Credit pai1.40 Bush, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Gerald Ford meet in the Oval Office in the first days of Ford's presidency, August 1974. Bush was under consideration for vice president; he would end up as liaison to China.
Credit pai1.41 Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, Bush, and President Ford in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, December 1975.
Credit pai1.42 Milton Pitts, the official White House barber, at work on Bush.
Credit pai1.43 CIA director Bush in the White House during a crisis in Lebanon, June 1976.
Credit pai1.44 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs George Brown, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Bush, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in President Ford's Oval Office, Wednesday, January 19, 1977.
The oil portrait of Pauline Robinson Bush, or Robin, commissioned by her grandmother Dorothy Bush in 1953.
Robin with her mother in Greenwich during the summer of 1953.
Dorothy Bush with her namesake, Doro, on the beach at Hobe Sound, Florida, February 1963.
Doubles partners James A. Baker III and George H. W. Bush on the court, circa 1967.
George W. and Doro Bush visit their father's diplomatic posting in China, summer 1975.
Noelle and George P., two of Columba and Jeb's children, during their grandfather's 1980 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Up from an "asterisk": Bush on the trail in 1980. He surprised Reagan in the Iowa caucuses, winning a narrow victory, but lost what he called "the Big Mo" after Reagan reasserted himself in New Hampshire.
Credit pai1.52 "Out of a clear blue sky": At the last possible moment, Reagan put Bush on the 1980 ticket-but only after last-minute negotiations to make former president Ford the vice presidential nominee had collapsed.
Credit pai1.53 Men of the world: Reagan and Bush at the White House. The two former rivals developed what a Reagan adviser called "a special relationship" during the two Reagan terms.
Despite uniform fealty from the Bushes to the Reagans, Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Bush never truly clicked, creating years of tension.
Credit pai1.55 A creature of the fading clubbiness of the Congress, Bush enjoyed friendships with Democrats, including Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi, Lud Ashley of Ohio, and Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts. Here he and O'Neill, the Speaker of the House, joke around at a Reagan State of the Union address-then turn somber at the appropriate moment.
At the wheel of his beloved speedboat with Doro, Jeb, and grandchildren off Walker's Point in the summer of 1986.
Credit pai1.57 Meeting Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis for their second and final presidential debate in the fall of 1988.
The forty-first president in the Bushes' bedroom in the White House Residence. He began each day drinking coffee and reading newspapers and a White House News Summary, and occasionally jotting down notes for his advisers.
With Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev on Governors Island in New York Harbor, December 1988. A little more than three years later, on Christmas 1991, Gorbachev would announce the end of the Soviet Union.
Watching his bank of televisions in the Treaty Room, which served as the presidential study in the White House Residence. Bush often used this office to dictate to his diary at quiet moments.
Bush spends Thanksgiving with the troops of Desert Shield in Saudi Arabia, November 1990.
Victory in the desert: Bush congratulates American troops at Sumter, South Carolina, after the successful liberation of Kuwait.
"There is a God": Bush takes a call from Gorbachev, who has survived the coup attempt against his government, August 1991.
Together to the end: Bush with Baker-who had given up the State Department to return to the White House-at work in the president's study in the Residence, August 1992.
Credit pai1.65 Newt Gingrich's rebellion against the president over the 1990 budget deal-one that broke Bush's 1988 "no new taxes" pledge-devastated the administration.
Credit pai1.66 On the eve of the Gulf War, Bush and his team brief the press.
At Blair House on Friday, January 20, 1989, the day of his inauguration. "I can't wait to get into that office now, and start trying to make things happen," Bush recounted in his diary during the transition.
Mrs. Bush poses with Millie on the Truman Balcony for the cover photo for Millie's Book, January 1990.
Bush and Scowcroft drop by to visit with Mrs. Bush and Lady Margaret and Sir Denis Thatcher as they finish breakfast in the Residence, March 1991. Thatcher had resigned as prime minister the previous fall.
Credit pai1.70 A strong advocate for literacy, among other causes, Barbara Bush reads to schoolchildren at the White House in 1990.
Signing the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act on a brilliantly sunny summer day in Washington, July 1990. Bush compared the opening of access to the disabled to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The last run: Bush on a campaign whistle-stop tour through the Midwest, late September 1992.
Changing the guard: Bush greets President-elect Clinton at the White House, November 1992.
Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush during a post1992 election tour of the White House.
Skydiving in his seventies at College Station, Texas.
Credit pai1.76 The former president Bush takes Tom Brokaw out on his boat in Kennebunkport, September 2006.
Credit pai1.77 President George W. Bush welcomes President-elect Barack Obama and all the living former presidents to the Oval Office, January 2009.
Credit pai1.78 "This is a gentleman": President Obama awards the forty-first president the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, February 2011.
Credit pai1.79 With George W. and Jeb Bush after completing a parachute jump in Kennebunkport on Friday, June 12, 2009, for his eighty-fifth birthday.
Credit pai1.80 The Bushes at home in Kennebunkport, summer 2004.
"I don't want to miss anything": Bush with Ranger on the rocks at Walker's Point.
To Keith, Mary, Maggie, and Sam
AUTHOR'S NOTE
My first and greatest thanks are due to George H. W. Bush, who granted me access to his diaries and sat (usually patiently, and always politely) for interviews from 2006 to 2015. The former president was generous, welcoming, gracious-and insisted that I call them as I saw them.
This book was written with the cooperation of the forty-first president and of his family and of many of his lieutenants, but it is an independent work. No one, including President Bush, had right of review or of approval. There was a single exception: Mrs. Bush allowed me to read her diaries, a private archive covering the Bushes' lives from 1948 forward. Her only condition was that I clear direct quotations from those papers with her. In the end, I sought Mrs. Bush's permission to draw from roughly ninety pages of transcripts. She granted blanket permission, withdrawing nothing that I had asked for the option to use. Mrs. Bush was unfailingly helpful, answering many questions over several years. At my request, toward the end of the project, both Mrs. Bush and George W. Bush (himself the author of a biography of his father) agreed to read selected manuscript pages in order to bring any errors of fact to my attention. For the same purpose I also asked James A. Baker III; Jean Becker, President Bush's chief of staff; and Chase Untermeyer, a longtime Bush associate, director of presidential personnel under Bush 41, and U.S. ambassador to Qatar under Bush 43, to read the manuscript. They generously did so, but none of these readers, of course, is in any way accountable for the resulting book. That responsibility is mine alone.
My aim in the book was to paint a biographical portrait of the forty-first president. This is neither a full life-and-times nor a history of the Bush family; it is, rather, an attempt to give readers a sense of a singular and complicated man whose life and career span so much of our history. Because many readers will have lived through the Bush 41 years (and the Bush 43 years) there will doubtless be those who will argue with the exclusion of this episode or that issue or with my choice of narrative emphasis. So be it: I view this book as a contribution to a burgeoning historical conversation about George H. W. Bush.
The historian Herbert S. Parmet was granted access to the Bush diaries for his George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee, published in 1997; President Bush and Brent Scowcroft used excerpts from them for A World Transformed, their 1998 account of the administration's foreign policy; and Jean Becker quoted them in All the Best, the 1999 book of Bush's letters. (All the Best was updated in 2013.) For the presidential diaries, I was allowed access to transcripts of the diary tapes prepared by the Office of George Bush. I endeavored mightily to ensure the accuracy of the transcribed quotes in this book by checking transcripts against audio. (I found the transcripts to be extremely faithful.) To be sure, though, as the historian Michael Beschloss, who has edited acclaimed volumes of the Lyndon Johnson tapes, has written, transcription is as much an art as a science. For diary quotations from the pre-1988 vice presidential years, I depended on transcripts from the Office of George Bush. Some tapes from 1981 to January 1987 were not available, chiefly those from November 4, 1986, to January 2, 1988. These tapes were transcribed in Bush's Houston office in real time by Betty Green, who, according to Bush's attorneys, "routinely erased the tapes once transcripts were prepared." The existence and timely production of the diaries to the special prosecutor became an issue during the Iran-contra investigation. Bush's attorneys turned over excerpts from the transcripts to the independent counsel, and the Office of George Bush provided the author the full transcripts.* The author plans to edit the Bush diaries, including the vice presidential years, for publication in future years.
