BUSH AGAIN SPOKE OUT AGAINST JOE McCARTHY Herskowitz, Duty, Honor, Country, 12336.
McCARTHY SMEARED A YOUNG LAWYER Patterson, Grand Expectations, 26869.
"MR. PRESIDENT, ALL MY LIFE" "Resolution of Censure, Remarks of Senator Prescott Bush," December 1, 1954, 83rd Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 100, pt. 12: 16268.
"HAS CAUSED" Ibid.
"I REALIZE THAT ANYBODY" GHWB to Senator William Fulbright, September 3, 1954, JB.
WOULD CALL WITH PSB, COHC, 351.
"TALK QUITE INFORMALLY" Ibid.
WHEN BUSH AND EISENHOWER PLAYED GOLF Ibid., 352.
"IT'S ALWAYS HELPFUL" Ibid., 35455.
BUSH WAS FLOWN OUT Ibid., 92.
DURING THE 1956 REELECTION CAMPAIGN Ibid., 189.
DOROTHY BUSH WAS CHARACTERISTICALLY COMPETITIVE Ibid., 18990.
THE TWO WERE, BUSH RECALLED, "ON THE GO" Ibid., 191.
AT ISSUE WAS LEGISLATION LF, 81.
THE "OPINION...OF A TEXAN" Ibid.
SENATOR BUSH WOULD NOT CHANGE Ibid.
THE CALLS TO GEORGE H. W. BUSH'S MIDLAND HOME Ibid.
"DAMN WELL BETTER" Ibid.
"THE HEAD OF PHILLIPS" Ibid.
IF THE SENATOR "DOESN'T VOTE FOR THIS BILL" Ibid., 82.
AT TWO O'CLOCK ONE MORNING Ibid.
"THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE" Ibid.
"THEY'LL NEVER PUT YOU OUT OF BUSINESS" PSB, COHC, 293.
THE LOBBYING EFFORT LF, 83.
IN AUGUST 1959, ZAPATA OFF-SHORE Ibid., 6970. See also Weisberg, Bush Tragedy, 34, and Wicker, GHWB, 1213.
IT WAS TIME LF, 6970.
ZOS, AS THE SEPARATE COMPANY WAS KNOWN Ibid.
BARBARA WAS UNHAPPY ABOUT THE MOVE BB, 5253.
MILDRED AND BAINE KERR'S HOUSE Ibid.
BUSH SET UP OFFICES Thomas Ludlow Ashley, M.C., to GHWB, August 30, 1960, JB.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1959 BB, 5354.
"ENCHANTING" ATB, 85.
HE WAS FOUND BB, 54.
TWELVE: Goldwater's Policies, Kennedy's Style THE SENATE IS A TERRIBLY SOUGHT-AFTER POST PSB, COHC, 179.
HE RADIATED CHARM Author interview with Peter O'Donnell.
THE HARRIS COUNTY REPUBLICAN CHAIRMAN LSY, 94; Naftali, GHWB, 1213; Wicker, GHWB, 1416.
"JIMMY, WHEN ARE YOU" LSY, 94.
ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL DEMOCRATS LF, 8384.
"THEY MENTIONED SEVERAL POSSIBILITIES" Ibid., 83.
THOUGH BUSH ADMITTED Ibid.
"PRIVATELY MY OWN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY" Ibid., 8081.
SUFFERING FROM ARTHRITIS LSY, 89.
HE'D "BE A FOOL" TO RUN PSB, COHC, 436.
"ONCE YOU'VE HAD THE EXPOSURE" Ibid., 439.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S HOLD OVER TEXAS LF, 84; Naftali, GHWB, 13; Wicker, GHWB, 1314. See also John R. Knaggs, Two-Party Texas: The John Tower Era, 19611984 (Austin, 1986), for a knowing exploration of the Texas political terrain. Another key moment for Texas Republicans was the election of Bruce Alger as a congressman from Dallas. (Ibid., 5.) EISENHOWER CARRIED THE STATE TWICE LF, 84.
