IN SEARCH OF GEORGE BUSH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580078-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 78
• Publication Date: March 6, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580078-6
Si H I The Washington Post
IN SEARCH OF
GEORGE
By Randall Rothenberg
CRACKLING FIRE
warmed the White
House office of the
Vice President this
raw winter day, com-
plementing the deep
wood tones, the rich
Oriental rugs and the
family photographs.
Sprawled in a chair,
George Bush contem-
plated a question:
How would his leadership differ from that
of his chief rival for the Republican Presi-
dential nomination, Senator Robert J. Dole
of Kansas?
"Can't talk about Bob Dole's leadership,"
Bush said of the man who humiliated him in
the Iowa caucuses and whom, in turn, he de-
feated in the bitterly attended New Hamp-
shire primary. Then, immediately, Bush
caught himself. "I can work well with peo-
ple," he added. "I can effect change without
brutalizing people."
A simple response to a simple question,
but telling in what was omitted. After seven
years as deputy in the most ideologically
charged Administration in this century, and
in the midst of the political fight of his life,
George Bush's credo remains intact: all
politics is personal.
He has strewn handwritten epistles by the
thousands along the path of his political ca-
reer ("George Bush is a fiend for writing
personal notes," says a former White House
official). On the stump, he seems to delight
less in being recognized than in recognizing.
"Hey, my main man!" he says to a high
school student he greets by name in Ames,
Iowa. He spots a fellow back in a crowd in
Iowa City. "Hey, how's Shirt? Back in Mar-
shalltown?" After his Iowa drubbing, he at-
tacked New Hampshire not with policies
but with politesse - offering help to locals
whose cars had stalled, shaking hands at
factory gates, tossing snowballs with re-
porters.
But ideas? "I'm not
what you call your
basic intellectual,"
said Bush during a
break in a campaign
whose next test
comes two days
hence, in the agglom-
eration of Southern
primaries dubbed
"Super Tuesday." He grew insistent: "Be
what you are in life. Don't try to be every-
thing just because you're running for
President."
The statement rings with irony, for if any
man in American politics has been every-
thing, it is 63-year-old George Herbert
Walker Bush. Yet his resume is the paradox
of his public existence.
Throughout his rapid ascension from job
to appointive job, Bush has left
in his wake respect and deep
affection. He is credited with
building the Texas Republican
Party, keeping the G.O.P to-
gether when Watergate ripped
its fabric, and restoring morale at a Central
Intelligence Agency critically damaged by
Congressional investigations.
Yet his political legacy is as ephemeral as
the good will is substantial. One former
White House aide calls him "the invisible
man" - an apt description of him through-
out much of his career. Two months of in-
terviews with more than 60 of his col-
leagues, family members and close observ-
ers from across his history leave an im-
pression of George Bush as a man who has
willingly sublimated ego and ideology to the
values of the institutions he has served,
rarely probing seldom questioning, never
reaching.
Eddie Mahe Jr., the political director of
the Republican National Committee when
Bush was its chairman in the early 1970's, is
an admirer of the Vice President's's hon-
esty and tenacity. Nonetheless, Mahe, now
a Washington political consultant unaffili-
ated with any Presidential candidate, says
of Bush. "He's not a deep person."
What is more, adds Mahe, "He doesn't
have the courage of his convictions."
The New York Times s?C-hcit
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
Date Co _Marc
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580078-6
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oiindly," he doesn't under-
stand the sophisticates'
snickers.
LET ME TELL YOU SOME-
thing," George Bush said to
a high school student's
query not long ago. "The
latest thing in politics is to
stretch you out on some
kind of psychoanalytical
couch to figure out what
makes you tick."
His own motivations, he
continued, were quite basic:
"I've always said that I
have respect for my Dad because he be-
lieved in public service. I believe in public
service."
Prescott Sheldon Bush, a managing part-
ner at the investment banking firm of
Brown Brothers, Harriman, personified
noblesse oblige, serving on sundry public
boards and committees and
later becoming a United
States Senator. But he was an
imposing man who had little
time for his children. "Every-
one was afraid of him," re-
calls his son Jonathan Bush, 56. "He was a
man on a mission, and he had mother to
raise us."
Dorothy Walker Bush, now 86, bred into
her five children rules to buttress the sense
of service instilled by their father. During
childhood summers at Walker's Point, the
family's waterfront retreat in Kennebunk-
port, Me., and on the lawn of their nine-bed-
room Victorian house in Greenwich, Conn.,
they learned competitiveness - "the zeit-
geist of the time," according to her young-
est child, William (Bucky) Bush, 49.
Whatever the game, the best at it was her
second son, George. Yet "Poppy," as he was
called, played ball with such grace that the
others couldn't begin to be jealous. "He was
too big a hero, too big a star," says Jona-
than. "You were just too tuvdous to get
close to him."