* Griffin B. Bell to the Honorable Lawrence E. Walsh, January 15, 1993, details the story of the tapes. This letter and report were released publicly on that day. (Bell, a former attorney general under President Carter, was representing former President Bush in the matter.) See also chapter 28 of The Final Report of the Iran-contra special prosecutor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
As noted earlier, I am most grateful to George H. W. Bush and to Barbara Bush, whose cooperation and patience made this project possible. Jean Becker, the former president's chief of staff, is a close third. Jean answered question after question after question, connected me with the far-flung Bush universe, and, like her chieftain, she expected me to reach my own conclusions about what I discovered. In his acknowledgment to her in his book All the Best, a collection of his letters and other writings that she compiled, President Bush wrote that he could not "properly express" his gratitude to Jean. Neither can I.
In the Office of George Bush, I am also indebted to Nancy Lisenby, Linda Poepsel, Mary Sage, Melinda Lamoreaux, Laura Pears, Catherine Branch, Evan Sisley, and George Dvosky.
The leadership and staff of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas, was generous, intelligent, and attentive. A biographer can ask for no more than that. Director Warren Finch and Deputy Director Dr. Robert Holzweiss welcomed me years ago. In a favorite phrase of President Bush's, they were "steady as she goes." I am especially indebted to Bob Holzweiss for his counsel and for a reading of the manuscript. Thanks as well to supervisory archivist Deborah Wheeler and textual archivists Douglas Campbell, Zachary Roberts, Chris Pembelton, John Blair, Buffie Hollis, Simon Staats, and Elizabeth Staats; to archives technicians Dr. McKenzie Morse, Rachel Medders, and Kathryn Burwitz; to audio-video archivist Mary Finch (who is also the keeper of the vast Bush Scrapbooks); and to audio-video archives technician Rebecca Passmore.
I am grateful to the forty-third president, George W. Bush, who was willing to spend as much time as I asked discussing his father's life. Jeb Bush, Marvin Bush, Neil Bush, and Doro Bush Koch were all exceptionally gracious and helpful, as were Nancy Bush Ellis, Jonathan Bush, and Bucky Bush. Bush's first cousin G. H. "Bert" Walker III and his wife, Carol, were generous hosts in St. Louis.
James A. Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, John Sununu, Boyden Gray, and Richard Haass answered my questions with grace, as did Roger Porter, Robert Kimmitt, Andrew Card, Fred McClure, Patricia Presock, Rich Bond, Roger Ailes, Mary Matalin, Tim McBride, and Vic Gold, among many others. (A full listing of interviews for the book can be found in the bibliography.) Secretary Baker opened his Princeton papers to me without restriction, shared many recollections, and offered analytic guidance. In Baker's Houston office, John Williams went out of his way to be generous. Jonathan Darman kindly allowed me access to the papers of his late father, Richard G. Darman. Nicholas Brady, the former secretary of the Treasury, shared a memoir he wrote for his family. Drs. Burton Lee and Lawrence C. Mohr helped me understand President Bush's health issues in the White House; Dr. John Eckstein was helpful with the post-presidential years. I was privileged to speak with figures ranging from James Leonard, who ran Bush's 1964 Texas Senate race, to Michael Dukakis, who candidly discussed the 1988 campaign, to Bill Clinton, who ended the forty-first president's elective career.
At Princeton University, Daniel Linke, university archivist and curator of public policy papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, was very helpful with the James A. Baker III Papers. At the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, I am, as always, grateful to Jeff Flannery, head of Reference and Reader Services.
Thanks as well to Barbara Cline, archivist, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas; Valois Armstrong, archivist, and Sydney Soderberg, researcher, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas; Elizabeth Druga, archivist, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Jennifer Mandel, archivist, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California; and Debbie Hamm of the Abraham Lincoln Library, Springfield, Illinois. Archivists, librarians, and staff at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and at Yale University were also generous.
Kathy Evans kindly shared Walker family research with me and checked me for inaccuracies; she is the author of A Useful Life, a book on George Herbert Walker III and the Walker family legacy slated for private publication in 2016. James E. Steen, an assistant to Dick Cheney in the Pentagon, provided me excerpts from his extensive "Desert Storm Chronology." I am also grateful to Pat Schley of the Judge David Davis House; to Paul St. Hilaire of the George W. Bush Childhood Home; and to Valerie Simpson, Jane Knowles, Nova Seals, and Laura Hooper at the library and archives at St. George's School, Middletown, Rhode Island.
