41.) George H.W. Bush

“The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’” — George Bush's GOP Nomination Acceptance speech, Aug. 18, 1988.

"Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Texas Governor Ann Richards at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

George H.W. Bush may have lived one of the most personally moving stories in all of presidential history. There's war. There's loss. There are great heights and great defeats. Through it all, Bush often appeared somewhat wooden. Unreachable. Unavailable. But beneath that was a man of deep emotions. Follow along as Bush fights in World War II, builds an oil empire in Texas, and rises through the ranks of GOP politics to the White House, where he contended with the end of the Cold War, the aggression of an Iraqi dictator, and an economic reckoning that threatened to be the undoing of his career.

Bibliography
1. Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush – Jon Meacham
2. When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War - Jeffrey Engel
3. The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House - John Harris
4. Ronald Reagan: The life – H.W. Brands
5. Bush - Jean Edward Smith
6.  Richard Nixon, the life – John A. Farrell
7. His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life – Jonathan Alter
8. Gerald Ford – Douglas Brinkley

Transcript

A quick note before we get started. We are now entering the era of presidents I might have crossed paths with in my journey. So I’ll go ahead and call those moments out at the top of each episode so you can decide for yourself if that impacts the telling of the history.

George H.W. Bush’s presidential library is at Texas A&M, my alma mater. And when I was a student there, it wasn’t uncommon for folks to see him on campus. I saw him in the stands for sporting events, folks often worked out beside him at the campus gym, and I once looked out the window of a classroom to see his secret service agents trying to learn how to drive segways – nothing strips the intimidation factor off secret service agents faster than watching them try to drive segways.

And that’s what I got. So let’s dive in.

SPEECH

George H.W. Bush has, I have to say, one of the more personally moving stories in all of presidential history. There’s danger, there’s loss, there’s heartbreaking goodbyes that molded a highly competent man defined by common decency.

The competency served him well when the unexpected crisis struck - Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union - but while his decency shone through, his vulnerability never did. Bush was a wooden politician. Unrelatable. Just another rich white guy. While the man who ultimately defeated him could ‘feel your pain.’

Today, we’ll take a look under that wooden exterior at the real Bush, and we’ll follow as he presides over four of the most consequential years in human history.

Empires fall, oceans rise, by the end of this story, there might be tears in your eyes.

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George H.W. Bush … is another rich white kid. It’s true! Born June 12 in Milton, Massachusetts, to Prescott and Dorothy Bush, the second of five children, the world was his oyster. Bush’s parents, both of them, were wealthy, competitive, and tough. You played to win, but you didn’t gloat. You focused on the team, not yourself. And you pursued greatness, you didn’t settle. That was the Bush way.

With values like that, it should not have been a surprise when, after a childhood education at Andover, one of the oldest prep schools in the nation, George H.W. Bush was inspired to join something greater than himself – the great war.

Bush was 17 years old and in the middle of his senior year of high school when Pearl Harbor was struck by the Empire of Japan. Six months later - the day Bush turned 18 and 4 days after he graduated high school - he traveled to Boston to enlist in the Navy.

But not to sail. To fly. There was a new weapon of war - the aircraft carrier - and pilots were needed to fly and land planes from their decks. Bush was going to be one of the youngest, if not the youngest, pilot in the navy.

Bush never forgot the day his father, Prescott, took him to New York to catch the train that would carry him to basic training, to war. Bush had never seen his father cry. But that day, on that platform, Prescott cried. They never knew if they’d see each other again.

And Bush’s father wasn’t the only one young George was saying goodbye to. In his wallet, he carried a picture to remind him of another goodbye. A picture of the woman he’d one day marry.

Days after Pearl Harbor, and months before enlisting, Bush had met 16-year-old Barbara Pierce at a holiday party. They’d quickly hit it off and, on the eve of war, with the world going to hell, George and Barbara fell in love. Through the long years and distance of war, Bush carried a picture of Bar everywhere he went. He wrote her letters about his hopes, dreams, and fears. After a year of training, he proposed to her by the ocean during a week of leave. He was 19, she was 18. They had only known each other 18 months. She said yes.

The war would nearly kill him before he’d see her again.

One September day in 1944, Bush, serving in the Pacific, was sent on a mission to bomb a Japanese radar installation on the island of Chichi-Jima 

It didn’t go well. Japanese anti-aircraft guns saw the American planes coming and the sky erupted in flack around them. BAM, Bush was hit. But he didn’t give up. As smoke filled the cockpit, Bush sped toward his target, bombs away! And successfully hit the radar installation. He hit the throttle to race away from the island, but knew his badly damaged plane wouldn’t make it back to the fleet. He yelled at his 2 crew to bail, but didn’t hear any response. He hoped they had jumped. He put the burning plane into a climb to gain altitude, put on his parachute, opened the hatch, and leapt out – ejection seats were not a thing yet. The wind threw him back tumbling along the plane and he gashed his head on the tail, but he didn’t black out. He pulled his parachute, fwoop! and watched as his burning plane crashed into the ocean and sank below the waves. Splash! Bush hit the water and when get got back to the surface and looked up, he saw American planes flying overhead, circling to protect him as he inflated a raft that had fallen nearby. A Japanese boat was sent to try to catch him, but the American planes chased it off with machine gun fire. With the planes overhead, Bush knew a rescue was coming, but he also knew the current was pushing him back toward the Japanese island and didn’t know if the rescue would beat the tide. He paddled against the current for as long as he could before he became delirious from heat and sea water. As he lay there in a daze, he thought about his fiance, his family, and his 2 crewmen - he hadn’t seen them since the plane went down. Had they died? And then, imagine this, the water before him began to churn and bubble and, holy smokes, a submarine rose from the waters before him. It was an American submarine - his rescue. George Bush had survived, but his crewmen were never found. He never forgot them. Their memories would stay with him the rest of his life.

