The Family (26 page)

In her own life, Barbara tended to look at things through the door marked “Unaffordable.” She said that when George was traveling for Zapata Offshore to Kuwait, Venezuela, Mexico, Brunei, and Trinidad, “we couldn’t afford for me to go to those places with him.” George told her she couldn’t go to Kennebunkport every summer because they “couldn’t afford it”—although he went. She shopped for Christmas presents on seasonal sales; she cut up Christmas cards to make gift tags; and she stashed her half-price booty from discount stores in a closet for the holidays.

George swore that he came from “a comfortable but not wealthy” background because he grew up with so many people who were wealthier. His poor-mouthing sounded comical to some of his employees, who joked about him as “a penny pincher” but gave him high marks as a boss.

“Hell, you just don’t meet a finer person,” said Hoyt Taylor. “Everyone around there that worked for him thought that he was a first-class guy . . . There was one or two or three that wound up getting the ax, but funny thing was that even those—most of ’em, not all, but most—remained friends . . . Some guys kind of get a little greedy and [when] this [one] guy did, George fired him. He didn’t ask somebody else to do it for him, either. He’ll tell you that you’re gone . . . I’ll tell you that if you ever . . . received one of George Bush’s ass-eatin’s, you’ll understand that, because he can do it, very politely and usin’ a lot of those damn twelve-cylinder words out of Yale . . . but, anyhow, you can walk right under the bottom of that door when you leave.”

Moving from Midland to Houston in the summer of 1959 required logistical planning by the Bushes because they were transporting a business, building a house, and expecting a baby. They decided to send Georgie, who was now thirteen, to Scotland for the month of August to visit the son of James Gammell, one of Zapata Petroleum’s biggest investors. The Bushes parked their other three children—Jeb, six, Neil, four, and Marvin, three—plus the family dog, Nicky, with a babysitter in Midland. “At least we weren’t put in a kennel,” Jeb joked years later when asked why his parents were constantly leaving the children with neighbors and friends and babysitters. At that time, George and Barbara moved themselves into an apartment in Houston for four months to await the arrival of Dorothy Walker “Doro” Bush, born August 18, 1959. The proud father wrote to friends in Midland: “You can imagine how thrilled we are to have a baby girl in the family. Barbara came home yesterday and the boys all gathered around and looked over the new baby with great concern. She looks just like all the others.”

The Bushes’ new home at 5525 Briar Drive in the Broad Oaks housing development of Houston was built to their specifications on 1.2 acres and, although legally unenforceable, carried a restrictive racial covenant that stated: “No part of the property in the said Addition shall ever be sold, leased, or rented to, or occupied by any person other than of the Caucasian race, except in the servants’ quarters.”

These restrictive covenants, attached to both the properties that the Bushes bought and sold between 1955 and 1966, were common in Texas, although ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948. As late as 1986, the Justice Department had to force the county clerk of Harris County in Houston to include a disclaimer on every certified real-estate record that such racial covenants were “invalid and unenforceable under Federal Law.”

As George was settling into a racially restrictive area in the South, his father was in the North needling Democrats for filibustering against civil rights. During the 1960 presidential campaign Prescott was part of the GOP “truth squad” that chased across the country “cleaning up” the “inaccuracies” of John F. Kennedy. During a special Senate session in August, Prescott sent a telegram to Kennedy in Hyannis Port, heckling him about his absences from the Senate floor:

It is now 11 p.m. and your Democratic colleague [Senator Russell Long of Louisiana] still filibusters after eight hours. We are anxious to vote on Medicare.

It is hot and sultry here. Won’t you please, as an experienced sailor, grasp the tiller and steer us to the “new frontier.” This is the time for greatness.

Kindest regards.

Two months later Richard Nixon’s running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, predicted a Negro would be named to the cabinet if the Vice President were elected President. As a member of the “truth squad,” Prescott quickly stepped forward to clarify the matter: “I think Mr. Lodge perhaps overstepped the bounds of propriety . . . He doesn’t name cabinet members and he knows that. He later qualified his statement to say he meant qualified Negroes would be considered for appointment.”