For all the competitiveness, Dorothy
Bush absolutely forbade bragging. Even
the slightest hint of self-aggrandizement,
according to Bucky Bush, would be met by
her firm statement: "We've heard enough of
the'Great I Am."'
Dorothy Bush also taught her children
loyalty. George Warren, a childhood friend
of George Bush's, recalls how as a young
adult he rushed to his parents' house in
Greenwich the day his father was killed in
an accident. When he got there, he found
Dorothy waiting on the lawn.
"I hadn't seen her in years, and the two
families very seldom saw each other social-
ly," says Warren, now a retired teacher.
"And she took it upon herself to come to our
house to tell me. It shows tremendous loy-
alty. And you'll find that quality in George
Bush as well."
Loyalty, modesty, competitiveness -
the qualities are George Bush's strengths.
But they haunt him. Preternaturally dis-
posed to team play at any cost, he is loathe
to rise above his surroundings. When he
says, as he did in '
0 NE DUTY FEW
young American men
questioned in 1942, the
year George Bush graduated
from high school, was going
to war. On June 12, his 18th
birthday, he joined the Navy,
his mathematics courses at
Andover qualifying him to be-
come a torpedo bomber pilot.
Bush became the Navy's
youngest flier, shipping out to
the South Pacific on the car-
rier San Jacinto. Leo Nadeau,
his gunner, painted "Barba-
ra" on the cowling of their
Grumman Avenger in inch-
high white letters. George
had met Barbara Pierce -
the daughter of the publisher
of McCall's Magazine - dur-
ing a prep-school Christmas
dance.
On Sept. 2, 1944, flying
cover for an invasion of
Chichi-Jima, Bush felt a jolt.
The cockpit filled with
smoke. After delivering four
bombs to the target, he bailed
out of his burning plane. His
two mates didn't make it.
He was picked up by an
American submarine and
after several months of recu-
peration asked to be reas-
signed to combat, eventually
flying a total of 1,228 hours.
There were no more close
calls, but for his heroism on
that mission, Bush was
awarded the Distinguished
Flying Cross.
He breezed through Yale, a
young married man in a
hurry, gaining the captaincy
of the baseball team, mem-
bership in the exclusive se-
cret society Skull and Bones,
an economics degree, a Phi
Beta Kappa key and a baby
son
A family friend, Neil Mal-
lon, a man who "could charm
the fangs off a snake," ac-
cording to Bucky Bush, of-
fered George a bottom-of-the-
ladder job in Midland, Tex.,
at Dresser Industries, his
large oil company. After two
years, Bush joined with a
neighbor to create a firm that
would purchase royalty
rights from small landown-
ers if a driller found oil on the
and Several years later, he
formed another company to
locate and buy oil-producing
properties. His uncle, Her-
bert walker, found $800,000
through Eastern investors to
help get the firms started.
marred by tragedy. In March
1953, the Bushes' second
child, Robin, was diagnosed
as having leukemia. After six
months of grueling commut-
ing between Texas and New
York's Memorial Hospital,
George and Barbara Bush
saw their 3-year-old daughter
die.
By the early 1960's, some-
thing began to gnaw at Bush.
Although a father of five and
a millionaire, neither the
family sense of noblesse
oblige nor his own desire for
recognition were being
served. So in 1962 Bush, then
living in Houston, ran for the
chairmanship of the Harris
County Republican Party.
If George Bush has been
caught in a political vise for
his entire career, squeezed
between a right wing suspi-
cious of his moderation and
centrists who believe he too
readily accommodates ex-
tremists, it was in Houston
that his ideological travails
began.
The Republican Party was
in its nascent stages in Texas
in the early 1960's; for a time,
only two Republicans sat in
the Texas Legislature. Even
so, the party was being torn
apart by battles between es-
tablishment Republicans and
the more militant members
of the John Birch Society.
Bush won the chairmanship
race, and immediately began
drawing in people from both
factions, identifying with one
or the other as the occasion
warranted.
When he ran for the Senate
in 1964 against the liberal
Democratic incumbent,
Ralph Yarborough, Bush
termed himself a "Goldwater
Republican" and opposed
both the Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty and much of the Civil
Rights Act. But he still man-
aged to antagonize the right.
"The rumor ran rampant
through the Goldwater or-
ganization that the Bush peo-
ple had damaged Goldwa-
ter's race because they had
been getting voters to the
polls who were going to vote
for Johnson" but who split
their ticket and voted for
Bush, recalls Congressman
Bill Archer, a nine-term Re-
publican veteran from Hous-
ton. True or not, says Archer,
"these were the seeds" of the
right wing's discontent with
Bush.
