The Family (36 page)

“I’m a member of the Yale class of ’68 who won’t be attending the reunion event at the White House because of revulsion toward Bush’s policies,” said Jacques Leslie. “The war in Iraq was unwarranted and promoted deceptively, his environmental policies are disastrous, and his attack on legal rights and constitutional rights is frightening. I would not be able to shake his hand without showing hostility.”

Another classmate, who met Deng Xiaoping during a visit to China, said he had shaken the hand of the “Butcher of Tiananmen Square,” so shaking George Bush’s hand couldn’t take him any lower.

“There’s enough spirit of ’68-ness, you might say, still in me to be disturbed by the rush to ‘kiss the ass of the ruling class’ (as they used to say),” said Ron Rosenbaum. “Indeed, one of the reasons I think the invitation is distasteful is that it will inevitably be spun as the final surrender of the spirit of ’68 to the establishment.”

Mark Soler said he stayed away from the White House part of the reunion because he profoundly disapproved of George W. Bush’s presidency. “When we were in college, we thought we would change things for the better when it came time for our generation to step forward,” he said. “We thought nobody among us could ever make the mistake of getting stuck in a ground war with no exit strategy and no clearly defined goals. We thought that would be impossible because we, the class of 1968, had learned the lessons of Vietnam . . . Now look what’s happening in Iraq . . . and to think it was brought on by one of our own . . . Supposedly George was a history major; he should have learned at the very least that ‘the past is prologue.’”

Reports of the White House picnic dominated the weekend reunion in New Haven. “I don’t know what shocked me more,” said one member of the class. “Seeing George Bush as President of the United States, or Peter Akwai as a woman. I’m still reeling.”

Stories were swapped about the man many considered least likely to become President, and how he greeted classmates he had once disdained, even shaking hands with a woman he had once known as a man.

“You might remember me as Peter when we left Yale,” Petra Leilani Akwai said as she passed through the receiving line. Since their college days together Peter, now Petra, had undergone a sex-change operation. The President, who had undergone his own transformation during that time, did not blink.

“Now you’ve come back as yourself,” he said.

His response surprised some of his classmates. They had assumed the born-again President would be censorious toward a transsexual. Instead, George appeared at ease in a situation that others found slightly uncomfortable.

Listening to his classmates discuss their dinner at the White House, for which each had been charged $150, Mark Soler inquired about the fascinating presidential discussions he had missed. He was sorely disappointed. He heard that the leader of the free world had walked around patting several prosperous stomachs and chiding his classmates for being overweight when he was holding his own at 194 pounds.

“He claims he’s nearly six feet,” said one.

“Right. More like five ten on tiptoes.”

One classmate patted Soler on the shoulder. “You missed nothing,” he said. “I spent five minutes talking to the guy, and it was just like talking to a Sears repairman.”

George, who had graduated with a C average, waited thirty-five years before he returned to Yale. When he did, he was President of the United States. Even then, he had to be lured with an honorary degree, something his father and his grandfather had also received. However, in George’s case, 208 members of the Yale faculty had signed a petition protesting the honor to such “a mediocre man.” George knew that 84 percent of the student body had voted against him in the election of 2000, but rather than resume his old rant at the “snobs” and “elitists,” he tried to charm them.

He began by congratulating the parents of the graduating class. “It’s a great day for your wallets,” he said. The audience rippled with laughter, knowing that he was paying thirty-three thousand dollars a year in tuition for his daughter Barbara, class of 2004.

Although he had acknowledged his past arrests, the subject of his run-ins with the law was still sensitive enough that White House speechwriters deleted a joke from his original text that read: “It’s great to return to New Haven. My car was followed all the way from the airport by a long line of police cars with slowly rotating lights. It was just like being an undergraduate again.”

He addressed the graduates, emphasizing the importance of their college degrees and the lifetime of privilege conferred by Yale. “You have to be a Yale graduate to be President,” he quipped, “and you had to have lost the Yale vote to Ralph Nader.”