Prescott campaigned doggedly and devotedly for the Nixon-Lodge ticket, and his wife was even more partisan. “They are the team for the times,” Dorothy told women’s clubs throughout Connecticut. “Senator Kennedy, who has missed 331 Senate roll calls, excluding the times he was ill, has generated an appeal similar to Frank Sinatra among teen-agers . . . The American people are too sensible to turn the election for President into a popularity contest . . . John F. Kennedy is a very ambitious young man who has neglected his work (by missing Senate votes) not only to fill his ambition, but the ambition of his father as well . . . It is fearful to think that a man of wealth can set out to gain an office and let it be bought for him.” Dorothy might have been shocked to hear people say the very same thing about her grandson during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Prescott fired off telegrams to Nixon throughout the 1960 campaign, supporting his position on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu and denigrating Kennedy’s “irresponsible adventures” into foreign affairs, especially Cuba, which Prescott said had “come with ill grace from a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Tsk-tsking his colleague, Prescott concluded: “Senator Kennedy has been slighting his homework, due probably to his poor attendance record at committee meetings.”

Shortly before Election Day, Prescott wired Nixon and predicted: “Connecticut will give you pleasant surprise early Tuesday night.”

Instead, the state flabbergasted Prescott and disappointed Nixon by going for Kennedy. Adding to Prescott’s discomfort was the public drubbing he was receiving from Albert Morano, who, now out of Congress, threatened to run against him so that Connecticut could have a senator “who cares for all the people, not just a few.” Prescott never deigned to respond to Morano’s charges, but on December 30, 1960, he announced that he would run for reelection in 1962. At the time, he was not looking forward to returning to Washington, where the Democrats now controlled the White House as well as the Senate and the House of Representatives. In a handwritten letter to Nixon after the election, Prescott wrote:

Dear Dick:

As the smoke clears, I send you this word of my continued admiration and respect. Washington will not seem the same to me after eight years service there with you, and in an administration for which I had no other feeling than pride and respect.

I had hoped we could continue in the same climate with you presiding. I could gladly have given my best to support your programs.

You had conducted yourself with courage, decency, and great ability, thus earning the continued admiration of those, including myself, who have been privileged to support your campaign vigorously.

With warm personal regards, I am
Sincerely,
Pres Bush

Two weeks later Prescott sent a letter to President-elect Kennedy, albeit not handwritten or as heartfelt as his letter to Nixon but still collegial:

Dear Jack:

I congratulate you upon your brilliant campaign for the nomination and election. I trust that you may be given strength to do your utmost for our country. You have proven yourself an extremely able man, better suited for the Presidency than any of the aspirants who opposed you for the nomination.

I shall try to be helpful whenever I can, especially in matters affecting our National Security, Defense and foreign policy.

In January 1961, Dorothy attended the joint session of the Senate and the House after the Electoral College ballots were officially counted and Richard Nixon proclaimed that John Kennedy was elected President of the United States. “This was an unusual situation,” she wrote in her column, “the first time in 100 years that the vanquished candidate has had to announce the election of his opponent.”

Dorothy would not live long enough to see history repeat itself in the year 2000, when the incumbent Vice President, Al Gore, had to announce the election, decided by the Supreme Court, of his opponent—Dorothy’s grandson George Walker Bush.

During the 1960 presidential campaign Governor Abe Ribicoff had done such a spectacular job turning out Connecticut’s vote for JFK that the President tapped the governor to become Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

“Abe went to Washington—in fact he lived a few houses from Prescott and Dorothy Bush in Georgetown,” said former Ribicoff aide Herman Wolf, “but after a couple of years he got restless with the bureaucracy and decided to resign and run for the Senate.”