The seeds sprouted after he
lost the Senate race. Within a
Z7.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401580078-6
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blindly," he doesn't under-
stand the sophisticates'
snickers.
O NE DUTY FEW
young American men
questioned in 1942, the
year George Bush graduated
from high school, was going
to war. On June 12, his 18th
birthday, he joined the Navy,
his mathematics courses at
Andover qualifying him to be-
come a torpedo bomber pilot.
Bush became the Navy's
youngest flier, shipping out to
the South Pacific on the car-
rier San Jacinto. Leo Nadeau,
his gunner, painted "Barba-
ra" on the cowling of their
Grumman Avenger in inch-
high white letters. George
had met Barbara Pierce -
the daughter of the publisher
of McCall's Magazine - dur-
ing a prep-school Christmas
dance.
On Sept. 2, 1944, flying
cover for an invasion of
Chichi-Jima, Bush felt a jolt.
The cockpit filled with
smoke. After delivering four
bombs to the target, he bailed
out of his burning plane. His
two mates didn't make it.
He was picked up by an
American submarine and
after several months of recu-
peration asked to be reas=
signed to combat, eventually
flying a total of 1,228 hours.
There were no more close
calls, but for his heroism on
that mission, Bush was
awarded the Distinguished
Flying Cross.
He breezed through Yale, a
young married man in a
hurry, gaining the captaincy
of the baseball team, mem-
bership in the exclusive se-
cret society Skull and Bones,
an economics degree, a Phi
Beta Kappa key and a baby
son.
A family friend, Neil Mal-
lon, a man who "could charm
the fangs off a snake," ac-
cording to Bucky Bush, of-
fered George a bottom-of-the-
ladder job in Midland, Tex.,
at Dresser Industries, his
large oil company. After two
years, Bush joined with a
neighbor to create a firm that
would purchase royalty
rights from small landown-
ers if a driller found oil on the
land. Several years later, he
formed another company to
locate and buy oil-producing
properties. His uncle, Her-
bert Walker, found $800,000
through Eastern investors to
year, his wing of the Republi-
can Party was known as the
"Bush Faction" and was con-
sidered "an extension of the
Eisenhower-Scranton-Rocke-
feller-Romney wing," accord-
ing to Archer. When Bush ran
for Congress in 1966 in west
Houston, he campaigned ac-
tively in black neighbor-
hoods, sponsored a black
girl's softball team and spoke
of the need for "equal oppor-
tunity." He won handily,
against a law-and-order
Democrat widely considered
more conservative.
"Young Bush," as he was
known, became an immedi-
ate presence in Washington,
gaining a coveted seat on the
House Ways and Means Com-
mittee. Back home, he was a
power. A 1968 Houston Chron-
icle editorial maintained that
"Bush has become so politi-
cally formidable nobody
cares to take him on."
Not only was he powerful,
he was independent. He voted
for an open-housing bill that
was vehemently opposed in
most of Texas. Political cal-
culation probably entered
into the vote; according to an
aide to a longtime Texas Con-
gressman, "anybody who
was considering a Senate
race" in 1970, as Bush was,
"would have voted that way,
because his eye would have
been on the vast south Texas
vote," much of it Hispanic.
But it took courage to cast
that vote, for in Houston, "it
was like the world came un-
glued," recalls Bill Archer. "I
can't think of an issue that's
come along since then that's
been as explosive emotional.
ly "
A meeting was called at
Memorial High School in
Houston for constituents to
discuss open-housing. Hun-
dreds of people filled the
auditorium and the atmos-
phere was charged. The
young Congressman talked
about the black Vietnam vet-
eran. "A man should not have
a door slammed in his face
because he is a Negro or
speaks with a Latin Amer-
ican accent," affirmed Bush.
He received a standing ova-
tion.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25 :
marred by tragedy. In March
1953, the Bushes' second
child, Robin, was diagnosed
as having leukemia. After six
months of grueling commut-
ing between Texas and New
York's Memorial Hospital,
George and Barbara Bush
saw their 3-year-old daughter
die.
By the early 1960's, some-
thing began to gnaw at Bush.
Although a father of five and
a millionaire, neither the
family sense of noblesse
oblige nor his own desire for
recognition were being
served. So in 1962 Bush, then
living in Houston, ran for the
chairmanship of the Harris
County Republican Party.
If George Bush has been
caught in a political vise for
his entire career, squeezed
between a right wing suspi-
cious of his moderation and
centrists who believe he too
readily accommodates ex-
tremists, it was in Houston
that his ideological travails
began.
The Republican Party was
in its nascent stages in Texas
in the early 1960's; for a time,
only two Republicans sat in
the Texas Legislature. Even
so, the party was being torn
apart by battles between es-
tablishment Republicans and
the more militant members
of the John Birch Society.