He appeared not to notice that some graduates had painted a white “5–4” on their tasseled caps, a reference to the Supreme Court decision of 2000 that had ended the Florida recount and put him in the White House.

He saluted the graduates and their college accomplishment. “To those of you who received honors, awards, and distinction, I say, ‘Well done.’ And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be President of the United States.”

The applause fell short of a rousing ovation.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

B
arbara Bush jumped out of the family station wagon in her bare feet and yelled hello to William Millburn, the black doorman, who grinned from ear to ear.

“I just loved it that Mrs. Bush would walk into St. Albans without her shoes on,” he said. He chuckled as he recalled the incident and shook his head. “No other St. Albans mother would ever have done something like that—come racing into the school in bare feet—but Mrs. Bush was real friendly and down-to-earth when she was dropping off stuff for her boys. Most of the other parents had a real get-away-from-me decorum to them. But not Mrs. Bush. She didn’t have no somebody airs, at least not in those days . . . She was a little on the heavy side of all the mothers, but she was my favorite . . . She liked that we were taking care of her boys.”

Barbara had been so relieved when Neil and Marvin were admitted to the prestigious Episcopal school in Washington, D.C., that she marked the day in her diary, January 3, 1967, in big capital letters: “BOYS ACCEPTED AT ST. ALBANS.”

“It’s my recollection that she boarded those boys because they needed to have some kind of male father image in their lives,” said John Claiborne Davis, the assistant headmaster. “Their own father just wasn’t around much, being a congressman and all. That wasn’t unusual for St. Albans parents. Our elite clientele was military and political and diplomatic, and these busy people needed to board their sons, especially when they were traveling or entertaining a lot like the Bushes. We boarded their sons during the week to give the boys discipline, but if their parents were in town, we allowed them to go home on the weekends.”

The assistant headmaster discussed the young sons of St. Albans’s “elite clientele” as if they were dogs that needed a kennel, but his views about Congressman George Bush being an absentee parent were borne out by others on the faculty.

“The Bushes were not parents who ran up to the school all the time, and he, the father, certainly was never around,” said Stanley Willis, the former head of admissions. “He was a distant figure in their lives.”

“I have no memory of the Bushes ever being around the school,” said Howard Means, a former English teacher. “I taught Neil, who was an average kid. He tried very hard and got frustrated over his learning problems, but he was one of the nicest kids I ever had in class. I’ve never figured out his parents, but Neil was sweet.”

George was not the only parent missing from the children’s lives at that time. Barbara, too, was remembered by the mother of one of her daughter’s best friends as being detached and spending more time on Washington’s social whirl than on her children.

“My daughter Carey was in the fourth grade with Doro Bush, or Dordie, as she was called by the kids at National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington,” recalled Marjorie Perloff, then an associate professor of English at Catholic University. “The girls were close friends in 1968, and from what I saw of Dordie, I would say that Barbara Bush was less than the devoted mother who spent lots of time with her children, supervising their games, their meals, and their homework . . . I know that is the Hallmark-card image of Mrs. Bush now, but when I knew her in 1968, she was hardly around . . . Behind the public image of Barbara Bush is the reality of a rich woman whom many of us recall as seeming to enjoy her dogs more than her children, a woman who rarely smiled.

“As a professor, I could arrange my classes so as to be home by 4:00 p.m. or so, when Carey and her sister came home . . . Dordie Bush, who was much younger than her four brothers, seemed to be largely on her own, a classic poor little rich girl. She was very sweet and shy and had difficulty with her schoolwork. Sometimes, when she came over to play with Carey, I would help her with her homework, and she often came over to use our
World Book Encyclopedia
. I recall once asking, ‘Dordie, don’t you have an encyclopedia at your house?’ The answer was no. And I must confess that when I drove Dordie home and the maid opened the door, she revealed a house that looked singularly devoid of books. Barbara Bush’s fabled literacy project, it seems, didn’t begin at home.”

The New Yorker
’s Brendan Gill, who once visited the family compound at Kennebunkport, told a similar story about the Bushes and their disinterest in books. The writer, an insomniac, tried to find something to read late at night. After investigating the entire mansion, he could find only one book:
The Fart Book
.