Galvanized by the specter of having to run against the popular governor in a state that now had more registered Democrats than Republicans, Prescott reached out to the Ribicoff constituency.

The Connecticut Jewish Ledger
of March 1, 1962, ran an exclusive with the headline: “Bush to Add Rider to Foreign Aid Bill Striking at Saudi Arabian Bias.” The story stated that the 1951 Dhahran Air Base agreement, coming up for lease renewal, gave the Saudis the right to reject any American they considered unacceptable. The principal use of this section of the agreement was the exclusion of American Jews from service at Dhahran. Prescott said, “In any new agreement with Saudi Arabia, we should make it unequivocally clear that we insist there be no restrictions because of religion, race or ethnic background of any member of the American personnel assigned to Dhahran . . . This is the time for us to assert our principles, to express our repugnance for discrimination and to demand equality for all citizens in any foreign agreement.”

Two months later Prescott endeared himself to Connecticut’s Catholics by opposing the Eisenhower administration on federal aid to parochial schools. “As a matter of law,” he said, “I am convinced that the Supreme Court’s decisions allow room for aid to these schools and that federal loans would come well within the permissible constitutional limits.”

Always responsive to his constituents, Prescott now worked overtime, responding to every letter and phone call that came into his office. When he received a complaint about “off-color” plays staged at the Westport Playhouse that were scheduled to tour South America as part of a cultural exchange program, he protested on the Senate floor.

“I am most concerned about two plays—
The Zoo Story
by Edward Albee and
Miss Julie
by August Strindberg—that have been described to me as filthy,” he said. He demanded “some control” over plays performed by American acting companies in foreign countries, even if they were not sponsored by the government, and suggested he would introduce legislation that would set up a federal review board. Prescott’s outrage was triggered by a letter from the director of the Department of Overseas Union Churches of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. The director, who lived in Stamford, Connecticut, had asked: “How many Latin American viewers will be able to see through the filth to some abstract and artistic integrity? Why should we expect any people to respect us when we glorify prostitutes and homosexuals and gangsters under the guise of entertainment?”

Forty years later, when asked about Prescott Bush’s censure of his play, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Edward Albee responded:

I’ve gotten very used to Republican anti-intellectual and anti-creative posturing, and general congressional misbehavior in the form of such things as The House Un-American Activities Committee and the Army-McCarthy hearings.

The interesting thing about Senator Prescott Bush’s condemnation of “The Zoo Story” was the height of objectivity which his ignorance of the piece gave him. I’m also grateful that he put me in the company of Strindberg. I wonder if he had read “Miss Julie” either.

I don’t want to get too much into my continuing and growing dismay with the Bush family beyond saying that democracy is fragile and that many people surrounding the present president [George Walker Bush] seem less concerned with the democratic process than I.

When the 1962 polls indicated that Ribicoff would defeat Bush by 10 percent, Prescott called upon former President Eisenhower for help. Vacationing in Palm Desert, California, Eisenhower responded with a note: “. . . certainly want to do anything appropriate, and that in the opinion of the experts will be helpful, to aid in your campaign. The Republican Party needs more statesmen of the capacity and qualifications you have so ably demonstrated.”

Taking this as a yes, Prescott wired back and asked Ike to appear at a political rally in Hartford on October 13, 1962:

I understand that you will be on your way to Boston to appear there the next day. As you know I shall be engaged in a difficult campaign for re-election since it is contemplated that Secretary of HEW, Abraham Ribicoff, former governor of Connecticut is now planning to run for the Senate against me.

I can think of no single thing which would be [
sic
] fortify me and the rest of the candidates on the Republican ticket as having you present on that date for this meeting. I have cleared this with Senator Barry Goldwater, chairman of the Senatorial Campaign Committee and also Bill Miller, National Chairman. Both give it their blessing and both will concur in the hope that you can be with us in Hartford.

I am most anxious about this and do hope you can fit it into your plans.

With respect and warm regards, I am sincerely yours,
Prescott Bush, USS