The Family (69 page)

The confirmation process had brought out the worst in everyone, diminishing all those involved in some way: Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri, who led the bitter fight for Thomas, lost luster among his colleagues for his dogmatic defense. Senators Simpson and Hatch were stung by the fury of their female constituents, who bombarded their offices with letters criticizing them for their treatment of Anita Hill; Senator Arlen Specter barely won reelection in Pennsylvania after his brutal cross-examination of Hill. The handling of her sexual-harassment charges against Justice Thomas had infuriated women across the political spectrum, who realized how little clout they had in a Congress dominated by white men. That fall an unprecedented number of female candidates ran for public office. Five women won seats in the Senate, and forty-seven women won seats in the House of Representatives. Most of the winners were Democrats.

In the end, President Bush got his way with Clarence Thomas, but at enormous cost. The process caused his party great enmity and sacrificed goodwill that he sorely needed. Worst of all, he had soiled his toga. Forsaking the ideal of presidential leadership expressed by Abraham Lincoln, Bush had not strengthened the bonds of affection among people by appealing to their better angels. Rather, he had caused the level of public discourse to be lowered, and the divisive afterclap affected him. He wrote a letter to Senator Alan Simpson, who had berated the press, Democrats, and women’s groups while helping to get Clarence Thomas confirmed:

You were right on all this. You helped a decent man turn the tide. You walked where angels feared to tread by zapping some groups and some press, and, in the process, they climbed all over your ass—but damnit you were right . . . Having said all this I’ll confess—there are days when I just hate this job—not many, but some.

Reading the polls after the hearings, the President decided he needed to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in order to get reelected. He had already vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990, claiming it was a “quota bill,” but in the wake of Clarence Thomas he could not afford another veto. His core beliefs were irrelevant. All that mattered was winning.

Earlier in the year his staff had arranged for him to receive an honorary doctorate from Hampton University, the all-black college in Hampton, Virginia, but the degree did nothing to enhance his standing in the civil rights community. Most of the 1,023 graduates refused to stand for his entrance to “Hail to the Chief.” They did not applaud the citation praising him for forty-three years of service to black education, and when he delivered his speech equating prejudice with cowardice, they sat on their hands.

Determined not to veto any more civil rights legislation, the President directed his White House counsel to work with the Senate and House Democrats to reach a bipartisan agreement on the 1991 Civil Rights Act. But those who attended the negotiations said that Boyden Gray consistently stymied the proceedings with contrary proposals. In one meeting, former Transportation Secretary William T. Coleman waved one of Gray’s memos.

“The President told us to negotiate in good faith,” Coleman said. “Can you believe what Boyden came up with?”

Gray snatched the document from Coleman’s hand and ripped it to shreds.

“That’s inoperable,” said Gray, unable to defend his position.

“I haven’t heard that phrase since the Nixon administration,” said Coleman, laughing.

During another negotiation with civil rights representatives, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Gray tried to establish a rapport with the Latinos and African Americans present by saying that he identified with their plight.

“You know I can understand how you feel, and what it must be like,” he said, “because I, too, felt the pain of discrimination when I was at Harvard and I was the only W.A.S.P. on the Crimson.”

The room fell silent and people shifted with embarrassment. The White House lawyer did not realize he looked like a dundering fool. “Everyone around that table was thunderstruck at the astonishingly insensitive and inappropriate remark,” recalled Ralph Neas, then executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “Here was one of America’s scions, an heir to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco fortune, demonstrating his plantation mentality. This was the type of man George Herbert Walker Bush surrounded himself with as President of the United States. With such a person advising him, there was no danger of Bush ever ascending to the pantheon of presidents where Abraham Lincoln was enshrined.”

After a bitter and anguished struggle, a compromise was finally reached, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 was sent to the President’s desk for his signature. On the eve of the bill signing, Boyden Gray again emerged as the hangman. He circulated a presidential order to all federal agencies directing them to comply with provisions that would end a quarter century’s worth of affirmative action and hiring guidelines benefiting women and minorities.