I benefited enormously from the work of many other writers and historians. Walt Harrington's "Born to Run," a 1986 profile in The Washington Post Magazine, is indispensable, as is Richard Ben Cramer's classic What It Takes, a book I devoured when it was first published and which has shaped my view of George H. W. Bush (and of Bob Dole and Joe Biden) ever since. Thorough and fair-minded, Herbert S. Parmet's 1997 Lone Star Yankee is a foundational work for all subsequent Bush biographers. My friend Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy is illuminating and challenging; I am in his debt. For family history, I learned much from Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer's The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty; Fitzhugh Green's George Bush: An Intimate Portrait; and Nicholas King's George Bush. Tom Wicker's George Herbert Walker Bush, published in 2004, is a predictably fine work from a great journalist whom we all miss. As Wicker noted in his book, he brought his years of reporting on Bush to bear on the task of a biography, and it shows-for the good.
Timothy Naftali's 2007 biography of Bush, written for the Times Books American Presidents Series founded by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and now edited by Sean Wilentz, is an essential work. Deeply researched and analytically insightful, Naftali's book informed my thinking about the subject in important ways. Wilentz's own Age of Reagan and James T. Patterson's Restless Giant provided invaluable general historical context for much of the period I covered. Barry Werth's 31 Days, about the Nixon-Ford transition, is illuminating, and I am grateful to him for counsel. For the politics of 1988 (and beyond), John Brady's biography of Lee Atwater, Bad Boy, is an important work; Brady also took time to help me. The Reagan assassination attempt is wonderfully rendered in Del Quentin Wilber's Rawhide Down, and I am grateful to him for reviewing my account of that terrible day. Michael Duffy and Dan Good-game's Marching in Place offers an essential view of the White House from 1989 to 1993. Maureen Dowd's Bushworld is a terrific collection, and Dowd was a fun interlocutor on the project.
The campaigns of 1988 and 1992 are brilliantly covered in the work of Jack Germond and Jules Witcover (Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? and Mad as Hell). And one can do no better in the search to understand those two campaigns than to read the work of the Newsweek special election project teams in two books coauthored by Peter Goldman: the first, with Tom Mathews, is The Quest for the Presidency, 1988, the second, with Thomas M. DeFrank, Mark Miller, Andrew Murr, and Tom Mathews, is Quest for the Presidency, 1992. I am also grateful to Don Graham, Lally Weymouth, Rick Smith, the late Maynard Parker, Mark Whitaker, Ann McDaniel, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Elliott, and my many former colleagues at the magazine, where I worked from 1995 to 2010, for engaging years of adventure in the study of politics in general and of the Bushes in particular. At Time, I have been fortunate to work for John Huey, Richard Stengel, Nancy Gibbs, and Michael Duffy.
This book would not have been possible without the hard work of the journalists who covered the different eras of Bush's life. Biographers stand on the shoulders of reporters and columnists. I found the Texas newspapers of the day invaluable, and of course owe much to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and the many other publications cited in the source notes.
For his grace in taking the time to read the manuscript early on, I am grateful to Michael Duffy, who covered the Bush 41 White House for Time and is, with Nancy Gibbs, the author of several distinguished volumes of history. Mike has an intuitive feel for the nuances and rhythms of politics and generously gave me the benefit of his counsel.
I am indebted, too, to the wonderful work of Howard Fineman, who read my manuscript and made observations that improved it greatly. A gifted writer and an excellent reporter, Howard has been my friend for two decades and has covered the Bushes for three, dating back to George H. W. Bush's first moves in 1985 toward a presidential run in 1988.
Thomas M. DeFrank gave me important guidance as well. Tom met George H. W. Bush in Beijing on the day before Thanksgiving, 1974, and has covered him ever since, first for Newsweek and then for the New York Daily News and now for National Journal. Tom's comments on the manuscript were incisive and useful.
David Hoffman's Washington Post coverage was important to this work, and David offered me generous counsel. Bob Woodward was generous with his time, and his The Commanders, Shadow, and his volumes on the George W. Bush years informed my thinking on sundry subjects. Craig Shirley was a generous reader: His history of the 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny, is indispensable.
My longtime friend and colleague Ann McDaniel, who covered the Bush beat for Newsweek, also gave generously of her time and insights. She is stalwart in all things, be they human or historical.
