What It Takes (179 page)

But it looked like even Baker could not save the Gip. The curtains had parted—the Wizard of Oz was finished. Everything he tried, to show renewed force, control, blew apart in a cloud of sawdust and swamp gas. Inauspicious planetary transit! Nancy wouldn’t let Ronnie out of the house to endorse George Bush. ... What did it matter? ... Reagan’s polls were at an all-time low, along with his political charm. Reagan was part of Bush’s problem.

Which gave the white men an idea:
Hey!
... How ’bout if we get Bush to
separate from Reagan
? ... He could be
his own man
! ... Say something about Meese?

“No!”

Noriega?

“No!” said George Bush. “I’m not gonna start that now!”

What
would
he do? ... Well, he’d
keep going
! ... He wasn’t going to sit around, fretting. But he was dropping in the polls! Dukakis was beating Jackson every week! One thing Bush hated—second to leaks—was panic. It made him
nervous
to see the white men in such a state. Plus, he knew they’d decide in the end, the problem was somehow ... him.

So he went on to states where there were primaries—even though he had no opponent—and showed up where the reporters were, collected some endorsements, got his face on the news. He set off to Ohio, Indiana ... then, Stratoliner to California. Anywhere the Democrats went, Bush was sure to follow.

But it wasn’t so easy to get on the news, without a horse race that week. Endorsements? ... Every Republican had already endorsed him—who else could they be for?

How about movie stars? Or
sports
! We love that stuff!

Well, Muhammad Ali would come out for Bush—but only if his pal, a guy named Salzman, could get a job with Ed Meese. ... In Ohio, Bush picked up the endorsement of the legendary football coach Woody Hayes. It had to be noted, however, that Woody died the year before ... but he did say he liked Bush—you know, before he croaked—really!

Bush was soon reduced to his standard photo op—heavy equipment. Since the eighteen-wheeler and forklift saved the bacon in New Hampshire, Bush, Inc., had not let a week go by without perching the Veep on some steel behemoth. His press pack had a name for this:

“What’s he doing in Indiana?”

“Same—you know. Tonka Toys.”

(Actually, in Indiana, it was a military vehicle to replace the Jeep. The head of the plant ushered Bush to a brand-new unit, carefully tested and cleaned. ... Feel free! Hop right in! ... Only hitch was, Bush had been limoed for so many years, he plopped into the passenger seat. There was a pause of skin-itching awkwardness while he waited for someone to drive him.)

The real problem—the fact at the root of all this unease—was, Bush couldn’t make news because Bush had nothing to say. Without an opponent—
me
instead of
him
—the Bush campaign was about ... nothing. Bush took some swipes at the Democrats, but Dukakis hadn’t finished his work, and Bush could not appear to play favorites. So he made his attacks against “Jacsis,” which, in his mind, was an amalgam of Jackson and Dukakis ... nobody else knew what he was talking about.

And every time he stopped talking—if he couldn’t disappear into a car, or a plane—someone would ask about Meese, or Noriega. ... What was he going to say?

“I’m not gonna get into the Meese thing.”

Did he pay Noriega, while he was the head of the CIA?

“I can’t confirm or deny ...”

If they pressed him—which they did, every day—he lied.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie in his mind—just another schizoid unease that came from being candidate and Vice President.

Vice President Bush supported the administration’s efforts in Panama. Candidate Bush saw the drip, drip from Noriega washing his campaign down the toilet. So George Bush was on a secure phone, every day, trying to get the White House to pull the plug on negotiations with Noriega. He’d try to get the National Security Adviser, Colin Powell, to tell him: What the hell were they negotiating
about
? Why should they offer Noriega
anything
? Why was it
public
? ... It wasn’t just that Bush hated leaks. Most of all, he loved secrets.

Secrets, and power, and loyalty, and government—they all went together in the Bush-mind. So this was his secret: he knew Noriega was dirty ... he thought the Panama policy was nuts. But he wouldn’t tell the
public
! He’d rather lie.

Meese—Bush said it wasn’t his place to ask the Attorney General to step down. In fact, that’s exactly what he had done, two weeks before, when he had a talk with Meese and asked him pointedly: Didn’t he realize the damage he was doing to the President, by hanging on? Meese said he didn’t see why he should resign—he hadn’t done anything wrong. He said he’d think about leaving after the Special Prosecutor issued his report.