Bush won the chairmanship
race, and immediately began
drawing in people from both
factions, identifying with one
or the other as the occasion
warranted.
When he ran for the Senate
in 1964 against the liberal
Democratic incumbent,
Ralph Yarborough, Bush
termed himself a "Goldwater
Republican" and opposed
both the Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty and much of the Civil
Rights Act. But he still man-
aged to antagonize the right.
"The rumor ran rampant
through the Goldwater or-
ganization that the Bush peo-
ple had damaged Goldwa-
ter's race because they had
been getting voters to the
polls who were going to vote
for Johnson" but who split
their ticket and voted for
Bush, recalls Congressman
Bill Archer, a nine-term Re-
publican veteran from Hous-
ton. True or not, says Archer,
"these were the seeds" of the
right wing's discontent with
Bush.
The seeds sprouted after he
That summer, the night he
was nominated for the Presi-
dency, Richard M. Nixon con-
vened a meeting in his hotel
room to discuss Vice Presi-
dential Possibilities. George
Bush's name came up sev-
eral times. "I've heard noth-
ing but good about George,"
said Nixon. Nevertheless, he
felt Bush was too young for
the post.
Bush entered the 1970
Texas Senate race with a
strong shot of unseating
Ralph Yarborough. But then
Lloyd Bentsen, like Bush a
businessman and World War
II pilot, defeated Yarborough
in the Democratic primary.
Although he was expected to
benefit from defections by
liberals, Bush lost. Yet he
ended his electoral career
with his popularity undimin-
ished.
"He was considered back at
the time one of the most char-
ismatic people ever elected
to public office in the history
of Texas," says Bill Archer.
"That charisma, people
talked about it over and over
again."
WHAT HAP-
p AT d? Did Bush
change or did our
perceptions of leadership
change? Probably some of
both. He is a child of the war
years, when charisma and
courtliness coincided. He
came of age intellectually
when politicians believed in
the "end of ideology." How
quaint both notions seem,
now that personal and ideo-
logical passion are measures
of political charisma.
President Nixon had prom-
ised to take care of him if he
lost his Senate race, and Bush
knew what he wanted. After
the election, his friend Potter
Stewart called a top White
House aide and said, "This
may surprise you, but George
would like to be more in-
volved in foreign policy. He'd
like to be Ambassador to the
United Nations."
Bush recognized from the
start that the United Nations
post was "a ceremonial
thing," in the words of a for-
mer aide. He assiduously pur-
sued the Administration's offi-
cial "two-China" policy - ad-
mitting mainland China to the
world body without jettisoning
r!-nfin!ii 1
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that Henry A. Kissinger, the
national security adviser, was
already in the process of dis-
missing Taiwan from Admin-
istration thinking.
Considered "loyal," accord-
ing to a former Nixon aide,
Bush was the President's
natural choice to replace the
irreverant and independent
Bob Dole as chairman of the
Republican National Com-
mittee. But he quickly
adapted to the reigning cul-
ture of the committee. He
considered himself a party
man, not a servant of the
White House. And when
Watergate became a burning
issue, about six months into
his tenure, Bush made it
clear that his loyalty was to
the state chairmen. He was a
traveling preacher of Repub-
licanism. In his first year as
party chairman, he jetted
124,000 miles, gave 118
speeches and conducted 84
press conferences, strenu-
ously attacking any implica-
tion that the G.O.P. was con-
nected to Watergate.
But Bush was tormented by
the increasingly debilitating
situation. According to his
brother Prescott, Nixon at
one point told him directly,
"There's absolutely nothing
to these accusations. I'm tell-
ing the truth and there's noth-
ing hidden." Bush believed
him, and although he pri-
vately vented his despair to
White House aides, he also
displayed what Eddie Mahe,
the Republican committee's
political director at the time,
calls "a toughness that is not
generally seen as being part
of George Bush."
After Gerald R. Ford suc-
ceeded Nixon in the Oval Of-
fice, Bush lobbied hard for
the Vice Presidency. He was
in Maine, at his beloved Walk-
er's Point with Peter Rous-
sel, a longtime aide, when he
received the call telling him
that President Ford had
chosen Nelson A. Rockefeller
for the post.
Bush returned stoically to
the porch where the two men
had been sitting. Shortly there-
after, a television news crew
from Portland arrived. "You
don't look too broken up about
this," the reporter told Bush.
"You cant see wnaus on
the inside," he replied.
Demanding an audience,
Bush told the President he was
quitting the national commit-
tee. Ford soon countered with
an offer to make Bush the
chief of the United States liai-
son office in Beijing.