The validity of executive orders has been questioned over the years because they are powerful edicts. It is a President’s way of avoiding congressional authorization and bulldozing over judicial review. An executive order is a law made by a single individual—the President of the United States—and Boyden Gray’s executive order for George Bush sought to overturn decades of civil rights legislation.

When news of the executive order was leaked, the entire Bush administration was turned upside down. Frantic cabinet secretaries called the White House in an uproar, and civil rights leaders denounced the directive as an assault on decades of civil rights progress. Everyone foresaw years of litigation to resolve whether an act of Congress takes precedence over an executive order while those who most needed protection by the law would be stripped of their civil rights. Backed into an uncomfortable corner, the President’s press secretary said the executive order, immediately withdrawn, “may have been open to misinterpretation.”

The President signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 on November 21, 1991, in a Rose Garden ceremony that was overshadowed by the intent of Boyden Gray’s presidential directive. The President condemned the “evil of discrimination” and reiterated his support for affirmative action, but he got none of the credit he craved. “There is no question that the Bush administration will continue to do everything possible to undermine the Civil Rights Act of 1991,” said Ralph Neas at the time, “and undermine the bipartisan enforcement policies of the past quarter century.”

Months later the President missed another opportunity to mend racial divisions when rioting broke out after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. The verdict was announced on April 29, 1992, as Bush was leaving a state dinner for German President Richard von Weizsäcker. Standing in his tuxedo and black patent-leather dancing slippers, the President made a statement that would be replayed for the next seven days, making him look foppishly cavalier and out of touch with the real world.

“The court system has worked,” he said. “What is needed now is calm and respect for the law until the appeals process takes place.”

His remark was idiotic because when the defense wins a criminal case, there is no appeal.

What erupted was bloody chaos and the violent deaths of fifty-four people in the most deadly riot in U.S. history. A tornado of destruction whipped through South Los Angeles, turning the area into an incinerator after 4,000 fires, staggering property damage to 1,100 buildings, 2,383 reported injuries, and 13,212 arrests. That evening, television viewers watched in horror as Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and beaten by a mob. Many people blamed the President of the United States for not immediately stepping forward in a time of national crisis.

“Bush had nothing to say when it counted to address the searing pain, the anger in the soul, that follows a miscarriage of justice of this enormity,” wrote Thomas Oliphant in
The Boston Globe
.

The riots continued all day and all night through April 30, when federal troops and the National Guard were sent in to restore order. The President tried to redeem himself with an impassioned speech to the nation on May 1, again calling for calm.

“What you saw and what I saw on the TV video was revolting. I felt anger. I felt pain. I thought: How can I explain this to my grandchildren?”

Whatever ground Bush might have gained with his speech was lost three days later, when his press secretary blamed the riots on the welfare programs enacted by Democrats during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. “We believe that many of the root problems that have resulted in inner-city difficulties were started in the 60s and 70s,” said Marlin Fitzwater, “and that they have failed.”

The next day Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was walking the burned-out streets of South Los Angeles talking to Korean shop owners whose small businesses had been destroyed by looters. Even then the President and the First Lady did not veer from their separate schedules of fund-raising in Massachusetts and Ohio. Only after he saw his Democratic opponent on television meeting with community leaders in Los Angeles did the President realize that he, too, should make an appearance in the nation’s second-largest city. He flew to California on May 6, a week after the Rodney King verdict. He arrived on Air Force One and was driven like a potentate in his bulletproof presidential limousine. The crowds jeered, and so did the polls, which showed a drastic fall in his support since the rioting had begun.

“It’s hard to believe that the President of the United States was so politically obtuse, but he was,” said Professor Susan J. Tolchin of the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University. “His aides were frantic. I just happened to be included in an informal strategy session one night during the riots that included Bush’s campaign manager, Fred Malek, several communications specialists, a couple of journalists, me, and the host, Roy Goodman, a Republican state senator from New York City.