Vice President Bush wouldn’t reveal
that
—no way! ... And as usual, when he was lying, Bush felt the need to
prove he believed
... in terms ever stronger ... to the point of an aggrieved shriek. When word leaked that Bush advisers considered Ed Meese a drag on their campaign—and that Bush, privately, thought so, too—Bush was at such pains to knock down the story, he said:

“I deny that I have ever given my opinion to anybody on anything.”

Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

Bush thought if he could just hold on, the bad news would go away. That was his text, in sermons to the white men—when they’d
beg
him to take just one shot at Meese, or
something,
to signal he had an opinion of his own. No, Bush said. This was a time for discipline, faith! He wasn’t going to cut and run. Reagan would be back in the polls—the pendulum would swing back.

In the end, Bush had faith in his yin-yang knowing, in the Washington way: no one would ever prove he knew anything. He could outlast the capital’s attention span.

And he was right. The Special Prosecutor finally issued his report. Meese declared victory (hell, he hadn’t been
indicted
...) and resigned. That was the end of Bush’s Meese problem.

Noriega hung on in Panama—a bit embarrassing to the America-standing-tall crowd. But Bush solved
his
problem. In mid-May, in California, he told a crowd at the Los Angeles Police Academy that he would not “bargain with drug dealers ... whether they’re on U.S. or foreign soil.” He didn’t mention Noriega by name—certainly did not mention Reagan—but Fuller filled in the blanks in a “background briefing.”

BUSH SPLITS WITH REAGAN ... was the lead story in the
Post
the next day. There was rejoicing among the white men (save for Teeley, who resented Fuller briefing the press). Yale friends and Andover friends, Houston friends and Maine friends poured calls of congratulation into the OVP. “Let Bush be Bush!” There was a two-day blizzard of stories about Bush and James A. Baker III waging a “battle royal” within the White House to quash any deal with Noriega. ... And then it was over.

The only attempt at explaining Bush’s change of heart was the mention of the latest poll (Gallup had Bush sixteen back). Lost in the back pages were accounts of his meetings with Noriega—stretching back to 1976—and clear indication that he’d known about Noriega’s drug connections, at least since 1985. After a week, that story disappeared, too. No one ever pinned Bush about his standards for truth in the public discourse.

“I’ve said what I had to say,” Bush said.

So he had, in a tactical sense. If the issue ever came up again, it was discussed as another “Bush loyalty thing.” There were so many fish to fry: new polls (worse and worse for Bush), Reagan Democrats shifting to Michael Dukakis ... Teeley quit—turmoil among the white men ... Reagan wanted to ship new warplanes to Kuwait ... Reagan was going to visit Moscow and Gorby ... Reagan announced the end of negotiations with Noriega.

There was, too, the interesting issue of Reagan’s loyalty to Bush.

The Gipper did finally endorse him ... at the annual President’s Dinner—a knowing crowd, black tie, fifteen hundred dollars a plate—but 9:00
P.M. ...
after the news. The Bush campaign had promised the President would “preview” his endorsement that afternoon, for the cameras at the White House ... but for some reason, Reagan never showed.

So there was a goodly press contingent that night at the Washington Convention Center—a huge place, a perfect Reagan event. There were gigantic mockups of federal buildings. There was a lovely, gauzy twenty-minute film of “Great Moments” in the Reagan years, all set to music and splashed with sunshine, like the Gipper’s “Morning in America” ads.

Just like old times! ... And the Gip was in form, reminiscing about Jimmy Carter’s interest rates with fond and practiced contempt. Then he got to the end of his speech—the last paragraph, matter of fact. Ronald Reagan said to the crowd:

“If I may, I’d like to take a moment to say just a word about my future plans. In doing so, I’ll break a silence I’ve maintained for some time with regard to the Presidential candidates. I intend to campaign, as hard as I can. My candidate is a former member of Congress, Ambassador to China, Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of the CIA, and National Chairman of the Republican Party. I’m going to work as hard as I can to make Vice President Bush the next President of the United States.”

There was a round of applause as Reagan said the name ... though, alas, he mispronounced it. (“Bush,” he said, like it rhymed with “slush.”) Then the crowd stilled for the big windup.

But there was none. Reagan turned back to the mike, and said: “Now it’s on to New Orleans, and on to the White House.”

That was it? ... After eight years?