In China, Bush courted the
image of the regular guy who
eschewed diplomatic formal-
ities in order to bicycle every-
where and understand the na-
tive ways. A different view of
his 16 months in China
slipped out shortly after he
returned. The historian Bar-
bara Tuchman recalls ap-
pearing with him at a forum
sponsored by a church in Con-
necticut. After Bush spoke
about his experiences in the
Far East, someone asked
whether he'd had a chance to
meet any of the local people.
According to Mrs. Tuchman,
Bush replied: "Oh yes. They
gave us a boy to play tennis
with."
AT THE CENTRAL
Intelligence Agency
- which Ford offered
to him in a 1975 Administra-
tion shakeup termed the
"Halloween Massacre" -
Bush again aggressively
sought to portray himself em-
pathically within the agency.
Intelligence veterans, al-
ready scarred by ongoing
Congressional investigations
of past agency practices,
viewed the appointment of
this quintessential political
animal with alarm.
But within days, according
to several former intelli-
gence officials, Bush had
turned sentiment around. He
"became one of the boys," in
the words of one. He not only
mastered superficial symbol-
ism - taking the employees'
elevator to his seventh-floor
office rather than the direc-
tor's private elevator - but
would also bring one of his
subordinates to National Se-
curity Council meetings and,
after a few words of introduc-
tion, turn and say, "I've
brought my brains along,
let's listen to him."
Yet that same amiability
may also have been responsi-
ble for the one substantive
controversy during his ten-
ure at the C.I.A., the "Team B
Affair."
For years, many in the in-
telligence community had
been disturbed by discrepan-
cies between the agency's
estimates of Soviet strategic
capabilities and what later
events proved to be true. Con-
servatives on the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advi-
sory Board wanted to create
a group of outside experts -
"Team B" - who would re-
view the same information as
did the agency's intelligence
officers and assemble a com-
peting set of estimates. Bush
agreed to the exercise.
But Team B, in the eyes of
several intelligence veterans,
was packed with conserva-
tive ideologues. Ray Cline, a
deputy director of the agency
before Bush's arrival and a
strong Bush supporter, says
that its members "were
clearly people who had a
more alarmist view about
Soviet strength than was
being expressed in the intelli-
gence community at the
time." Agency staffers
pleaded in vain with Bush not
to allow Team B to be
stacked with such conserva-
tive figures as Professor
Richard Pipes of Harvard.
The study's conclusion -
that the Russians were seek-
ing military superiority over
the United States, rather than
mere parity - lent support to
hard-liners who opposed
arms control. As Director of,
Central Intelligence, Bush,
ironically, helped to empower
conservatives who still con-
sider him weak on defense
policy.
But more telling was his al-
lowing the Team B episode in
the first place. It was widely
viewed, in the words of one in-
telligence veteran, as "a bad
idea that he permitted in the
interests of getting along
with everybody."
G EORGE BUSH IS A
man of rules and insti-
tutional values. He op-
erates superbly within estab-
lished parameters - chair-
ing meetings, carrying diplo-
matic messages to foreign
friends and foes. "He's such a
good listener," says a top Ad-
ministration national se-
curity official. But when the
rules change - when ideo-
logues try to force their
agenda or when the Iran-con-
tra affair bypasses estab-
lished national-security
procedures - Bush can be
caught off guard.
A turning point of his 1980
Presidential campaign came
in Nashua, N.H., at a planned
two-man debate between Bush
and Ronald Reagan, jointly
sponsored by The Nashua
Telegraph and by Reagan.
Just before the event, Rea-
gan's staff opened the debate
to the other contenders.
Bush refused to agree to
the open forum. He sat
mutely on stage while Rea-
gan and the newspaper's edi-
tor argued over the new for-
mat. When the editor, Jon
Breen, threatened to shut
down the sound system, Rea-
gan shouted, "I paid for this
microphone!" Even though
the two-man debate pro-
ceeded as planned, Bush's re-
calcitrance left an indelible
impression.
That night, after the de-
bate, as they were returning
to his hotel, Reagan said to
James H. Lake, one of his
campaign aides: "I don't un-
derstand it. How would this
guy deal with the Russians?"
Reagan was not questioning
Bush's mettle, according to
Lake, but his "wisdom." Bush
"failed to understand that in
order to win this game he
would have been better
served by being more flex-
ible," he says.
Bush's apparent lack of an
ideological base may account
for his remarkable malleabil-
ity. In 1980, running as a self-
described "moderate conser-
vative," he could call Ronald
Reagan "as far to the right as
you can get." But "the minute
they accepted the Vice Presi-
dency, the Bushes forgot
about the past and became
Reagan people," says Nancy
Clark Reynolds, a Washing-
ton public affairs executive
and a longtime friend of
Nancy and Ronald Reagan.