ONLY NARROWLY DEFEATED http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=48&year=1960.
"THE LARGEST METROPOLITAN AREA IN THE COUNTRY" LF, 84.
THEN CAME JOHN TOWER Ibid., 80; Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 12.
THE MAY 1961 SPECIAL ELECTION Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 115; LF, 80. The conservatives were led by former governor Allan Shivers, who had campaigned for Eisenhower; the liberals by the populist Senator Ralph Yarborough. When Johnson was elected vice president, the governor, Price Daniel, Sr., appointed a conservative from Dallas, William Blakley, to the seat. An intricate battle ensued in which liberal Texas Democrats either voted for Tower or simply chose not to show up at the polls, thus denying the Democratic nominee their votes. (This liberal tactic was known as "going fishing.") The goal: to elect a Republican and force a conservative exodus to a newly empowered GOP, creating a true two-party system that would give liberals more control within the Democratic Party. It was a complicated political moment, one that required hard-core populist liberals in the short term to support a candidate with whom they disagreed in order to achieve a long-term strategic objective. (Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 1012.) "SOMETHING WAS STIRRING" LF, 84.
JAMES BERTRON, THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN LSY, 9399.
JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY Ibid., 93. For a history of Texas and extremism, see Don E. Carleton, Red Scare! Right Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin, 1985). See also Naftali, GHWB, 12, and Wicker GHWB, 15.
A SUNNY SPRINGTIME SATURDAY MORNING LF, 8485. LSY, 8797, tells the Harris County story well.
BUSH'S CALLERS WANTED LF, 85.
OVER LUNCH CAME THE QUESTION Ibid.
"I DIDN'T REALLY NEED TIME" Ibid.
BARBARA TOOK UP NEEDLEPOINTING LSY, 95.
BUSH WAS ELECTED CHAIRMAN Ibid. Just two weeks into his term, on Thursday, March 7, 1963, he wrote leading businessmen whom he suspected were Republicans but who, as he put it, "have not elected to be identified with the local party. Some, of course, are conservative Democrats who vote Republican in national elections but there are many who are life-long Republicans who just have never gotten active in the Republican Party. One of my main goals...is to up-grade the image of our party through getting these people to identify as Republicans." (GHWB to John E. Lyons, March 7, 1963, JB.) He also contacted Albertine E. Bowie, a black Texas woman who had just been appointed to the women's division of the Republican National Committee. "The Republicans have done miserably in getting any negro votes and I am determined that we work diligently toward finding an answer," Bush wrote Bowie on Monday, March 11, 1963. (GHWB to Albertine E. Bowie, March 11, 1963, JB.) "I FOUND OUT THAT JUGULAR POLITICS" LF, 86.
"YOU'RE EITHER FOR" Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 8.
"NINETEEN SIXTY-FOUR" GHWB, "By George," Republican County Headquarters 1962, Business Alphabetical File, ZAP. For an account of the 1964 Senate campaign from the Democratic point of view, see Patrick Cox, Ralph W. Yarborough: The People's Senator (Austin, 2001), 21420. See also Wicker, GHWB, 1619; Naftali, GHWB, 1316; LSY, 98114.
BEEN HEARING GOOD THINGS Author interview with Peter O'Donnell.
STEWART THOUGHT THE TWO MEN Ibid.
"I THOUGHT I COULD WIN" Author interview with GHWB.
O'DONNELL BELIEVED BUSH'S ENERGY Author interview with Peter O'Donnell.
TWO PREVAILING FACTIONS See, for instance, Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York, 2001); Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1964 (New York, 1965); Richard Norton Smith, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller (New York, 2014).
"EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE" Perlstein, Before the Storm, 391. The remark came in Goldwater's acceptance speech in San Francisco. In the convention's keynote address earlier in the week, Governor Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon had called out the farthest fringes of the right. "There are bigots in this nation who spew forth their venom of hate," Hatfield had told the delegates in a half-hour speech on Monday evening. "They parade under hundreds of labels, including the Communist party, the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. They must be overcome." (NYT, July 14, 1964; Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1964).