It turned out, in the agonizing aftermath (the white men were crestfallen, Bar was furious,
The New York Times
front page announced:
BUSH CAMP LONGS FOR SIGNS OF MORE SUPPORT BY REAGAN)
... that the White House writers
had
used some of the splendid Bush-staff prose, but Nancy wouldn’t
hear
of it. (“No! It’s
Ronnie’s
dinner!”) ... So the President had to write, in his own block print, what
he
thought about his Veep—which wasn’t much.

And the heartbreaking thing was, he’d called in George Bush ... and showed him! ... Bush could see it wasn’t much. But he also saw his Big Friend laboring, at his legal pad ... what could he say?

“I think that’s great, Mr. President.”

T
HE NEGATIVES CAME FROM
Jim Pinkerton, in research. Atwater gave him a file card and told him:

“You git me the stuff to beat this little bastard. Ah wancha put it on this card.”

The card was three inches by five.

“Use both sides,” Atwater said.

Pinkerton came up with seven entries: Dukakis’s national defense positions, his record on taxes and spending, the pollution of Boston Harbor, his opposition to the death penalty and to mandatory sentences for drug offenders. ... The longest entry on the card was Dukakis’s policy on prison furloughs—including one case in which a murderer named Horton got a furlough from a Massachusetts pen and attacked a couple in Maryland, raping the woman, stabbing her fiancé.

Pinkerton found out about the case from the question Al Gore asked Dukakis at the New York debate. Pinkerton called up Andy Card, his best Massachusetts source—did he know about this? Card did, indeed. He pointed Pinkerton to the
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
, which had won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of prison furloughs. What shocked Pinkerton was not the incident, but that Dukakis refused afterward to change the policy. Massachusetts was, at that time, the only state allowing furloughs for murderers who had no chance of parole.

“I don’t get it,” Pinkerton said. “When they find out this thing is all screwed up ... why wouldn’t he change it?”

“You don’t know Dukakis,” Card said. “You can’t tell him anything.” Card had served in the Massachusetts legislature. He told Pinkerton how they’d passed a bill to require recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, “... so this guy vetoes the Pledge of Allegiance!”

Pinkerton tucked that onto the file card, too.

To Atwater, this did not require a lot of thought: Bush, Inc., had a candidate who was fifteen points behind—and falling. George Bush had “negative ratings” of forty percent with the voters. Dukakis’s “negatives” were only twenty percent. There were two choices: they could work on building a more positive Bush-image ... or they could stick so much shit on Dukakis’s head that his “negatives” would shoot through the roof.

They’d tried for three years to show what a sterling fellow was George Bush.

To Atwater, there was only one choice now.

The day before the white men went up to Kennebunkport for the big Memorial Day sit-down with the Veep, they gathered in a shopping center in Paramus, New Jersey, for a focus group with the sort of voters that Bush, Inc., would have to turn around.

They were suburbanites, forty thousand a year, or better ... they used to be Democrats ... but they voted for Reagan ... now they were for Dukakis.

Why?

Well, he seemed able, middle-of-the-road, nonthreatening. Seemed like a good man, a successful Governor, and smart.

The Bush white men watched from behind a one-way mirror. There was a moderator—one of Teeter’s ops from Michigan—at a table with the voters.

The moderator told the story of Willie Horton and the prison furloughs. Then he said Dukakis was against the death penalty. Then he said Dukakis was against prayer in the schools. Then he said Dukakis vetoed the bill to require kids to say the Pledge ...

Within ninety minutes, half the voters had switched to Bush.

As the family liked to tell it, George Bush was the calmest hand on deck. Friends were calling from all over the country, wringing their hands and moaning: Why couldn’t he
do something
! The Gee-Six were in a lather ... panicky about Dukakis’s lead.

Junior knew that, of course, with his office on the Wing of Power. Hell, he was among them enough to worry, too. He knew all the bad news: the polls, the “internals,” the “gender gap,” the “negatives.” He knew the schedule for the next two months held nothing to help Bush get back on the evening news. Dukakis looked like the centrist statesman in his week-to-week wins over Jesse Jackson. He would hold the spotlight through July, as the Democrats convened in Atlanta. George Bush couldn’t even throw his own body around the country to get onto
local
TV. ... GBFP had spent the legal limit; the travel budget was a hundred thousand
overspent
... no one wanted to tell the Veep.