One former Administration
official who wants to remain
anonymous calls Bush "a
neutral political functionary"
who would "come to a lot of
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448ROO0401580078-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448ROO0401580078-6
Cabinet Council meetings, lis-
ten for a while, raise a few
points, and say,'Why can't we
overcome this problem?
What's the solution?' He had
this sense that there was a
disembodied solution out
there that involved no politi-
cal or ideological position."
Bush is reminiscent of the
small-town civic leader in the
late sociologist C. Wright
Mills's study of America's
ruling classes, "The Power
Elite," who said: "We do not
engage in loose talk about the
'ideals' of the situation and all
that other stuff. We get right
down to the problem..."
Bush replaces ideology with
what might be called a cult of
courtesy. Stretched out in Air
Force I I recently, his gray suit
jacket replaced by a blue flight
jacket with his name threaded
vertically up the zipper, his tie
loosened, he bridled at the
mention of the name of a
prominent liberal activist. It
wasn't the man's politics that
disturbed the Vice President;
it was that he had once dispar-
aged Bush in front of one of
Bush's sons.
"Can you imagine that - to
a man's son!" he said,
munching on a beef stick.
"Now, what kinda thing is
that to say?"
But the graciousness and
civility also make Bush a
potential captive of what the
author Christopher Buckley,
a former Bush speechwriter,
calls "the gentle man phe-
nomenon: it's good to be liked,
better to be loved." Indeed,
the drive for accommodation
seems to lie behind many of
Bush's celebrated gaffes
over the years, among them
his 1981 toast to Philippine
dictator Ferdinand E. Mar-
cos that "we love your adher-
ence to democratic princi-
ples"; his 1984 gloat to New
Jersey longshoremen that he
had to "kick a little ass" in his
campaign debate with Geral-
dine Ferraro, and his enthusi-
astic comment in Europe last
fall that when Russian me-
chanics "run out of work in
the Soviet Union, send them
to Detroit, because we could
use that kind of ability."
"George Bush wants to see
himself as a regular guy,"
says a former state Republi-
can chairman who was
wooed ardently by Bush in
preparation for the 1988 elec-
tion. Bush's brother Prescott
agrees: "With the dock work-
ers, he probably felt, 'I'm one
of you and I can talk the way
you talk.' " He seems to
refuse to acknowledge that
his upbringing effectively
prevents him from identify-
ing fully with many of those
whom he would court. "It's
when he tries to be Every-
man that he sounds false,"
says Jim Lake, the former
Reagan aide.
Bush's desire to appeal to
people on their terms, rather
than his, often looks like
capitulation, and this is the
root of his widely discussed
"toughness" problem. During
the 1988 campaign, he has
been obsessed with proving
his strength, not only in con-
trived confrontations with
television newscasters, but in
interviews, where, without
provocation, he will cite his
"toughness."
"I avoid sometimes the
manifestations of my tough-
ness," he said in one recent
conversation. At another point,
he added: "I don't have to go
out and beat my chest like Tar-
zan ... and assert toughness
by being brutal to people."
But it is not his physical, or
even his emotional, tough-
ness that is in question -
through World War II and
personal tragedies he's ex-
hibited ample quantities of
both, and his set-to with Dan
Rather and his strident anti-
Dole commercials in New
Hampshire betokened a will-
ingness to hit hard. The
doubts concern his intellec-
tual independence.
B USH HAD EX-
plicitly pledged his loy-
alty to Ronald Reagan
when he was offered the Vice
Presidency. After the 1980
election, he made that oath
the center of his political ex-
istence. Not only would he
never be seen or heard dis-
agreeing with President Rea-
gan on any matter, but he
also would never publicly of-
fer any substantive opinions
of his own.
All modern Vice Presidents
have been immensely frus-
trated in their jobs, to be
sure. But none felt com-
pletely constrained from at
least offering opinions within
the confines of the White
House. Richard Nixon and
Nelson Rockefeller both
spoke their minds in National
Security Council meetings.
Walter F. Mondale was
President Carter's faithful
soldier, but differed with him
over MX missile deployment,
the Soviet grain embargo and
the sale of F-15 fighter-plane
equipment to Saudi Arabia,
among other matters.
Bush's loyalty to President
Reagan may be the strongest
asset he carries into the pro-
Reagan south on Tuesday. But,
because of the way he has ex-
ercised his fealty, no one
knows for certain how Bush
has influenced the President
on policy, nor can anyone - in-
cluding his closest advisers -
point definitively to areas
where Bush has attempted to
make an impact.