I am grateful as well to a formidable company of amazing writers, historians, and readers: David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Walter Isaacson, Tom Brokaw, Julia Reed, Louisa Thomas, Christopher Buckley, Peter Schweizer, John Brady, Tim Naftali, Herbert Wentz, and John Cooper.
James Baker's diplomatic memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy, coauthored by Tom DeFrank, is, along with Bush and Scowcroft's A World Transformed, a wonderful record of four extraordinary years. Baker's political memoir, coauthored with Steve Fiffer, Work Hard, Study...and Keep Out of Politics!, is a spirited account of Baker's amazing political life-a subject that Peter Baker and Susan Glasser will examine in a forthcoming biography of the man who still calls Bush "Jefe." John Sununu generously shared an advance copy of his 2015 White House memoir, The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H. W. Bush, an account of the substantive successes of the administration. Sununu was always available to me to answer questions, and I am grateful to him. I learned much from Dick Cheney's In My Time, Donald Rumsfeld's Known and Unknown, Robert M. Gates's two books, From the Shadows and Duty, and from Colin Powell's My American Journey.
Professor Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at SMU, was welcoming and kind; I owe him greatly for his willingness to answer questions, assess a hypothesis or two (or three), and read and comment on the manuscript. Jeff's articles and edited volumes are invaluable, and he is at work on what will no doubt be a brilliant history of George H. W. Bush's diplomacy. Thanks as well to Brian Domitrovic of Sam Houston State University, who was helpful on economic history, and to James A. Stimson of the University of North Carolina for his work on the "Policy Mood Index."
I have been fortunate in my friends at Vanderbilt University. Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos, John Beasley, and John Geer have welcomed me into their world. The chancellor took valuable time to consult on this project. John Geer contributed his wonderful scholarship, helped in many ways, and then offered a valuable critique of the manuscript. To him and to his formidable wife, Beth, I am hugely grateful. Thanks, too, to Professors Larry Bartels, Joshua Clinton, and Bruce Oppenheimer. At the University of the South, I am indebted to Vice Chancellor and President John M. McCardell, Jr., Provost John Swallow, Deans John Gatta and Terry Papillon, Professor Woody Register, and Vice Chancellor Emeritus Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.
For kindnesses large and small, my thanks to Beth and Charles Peters, Jonathan Alter, Joe Klein, Jan Baran, Lou Cannon, Peter Hannaford, Lawrence Noble, Wick Sollers, Trevor Potter, Nicolle Wallace, Dan Bartlett, Sofia and Herbert Wentz, Claire and John Reishman, Leslie and Dale Richardson, Chris Matthews, Jamie Gangel, Dan Silva, George Hackett, Terri Lacy, Edwin Williamson, Liz Cheney, David Hume Kennerly, Rob Pearigen, Jim McGrath, Michael Meece, Logan Dryden, Freddy Ford, Valerie Jarrett, Jennifer Friedman, Kara Ahern, Sally Quinn, Daniel Klaidman, Sam Register, Tammy Haddad, Betsy Fischer and Jonathan Martin, Lisa and Richard Plepler, Christina and Willie Geist, Gardiner and Nicholas Lapham, Anna Quindlen, Don King, the late Don Rhodes, Carol D'Ambrosia, Mike Allen, Mike Barnicle, Perri Peltz and Eric Ruttenberg, Jodi and Mark Banks, Betsy and Ridley Wills, Laura and John Cooper, Corinne and Brock Kidd, Bill Frist, Dorothy Barry, Remley Johnson, Mary Pat Decker, Harold Ford, Jr., Rob Crawford, Debbie Dingell, Elizabeth and Jeffrey Leeds, Daphne and Rawls Butler, Laura and John Chadwick, Julie and Tommy Frist, Elizabeth and Bob Dennis, the late John Seigenthaler, Tom Ingram, Mark Updegrove, John F. Harris, Charlie Rose, Yvette Vega, Susan Glasser, Katty Kay, Darren Walker, Will Byrd, Louise Kushner, Kathy Murphy, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Alex Korson, Kristin Koch, Ann Ungar, Joseph Jones, Bret Begun, Harlan Crowe, Leslie Bowman, Ann Patchett, Andy Brennan, Andrea Mitchell, George Stephanopoulos, Chuck Todd, Jonathan Karp, Jonathan Dwyer, Lynn Hughes, Peggy Cifrino, Bill Hagerty, Mary and John Bettis, Karl VanDevender, Hannah and John Lavey, Melissa and Jay Wellons, Kathryn and Gray Sasser, Jennifer and Billy Frist, Mary and Lee Barfield, Jack May, Natasha Duncan, Teresa Smith, Christine Mejia, Nora Frances and Vaughan McRae, Selby McRae, Mary Mack Jones, Sherry and Rick Smythe, May Smythe, Leskia Menjivar, and Barbara DiVittorio. And Jack Bales worked his usual bibliographic magic.
