the President may well be good for the country, but it is not necessarily good for congressional Republicans," Vin Weber had told The Washington Post in July 1990. "We need wedge issues to beat incumbent Democrats." Bush needed something different: an agreement that would control the deficit. And so out he went to the Rose Garden.

Standing with the other leaders, Bush did not hide his own ambivalence about the deal. "Sometimes you don't get it just the way you want, and this is such a time for me," Bush told reporters. "But it's time we put the interest of the United States of America first and get this deficit under control." As CNN broadcast the president's remarks, the network ran a split screen of Gingrich's exit on the other side of the White House, giving visual evidence to the split in Bush's own party. Congressman Bob Walker, another Gingrich ally, had been watching on TV. By the time Gingrich returned to Capitol Hill, Walker had organized a rally of House Republicans to cheer their rebel hero's triumphant return.

In the Rose Garden, Bush said that this was not a "phony," "smoke and mirrors deficit cutting program" but, rather, "real" compromise. The congressional leaders struck the "compromise" theme as well. For Bush, the time for fighting over "Read my lips" was long over. He had felt that way even before the Persian Gulf crisis; in the midst of the showdown with Saddam, the president had no interest in exacerbating partisan relations if he could help it. If he was going to lead the world community against Iraq and possibly take the United States to war, he would need congressional support. He did not believe he could afford to be intransigent or difficult over a campaign promise, even a serious one. Bush was then off again to New York. He had a dinner date with Margaret Thatcher.

Credit 39.1 After breaking his "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge, Bush and the congressional leadership announced a bipartisan budget agreement on Sunday, September 30, 1990-only to have liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans blow the deal up in Congress.

- The agreement that had raised taxes, Gingrich argued, was "totally unnecessary." He had a thought that Bush could find political salvation by reversing course once more. When the initial concession on taxes had been made in June, Saddam had not yet invaded Iraq; everything was different now. Bush, Gingrich argued, should cite the war as an exigent circumstance and refuse to go along with the deal, challenging the Democrats to shut down the government in a time of preparations for war. "If he had just looked them in the eye, suspended the talks, and said we're going to hold a midterm saying, 'If you want more taxes, elect a Democratic Congress; if you don't, elect a Republican one,'" Gingrich recalled, "I think the Democrats would have blinked. They were not going to have a government shutdown with hundreds of thousands of troops in the field with tax increases at the heart of the debate." Bush could not imagine such a course. He had wanted the budget settled for the sake of fiscal order even before the Persian Gulf became an issue, and he was surely not going to let a midterm election create chaos with Americans in harm's way.

Beginning early on Monday, October 1, 1990, the administration did what it could to lobby conservative Republicans to stand with Bush on the budget vote. "We were struggling and working," he told his diary. "Opposition comes from the right wing." The battle was in the House, where Gingrich and his allies argued that voters would exact revenge on lawmakers who supported higher taxes. The debate evoked old memories for Bush: "Each Congressman thinks it is life or death, and my mind flips back [to how I felt when I voted,] as a matter of conscience, for the Open Housing Bill. I thought it was the end of the world. Predictions of defeat and disaster were terrible, but the district did not take it out on me." Late in the day on Wednesday, October 3, Bush got a call from Tom Foley, who said, "It's in trouble." Dan Rostenkowski called the president and tried to buck him up, saying in a "very confidential" conversation that Rosty, at least, "appreciated" what Bush was trying to do in the growth package. Then his old friend added: "You've got to get 51 percent, pal."

Bush knew that, and he was trying. "It is budget, budget, budget," Bush dictated on Thursday, October 4. On the day before, there had been some relief from the fiscal battles when Bush gathered the cabinet at 9:50 A.M. to offer congratulations to German chancellor Helmut Kohl on the unification of East and West. But the days were almost entirely taken up with what USA Today described as much "arm-twisting" of "disgruntled House Republicans...called to the White House for group sessions with Bush, Vice President Quayle and other top officials." To his diary, Bush confided: "Newt is out there, part of the leadership, saying he wasn't elected to support the President. [He is] simply out there saying he has to represent his district...and these right-wingers love it....It just makes me furious."

On the morning of the fourth the president held a meeting in the Residence with forty congressmen, rallying support. Later Foley gave Bush some bad news: The Democrats' left wing was as unhappy about the spending cuts as Bush's right wing was over the tax increases.

Bush was doing everything he could. "I am making phone call after phone call," he told his diary. He placed twenty on the morning of the vote, reaching fourteen of the lawmakers he tried to talk to. "Small time: one Congressman doesn't like an insurance provision, and another one is sore that I didn't mention his name while in Kansas in somebody else's district," Bush told his diary. "A lot of things come out when you get into this complicated environment. Trivial Pursuit." It was frustrating for Bush. He could mold an international coalition, but he could not convince members of his own party to back their president.

Vin Weber and other Republican lawmakers were talking things over in Sununu's West Wing office when Bush walked in and sat down at the chief of staff's conference table. A moment later, the television in the corner of the room reported some political news: Ed Rollins, the former Reagan campaign manager who was running the National Republican Congressional Committee, had issued new guidance to the GOP's midterm hopefuls. The message: "Do not hesitate to distance yourself from the President." A furious Bush slammed his fist down on the table. "I know what people say, that I'm a nice guy, but I'm not going to forget that," the president said.

The Gingrich-led revolt on the right, joined by the left-wing revolt on the Democratic side, defeated the budget package on Friday, October 5, 1990. Bush was told that lawmakers "just stood around on the floor, stunned." The compromise was dead. Bush watched a couple of congressmen on television holding forth. "They can pontificate, but somebody has to compromise, and someone has to make a deal," Bush dictated. Yet the president had to conceal his anger. "We can't be vindictive," Bush told his diary, "and we can't look petty."

- There was a partial government shutdown as congressional leaders raced to find a way forward. On Saturday, October 6, Bush was fretful. "Every Congressman can find a reason to oppose our deal, and so could I-I guess-if I were in Congress....But sometimes you have to govern; you have to make things come together; you have to join with responsible leaders on both sides to get something done for the country." While jogging with Jeb on a trip to Florida, Bush unwisely pointed to his backside and joked to reporters: "Read my hips"-a moment that made him seem unserious about breaking a central campaign promise. Bush realized he was in a largely untenable position. "Nobody is particularly happy with me," he told his diary. "I don't want a terrible deal to take place, but [I] don't want to be off in some ideological corner falling on my sword, and keeping the country from moving forward."