“‘How can we get George Bush reelected?’ Malek asked everyone.

“I certainly didn’t want to see the guy reelected, but the political scientist in me took over. I had just seen the network news that evening, showing clips of all the black and Korean shopkeepers in tears as they poured out of their blazing liquor stores and groceries. Everything they had worked for was engulfed in flames, every bit of it uninsured.

“I suggested that Malek ask the President to phone his friends in the corporate world and recruit CEOs to each adopt a store, give the owner twenty-five thousand dollars, and put each back in business. Twenty-five thousand dollars to the presidents of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler for bankrolling a Korean grocer is like twenty-five dollars to me. Republicans would be in the enviable position of rewarding hard work; the GOP could capitalize on its reputation for entrepreneurship; private business could be seen rewarding enterprise, not violence; and the President would position himself in the role of leading the city back to racial peace. It looked like a win-win for everyone. The companies would get great publicity for their good deeds; President Bush would get credit for leadership; and the taxpayer would be off the hook because ‘big government’ wouldn’t have to spend a dime.

“Everyone agreed it was a wonderful idea. A week later I happened to see Fred Malek in the airport. ‘What happened to my idea?’ I asked. Malek shook his head woefully. ‘I couldn’t sell it to Bush,’ he said. ‘I went in to see him the very next morning with your idea . . . He didn’t listen to us on anything.’

“I felt then that Bush had blown the domestic-leadership opportunity of his presidency. He missed the chance to reconcile the conflicting angers in South Los Angeles, where people were suffering physical, economic, and emotional damage.”

The Bush reelection campaign was in such disarry that Barbara sent up a flare for her firstborn. George W. took a leave of absence from Harken Energy in June 1992 and began commuting from Dallas to D.C. to ride herd again for his father. Months earlier Junior had warned the White House that Ross Perot was mounting a serious third-party assault on the presidency, but his father refused to take the Texas billionaire seriously. “He’s an idiot,” said the President. He told his campaign: “I’m not worried about him. You guys get paid to worry about him. If you want to worry about him, go ahead, but what are you going to do anyway?”

After announcing his candidacy in February, Perot bowed out in July but reentered the race in October. George W. told reporters he had named his golf cart “Perot,” saying you could just never tell if it was going to run or not.

Whether headhunter or head chopper, George W. made his influence felt throughout his father’s White House. Before the inaugural, Junior had chaired the “silent committee” that selected the names for the top federal jobs in the new administration. Ability and experience were irrelevant. Unswerving loyalty to his father was the son’s only criterion.

“Let’s make Roger Horchow the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts,” Junior said.

The choice of the Dallas catalog king struck one participant as inappropriate.

“Why Horchow?”

“Because he gave money to my father.”

A quick cross-check of financial records showed that Horchow also contributed to the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

“It didn’t take any more than that,” said the participant. “George W. said, ‘That’s it.’ And Horchow ceased to be a candidate.”

Documents in the Bush Presidential Library indicate the influence the son wielded in his father’s administration. Whether it was a job, an autographed picture, or a personal meeting with the President, the requests George W. forwarded to the White House were honored with dispatch. His memos to C. Boyden Gray resulted in several judgeships. For Rhesa H. Barksdale to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, W. wrote: “Boyden—This guy [is] up for federal judgeship. He is a very good man—Any help would be appreciated. Geo W.”

George W.’s memo recommending Ellen Segal Huvelle got her seated as an associate judge for the D.C. Superior Court, and his memo forwarding the recommendation of a fraternity brother, Don Ensenat (Yale 1968), got Edith Brown “Joy” Clement placed on the federal bench for the Eastern District of Louisiana: “Boyden—Don Ensenat is a very good man and good friend of all Bushes—Please give Joy any consideration you can—Warmly, George.”