Bush, as have other Vice
Presidents, chaired several
task forces in the White
House that he cites often in
his campaign speeches. Their
success has been mixed. His
staff estimates that his Task
Force on Regulatory Reform
will save the Government
$150 billion in regulatory
costs during the coming dec-
ade. But conservatives in the
White House, among others,
have criticized it for serving
as little more than a "report-
ing mechanism" on the costs
of regulation.
The South Florida Task
Force, formed in 1982 to deal
with the marked increase in
cocaine and marijuana
smuggled into the Sunshine
State, was successful in unit-
ing several competing Gov-
ernment bureaucracies in the
cause of drug interdiction.
But during the task force's
existence, cocaine imports in-
creased, its price dropped
and marijuana smugglers
shifted their operations to do-
mestic cultivation. And the
Vice President's Task Force
on Combatting Terrorism,
whose final report aptly sum-
marized the conventional
wisdom on antiterrorism
policy, had its key recom-
mendation - "The U.S. Gov-
ernment will make no con-
cessions to terrorists" - vio-
lated by the Iranian arms-
for-hostages trade.
Beyond the task forces, one
can only collect impressions
about Bush's White House ac-
tivities. For example, he sup-
posedly played a role in soft.
ening President Reagan's
"evil empire" rhetoric about
the Soviet Union and in open-
ing a dialogue with Moscow
after Korean Air Lines flight
007 was downed by the Rus-
sians. And scuttlebutt inside
the White House had it that he
was responsible for convinc.
ing the President to withdraw
American troops from Beirut
after the 1983 bombing of the
marine barracks there.
How fully his whispers in
President Reagan's ear con-
tributed to these moves is un-
known. "He did not, as other
Vice Presidents did, speak up
in National Security Council
meetings," says a national se-
curity aide who has served in
several Republican Adminis-
trations.
A number of his own aides
declare flatly that Bush, in
1985 and 86, interceded with
the President to resolve a dis-
pute between Attorney Gen-
eral Edwin Meese 3d and then-
Labor Secretary Bill Brock
over Meese's desire to elimi-
nate an executive order re-
quiring certain affirmative
action standards in Federal
hiring.
But another former Admin-
istration official familiar
with the Meese-Brock contre-
temps says that Bush's role is
"just something I'm not
aware of ... [Then chief of
staff) Don Regan took the
viewpoint that as long as
there was disagreement in
the Cabinet Council, then it
wouldn't go to the President.
That was what wore people
down."
It is impossible to coax de-
tails about these or other inci-
dents from either Bush or his
aides. Whatever he and
President Reagan speak
about in their private, weekly
Mexican-food lunches in the
Oval Office remains locked in
their hearts. The Vice Presi-
dent virtually taunts those
who would question his in-
volvement in White House
decisions.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448ROO0401580078-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448ROO0401580078-6
- i nere are just many ex-
amples in my mind that I'm
not gonna share with you,
where I know I've shaped
what happens," Bush said in a
White House interview. "You
can't point to three things, I
take that on the chin, because
it's offset by the fact that I
know I've been loyal."
More telling, perhaps than
Bush's apparently meager in-
volvement in policy formula-
tion is the perception that he
actively backed away if the
slightest controversy was in-
volved. "There was sort of a
fail-safe strategy that he and
his people employed," says
one former official.
Eventually, many in the
Administration simply wrote
him off as a player. Although
some senior officials would,
throughout the two terms,
continue to try to use Bush as
a conduit to the President,
others gave up. Says one na-
tional security aide: "It be-
came known that you didn't
go to George Bush to get the
President to do something."
Even after the re-election
landslide in 1984, Bush appar-
ently refused to step into the
foreground. In late 1984 and
early '85, he rejected David
Stockman's pleas for help in
convincing the President to
cut the deficit. A year later,
according to several sources,
he spurned repeated appeals
from leading Republicans to
intervene with the President
to dismiss Donald T. Regan
as chief of staff.
A year later, Bush was ab-
sent from the scene during
the battle to confirm Robert
H. Bork as an Associate Jus-
tice on the Supreme Court.
One former aide says that
members of Bush's staff said
they wanted "to get out front
on Bork" but "it never ma-
terialized."
G IVEN THE VICE
President's penchant
for noninvolvement,
we can perhaps see more
clearly his role in the Iran-
contra affair, an issue that
will continue to hound Bush, if
not in the rest of the pri-
maries then certainly in a
general election campaign.
Bush attended at least 30
meetings at which the Iranian
arms sale was discussed,
beginning in the summer of
1985. Moreover, Bush's staff
had information that might
have led them to question
relationship with the contras:
the Vice President's national
security adviser, Donald P.
Gregg, a former C.I.A. station
chief, was told in August 1986
that North was involved in
Central America with associ-
ates of the renegade C.I.A.
agent Edwin Wilson.