Years later, when Barbara needed to be affiliated with a public cause, she embraced literacy and filled her bedroom bookshelves with books. Having one son, George, who had reading problems, and another son, Neil, who was dyslexic, she realized that being able to read was the basis of education. She later established a foundation dedicated to family literacy.

As fourth graders, Doro Bush and her little friend frequently spent the night at each other’s houses, but, according to Carey’s mother, both girls preferred the Perloffs’ house. “Most evenings the only person at home at the Bushes’ was the maid, as the live-in housekeeper who took care of the children and did most of the household chores was then called. It was the maid (or maids) who cleaned, cooked, did the laundry, and ordered groceries on the phone . . .

“Not that Barbara Bush wasn’t sometimes at home. Whereas most stay-at-home mothers from National Cathedral School for Girls played golf or tennis at the country club, went to countless lunches and charity affairs, played bridge, and shopped, Mrs. Bush, Carey recalls, preferred to shut herself up in her third-floor sewing room, doing needlepoint. At Christmas, each of Dordie’s friends received a pincushion with her name on it, embroidered by Barbara Bush.

“But, as Carey remembers it, Dordie’s mother never spent a moment with the girls when they were playing at her house, never inquired about homework, and Carey never sat down to a family dinner . . . The Bushes were out almost every night—at cocktail parties, dinners, receptions, charity balls, political events. Dinner, under these circumstances, was prepared by the maid and served to the girls in the family room. Barbara was often out of town for a number of days, accompanying George on his professional trips. As for George, he was pretty much the Invisible Man in Dordie’s life.”

On the move constantly, George flew to Houston every other weekend, and during the week in Washington he and Barbara went out almost every night. “They went to everything—dinner parties, diplomatic receptions, embassy balls—everything,” said Ymelda Dixon, a society columnist for the
Washington Star
. “That’s how I got to know them.”

Betty Beale, the doyenne of Washington’s society columnists during the 1960s, developed such a close friendship with the Bushes that she would be invited to visit them all over the world. “I stayed with them in China, visited them in New York, and, of course, at Kennebunkport,” she said. “They were very social and cared very much about being in Washington society.”

In addition to socializing, George accepted every speaking engagement that came his way. In 1968, he was asked to be a Chubb Fellow at Yale, an honor that had been bestowed on his father. The fellowship involved spending a few days on campus, lecturing, attending classes and seminars, and meeting with students.

“I remember when he arrived because some breathless aide came running into my office,” said the Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin. “‘Congressman Bush wants to exercise. He wants to play squash.’

“‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Bring him on.’ George was always a good athlete, but I was lucky enough to know my way around a squash court. The word spread quickly on campus that the right would square off against the left on Court 2. We soon drew a big crowd.”

The reverend’s antiwar politics were as well known to Yale students as Bush’s pro-war support of Richard Nixon. Both men played as if more were at stake than a squash game.

“I beat him three in a row,” recalled Coffin. “He insisted we play more. So we did. I beat him again. But he wouldn’t call it a game. He was so competitive. Ferociously competitive. He wanted to play until he won. By then, we were hogging the court. So I suggested we play the next day. He gritted his teeth and said no. He insisted we keep going. So we did. That time I kicked a little ass and it felt good.”

George was just as driven about running for political office. After making a little squeak as a first-term congressman when he tried to snag the vice presidential nomination, he now wanted to make a great big noise. He was determined to run against Ralph Yarborough again in the 1970 election.

“Don’t do it, George,” said his father. “Stay where you are. There’s a great life to be had in the House. You’ve got an important committee assignment and the respect and friendship of the most powerful chairman on the hill.”

When Prescott visited George in Washington, he accompanied him to the Hill. “I can’t think of anything that has pleased George more in years,” Barbara wrote to her father, Marvin Pierce, a few months before he died. “Dad Bush came to visit the Ways and Means Committee and the chairman [Wilbur Mills] invited him to sit with the committee. George tells me that this is the first time he has seen this happen since he’s been here . . . Then his dad visited the House floor and everyone showed such great pleasure in seeing him again and one and all came to greet him. George was thrilled.”