GROWN MORE CONSERVATIVE Author interview with GHWB.
EISENHOWER HAD FAILED Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 18901952 (New York, 1983), 56367.
BUSH WOULD OPPOSE KEY ELEMENTS OF THE LANDMARK CIVIL RIGHTS ACT DMN, April 8, 1964; June 11, 1964. For a summary of GHWB's 1964 positions, see also Naftali, GHWB, 1314, and Wicker, GHWB, 17.
BUSH OPPOSED MEDICARE DMN, October 20, 1964. The article noted that GHWB "favors the proposed increase in [Social Security] payments, but without the Medicare rider."
WAR ON POVERTY DMN, June 3 and 11, 1964.
THE ADMISSION OF Ibid., April 8, 1964. "If Red China shoots its way into the U.N., we should drop out-because this would torpedo the U.N.," Bush said in Austin. "Technically, Red China is still at war with the U.N." (Ibid.) OPPOSED A NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY "Texas: Cactus-Nasty Campaign," Time, October 16, 1964.
BUSH PAID A CALL ON AUSTIN'S JOURNALISTS Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 3334.
YARBOROUGH, BUSH SAID, "IS DIAMETRICALLY" DMN, September 12, 1963.
A POPULIST DEMOCRAT NYT, January 28, 1996.
"THE WORST CANDIDATE I'D EVER HAD" Author interview with James Leonard.
"HE'D GO OVER TO THESE YOKELS" Ibid. Years later, James Baker encountered the same dissonance between the candidate's vocabulary and the voters'. "George was always saying 'My father inculcated in me a sense of public service,'" Baker recalled, "and a not inconsiderable number of folks listening were unaccustomed to hearing the word 'inculcate.' I'd ask him to stop, but it didn't do any good. He kept on saying it anyway." (Author interview with James A. Baker III.) "I PUSHED HIM" Author interview with James Leonard.
COOKING SPAGHETTI FOR SCORES BPB diary and letters, November 2, 1963.
THERE WERE "TASTIN' TEAS" Ibid., November 10, 1963.
BARBARA PREFERRED SITTING IN AUDIENCES Ibid., October 9, 1963.
"THE IVY LEAGUEYANKEE LABEL" Ibid., September 1963.
"GEORGE H. W. BUSH" BECAME JUST "GEORGE BUSH" Ibid.
SOME ALLIES THOUGHT BUSH Ibid.
THE NASCENT BUSH NETWORK Ibid., September 25, 1963.
"NO FOREIGN CAR DRIVER" Ibid., September 1963.
RUMORS ABOUT BUSH AND HIS EASTERN TIES BPB diary and letters, May 18, 1964.
A "TOOL OF THE COMMIES" Ibid.
ALSO PUBLISHED THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY'S HANDBOOK Ibid.; BB, 5859.
A STATEWIDE HOUSTON CHRONICLE POLL Knaggs, Two-Party Texas, 35; LSY, 105.
THE CHRONICLE SURVEY APPEARED Ibid.
AT MIDDAY THE NEWS CAME OVER THE RADIO BB, 59.
AT A MEETING Author interview with GHWB.
"OH TEXAS-MY TEXAS" BB, 59.
BUSH CALLED BARBARA BPB diary and letters, November 22, 1963.
FLEW HOME TO HOUSTON BB, 5960. The Bushes flew from Tyler to Fort Worth on a private plane. "We had to circle the field while the second presidential plane took off," Barbara wrote. "Immediately Pop got tickets back to Houston and here we are flying home." (Ibid.) From his Harris County post and from the road, Bush was so attuned to the right wing that, when he first heard the news, he thought he might have a lead for the FBI in the murder of the president. According to an FBI report: At 1:45 P.M. Mr. George H. W. Bush, President of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.
BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one James Parrott has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.
BUSH stated that Parrott is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in the area. He stated that he felt Mrs. Fawley, telephone number SU 25239, or Arlene Smith, telephone number JA 99194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of Parrott.