Yet Bush has consistently
maintained that he was "out
of the loop" on the arms sale,
that he was "deliberately ex-
cluded" from key meetings
on the subject, and that he
was completely unaware of
the diversion of funds to the
contras.
In a White House interview,
Bush grew testy when the
subject was pursued: "I've
said all I really want to say on
this subject ... To rehash all
this and then, frankly, play
into the hands of political op-
ponents is not in my interest."
But the question remains:
How could he not have
known?
The most frequent re-
sponse from those who have
worked with him is that the
Vice President was ill-served
by his and the White House
staff. "Somebody screwed
him," says Adm. Daniel J.
Murphy, Bush's former chief
of staff. "I'm sure it was the
N.S.C. staff." While Murphy
singles out North and the for-
mer national security advis-
er, Rear Adm. John Poindex-
ter, others point to Don
Gregg, who declined to trans-
mit to Bush the news about
North's involvement with in-
telligence agency apostates.
Gregg told Congressional in-
vestigators that he did not con-
sider the information "Vice
Presidential" (Bush said re-
cently that "ex post facto,
maybe" he should have been
told about North's escapade.)
Criticisms of Bush's staff
occur with startling frequen-
cy. "There's a feeling he de-
serves to be better served,"
says a senior Administration
foreign policy official. "He
has a weak national security
staff," echoes another offi-
cial. "They don't have an im-
pact on policy, and they don't
have a grasp of the issues in-
volved."
There are indications that
Bush purposely chose a lack-
luster Vice Presidential staff
in order to fit in to the Reagan
White House. According to
one former campaign advis-
er, Bush said that he felt a
high-powered staff could
create contention rather than
harmony with the President's
staff.
The Vice President grew
angry in a recent interview
when told of criticisms of his
staff. "I just deny that. I don't
agree with that. I think it's
wrong," he said. He main-
tains his own code of loyalty
and forgiveness. "I'll be
damned if I'm gonna let the
pressure in the newspapers
compel me to fire Don
Gregg," he said heatedly.
"That's not fair and that's not
right and I'm not gonna do
that!"
Still, his professed lack of
knowledge about the Iran-
contra affair indicates an un-
willingness or inability to
draw on all available re-
sources for intelligence and
enlightenment.
In his classic 1960 study on
leadership, "Presidential
Power," the Harvard politi-
cal scientist Richard E.
Neustadt noted that a suc-
cessful executive must ac-
tively seek information.
"It is not information of a
general sort that helps a
President see personal
stakes," wrote Neustadt. "It
is the odds and ends of tangi-
ble detail that, pieced to-
gether in his mind, illuminate
the underside of issues put
before him. To help himself
he must reach out as widely
as he can for every scrap of
fact, opinion, gossip, bearing
on his own interests and rela-
tionships as President."
In the Iran-contra matter,
this Bush did not do.
C AN ONE PREDICT,
from his handling of
the Iran-contra matter
- or, indeed, from his han-
dling of the Vice Presidency
- how George Bush would
lead as President of the
United States? Difficult to
say. His innate moderation
shines through in the few spe-
cific proposals he has made
on the Presidential campaign
trail.
He wants a line-item veto to
balance the budget and a cut in
capital-gains taxes - emi-
nently conservative ideas, yet
far from right-wing. But he op-
poses the concept of an across-
the-board freeze on Govern-
ment spending, because he
wants to he able to spend
money on AIDS research, drug
interdiction and tax-free sav-
ings accounts for college
education. He has said time
and again that he wants to be
known as "the education Presi-
dent," employing "the bulky
pulpit, using the Presidency, to
promote the kind of excellence
we want."
Beyond these proposals, he
adds little to the debate over
post-Reagan politics. In the
twilight months of the Rea-
gan Presidency, this man
who has blended in so well is
still leery to call too much at-
tention to himself and his
thoughts.
. Yet there is a calm that
pervades him. Sitting in his
White House office recently,
George Bush pondered
whether life would have been
different had he "stopped to
smell the roses."
"I sometimes think about
that now," he said. "But how
many people that pause to
find themselves, wondering
who they were, uncertain of
themselves, have the bless-
ings that I have that come
from strength of family?"
He admitted that he would
love to spend more time read-
ing, or fishing at Walker's
Point, especially when he
thinks how "adversarial and
denigrating" politics has be-
come. "But do I have a cer-
tain self-assurance that I'm
on the right track and that
I'm lifted up by friends and
family?" he asked. "Yeah."
"You see, I know who I
am," he said. "I know exact!
where I want to go. How to
take this country there."
And if he didn't make it?
"I'd be a good grandfather,"
answered the Vice President
of the United States. ^
31.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/25: CIA-RDP99-01448ROO0401580078-6