Prescott tried to counsel his son on certain political realities. He said that George now occupied a safe Republican seat in a state where the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was three to one. “Look at the numbers,” Prescott said. “Texas is still a Democratic state. Even conservative Yellow Dog Democrats don’t vote for Republicans.”

George thought otherwise. “They’ll vote for me,” he said, “especially over Ralph Yarborough.”

His father grew exasperated. “You’ve only been in the House a short time, and you’ve already introduced important legislation. Imagine what you could accomplish in a few years.”

George’s main interest in Congress was population control. Like his father, he supported Planned Parenthood, and he advocated family planning as a way to protect a woman’s health and to combat poverty. In those days, family-planning advocates spoke openly of contraception, and legal abortion was the goal of many, including George Herbert Walker Bush. “My distinct recollection at that point in history is that George was a ‘choice’ person,” said former Republican Representative John Buchanan of Alabama, using the word for abortion rights.

“He was most definitely pro-choice—then,” said former Democratic Representative James H. Scheuer of New York. “He was my minority [Republican] man on the Select Committee on Population and was very supportive until he became Reagan’s VP. Then he had to adopt Reagan’s backward position and refute family planning and become pro-life. After that, when George would see me in the hall of the House of Representatives, he’d say, ‘Jim, don’t break my cover.’ And I never did—until now. George was a nice guy. He couldn’t have continued supporting family planning and still made the national ticket. So he made a political choice.”

“George and Barbara were very active in Planned Parenthood from the time I knew them at Yale in the 1940s,” said Franny Taft, who had married the grandson of President William Howard Taft. Franny’s husband, Seth, was a nephew of Ohio’s Senator Robert A. Taft, known as Mr. Republican. “We worked like crazy then to make birth-control advice available, and you have to remember in those days birth control was still illegal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. That’s when Barbara and George were progressive. Then they moved to Texas and became right-wingers.”

George joined Representative Scheuer to introduce the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act, which became law in 1970 and, under Title X, the only federal program solely dedicated to family planning and reproductive health. In 1988, under Ronald Reagan, a gag rule was imposed on Title X clinics, prohibiting them from providing abortion counseling, which George had once supported. While in Congress, George was so committed to providing contraceptives for all who wanted and needed them that Wilbur Mills called him “Rubbers.”

For weeks George had resisted his father’s rationale about the 1970 Senate race. “I know I can beat Yarborough this time,” he said. “I can just feel it. Last time [1964] he rode in on Lyndon’s coattails. This time he’s more vulnerable.” George explained that his campaign would be well financed because President Nixon wanted him to run and had promised him White House support. In addition, his friend John Tower, the Republican senator from Texas, was in charge of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, so even more money would come his way. As for giving up his safe House seat, George told his father that if he lost the race, Nixon had promised him “a high post” in the administration. “I really think this is my time,” George said. He later explained his ambition to an interviewer: “I want to score and then be captain, get promoted and then be boss, achieve something and then get elected to something else.” To him life was a series of successes in which he would always wind up on top. There was never any sense of ideological purpose. It was only about winning.

George decided to seek the counsel of the best politician in Texas, then in retirement at his ranch on the Pedernales River. As a Republican congressman, he had won a favorable nod from Lyndon Johnson by skipping Nixon’s inaugural festivities in January 1969 to be at Andrews Air Force Base to say good-bye to the Johnsons as they left Washington.

“LBJ was mighty impressed that Bush had shown up that day to pay his respects,” said the former Johnson aide Harry McPherson. George’s presence made the absence of Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough even more conspicuous. His courtesy to the former President led to an invitation to visit the LBJ ranch in Stonewall, Texas, which he and Barbara eagerly accepted.

Months later, as George tried to make up his mind about the 1970 Senate race, he called Johnson’s office, hoping he might prevail upon the former President to remain neutral in the race. George asked if he could visit the ranch again on a political matter. He was granted a fifteen-minute audience on condition that the meeting be kept confidential.