Thaddeus Romansky was instrumental in work undertaken at the Bush Library in College Station. With a historian's eye and a good man's patience, Thaddeus carved a path for me through the wilderness of the library's collections. My old friend Mike Hill was there for me through it all; I can't imagine writing a book without his skill, his grace, and his friendship.
Samuel Adkisson proved himself truly invaluable by undertaking several targeted research projects and then devoting himself to a scrupulous fact-check of the manuscript and the source notes-an enormous task that he performed with preternatural skill, great intelligence, and a matchless eye for detail. For other research and fact-checking assistance, I am grateful to Daniel Constantine, Riley Griffin, Kolby Yarnell, and Meade Wills.
At Random House, I continue to be dazzled by Gina Centrello, who makes all things possible. My editor, Kate Medina, is the best in the world at what she does, and as always I am indebted to Susan Kamil and Tom Perry. Porscha Burke runs my life-a thankless task if there ever were one. Will Murphy and Andy Ward took valuable time out of their hectic lives to help me, and I am in their debt. I am grateful to the Random House publishing team, one without peer: Sanyu Dillon, Leigh Marchant, Paolo Pepe, Joseph Perez, Simon Sullivan, Theresa Zoro, the still-erratic-but-ever-charming Sally Marvin, Barbara Fillon, Andrea DeWerd, Anna Pitoniak, Bill Takes, Carol Poticny, and Derrill Hagood. Benjamin Dreyer and Dennis Ambrose once again proved themselves wizards, and I can never repay them their many courtesies. Amanda Urban is the best of agents and of counselors.
Michael Beschloss continues to be the best of friends and the most reassuring of advisers. His grasp of historical detail, his excellent judgment, his infinite patience, and above all his friendship are among the great gifts in my life. I can't imagine writing a book-or doing much of anything else-without the counsel and the company of Oscie and Evan Thomas, who are terrific editors and even better friends. A master biographer, Evan has taught me more than I can say.
My family endures much so that I can spend time exploring distant days, but Keith, Mary, Maggie, and Sam are the true center of everything-past, present, and future. President Bush always liked to talk about "heartbeat." They're mine.
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NOTES.
Abbreviations Used ATB: George H. W. Bush, All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings AWT: George Bush, with Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed BB: Barbara Bush, Barbara Bush: A Memoir BPB: Barbara Pierce Bush BSC: Brent Scowcroft Collection, GHWB Presidential Records, Office of the President, GBPL DF: Daily Files, GHWB Presidential Records, Office of the President, GBPL DMN: The Dallas Morning News FITZ: FitzGerald Bemiss Collection, Donated Materials, GBPL GBPL: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, College Station, Texas GHWB: George Herbert Walker Bush GWB: George Walker Bush JB: Jean Becker, "All the Best, George Bush" File, Post-Presidential Materials, GBPL LAT: Los Angeles Times LF: George Bush and Victor Gold, Looking Forward LSY: Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee Naftali, GHWB: Timothy Naftali, George H. W. Bush NSC: National Security Council, GHWB Presidential Records, Office of the President, GBPL NYT: The New York Times PSB, COHC: The Reminiscences of Prescott S. Bush (196667), in the Columbia Oral History Collection VIC: Vic Gold Collection, Personal Papers, GBPL Wicker, GHWB: Tom Wicker, George Herbert Walker Bush WP: The Washington Post ZAP: Zapata Oil File, Personal Papers, GBPL EPIGRAPHS.
DESTINY IS NOT Bryan, William Jennings, and Mary Baird Bryan, Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, Revised and Arranged by Himself (New York: Funk and Wagnall's Co., 1909), 11.
MOODS COME AND GO Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush, 19921993, bk 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1993), 163.