Bush continued to successfully fly missions for the navy after his rescue, then went home on leave the winter of 44-45 to marry Barbara and begin preparing for his next mission, the invasion of Japan. But before that mission could be launched - news! The atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan unconditionally surrendered days later. WWII had reached its end.

As the nation celebrated and sailors kissed nurses in Times Square, Bush did what the men in his family had always done - he went to Yale. Bush earned an economics degree in 2.5 years while playing for the Yale baseball team and fathering the first of six children with Barbara, George Jr. When bush graduated, a friend of his father’s sold him on the idea of chasing oil in Texas - the kind of bold risk you can comfortably take when your dad and grandad are rich Wall Street execs. His parents bought him a red studebaker as his graduation gift and he packed up his family and made for Texas.

The bushes started in Odessa,Texas, where they found an apartment that shared a bathroom with a pair of prostitutes who often locked them out as they were, uh, with their clients. From these humble beginnings, and backed by, you know, a ton of family wealth, Bush built a nice little oil empire.

But that doesn’t mean these years were free from tragedy.

While George Jr. and Jeb were healthy children, George and Bar’s third child, Robin, was not. When Robin was 3 years old, she started feeling out of sorts. Bruises appeared. She became lethargic. When the doctor began to cry as she told George and Bar that Robin had Leukemia, they were confused. What’s leukemia? That’s when the doctor broke the news – Little Robin had just weeks to live.

Bush tried to save her. The family flew her to a hospital in New England, where the doctors tried every treatment available to hold off the disease, but there was no cure. Sometimes Robin would be in tears from the treatments, sometimes she’d laugh and smile as if nothing were wrong. Bush would have to leave the room every time he was on the verge of tears because he didn’t want her to see him cry. On October 11, 1953, Robin died with her parents at her bedside. “One minute she was there, and the next she was gone.” She was less than 4 years old. For the rest of his life, Bush kept Robin’s picture in his desk or on his table, even in the white house. A family with all the money in the world, and they couldn’t save their daughter.

I sometimes wonder if that played a role in Bush going into public service.

10 years later, Bush, now a successful oilman living in Houston, entered politics.

His father, Prescott, had become a moderate republican senator in 1952. Serving along LBJ, JFK, and Nixon. Bush would emulate his father’s moderation, but his path through politics would be a far more circuitous odyssey.

He started at the county level - party chair for the Harris County Republican party, aka, Houston Texas. Then jumped to Congress, where his moderation won him a relationship with president LBJ. 

After LBJ left office, Bush turned to him for advice. Bush had a safe seat in Congress and would likely chair the powerful ways and means committee in a few years if he stayed put. But… should he run for the senate instead? LBJ replied “Son, I’ve served in the House. And I’ve been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they’re both good places to serve. So I wouldn’t begin to advise you what to do, except to say this—that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.”

So Bush ran for the senate… and lost. But this is where Bush’s career gets really interesting. Because, in defeat, he had impressed the one man who mattered most in GOP politics – president Richard Nixon.

Nixon called Bush to the White House to pitch him on being a presidential aide. But Bush had a counter proposal – why don’t you put me in the U.N. instead? Quote, “You can have someone in NY defending you on the world stage and to all the eastern elites.” Nixon liked the idea and gave him the post. Upon hearing the news, a friend of Bush asked “George, what the fuck do you know about foreign affairs?” To which Bush replied “ask me that in ten days.”

In the decades that followed, Bush learned a LOT about foreign affairs. He spent 2 years at the UN, 15 months as Liaison to China, and 1 year running the CIA. He also spent 2 years chairing the Republican National Committee, which became a much tougher job when Watergate broke into the news and Bush had to defend it. But he did the deed – Bush is nothing if not a team player – and then urged Nixon to resign when impeachment became inevitable.

By the time 1980 rolled around, George was 56 years old, worldly, humble, experienced, and a candidate for president of the United States.

He was also the underdog.

1980 was going to be the year of Ronald Reagan. Everyone knew it! Reagan had run in 1968 and 76 and was the darling of conservatives everywhere. It was his turn.

But this confidence created opportunity. Reagan’s advisors told him his smartest play was to stay home and let the nomination come to him. While he rested in California, Bush hit the trail in Iowa, hard, and the people of Iowa rewarded Bush with an upset victory in the Iowa Caucus.

That woke Reagan up. The New Hampshire primary was next, and Reagan leapt in with both feet. Debates were scheduled. The first would be Bush, Reagan, and four other candidates. The second would be just Bush and Reagan.

But polls move fast in an election year. When the debate was scheduled, Reagan was trailing and eager for a 1:1 with Bush – so eager that his campaign agreed to shoulder the costs of hosting it. But by the time the debate arrived, Reagan had surged to the lead and a 1 on 1 debate looked like a risk. So he decided to set a trap.

Bush walked out onto the stage with the moderator and took his seat, then glanced around. Where was Ronald reagan? After a slight delay, Reagan appeared, trailed by the 4 other Republican Candidates who were not supposed to be there. Reagan wanted them to join the Debate, and Bush recognized the trap. If Bush said ok, he’d just be another face in the crowd and lose the status of a 1 v 1 debate against Reagan. But if Bush said no, Reagan would pounce on him for being elitist. Caught in the moment, Bush froze.

In the words of one journalist, Bush looked like a child dropped off at the wrong birthday party and unsure of what to do. As Reagan demanded the right to make a statement, the moderator told him no and asked that Reagan’s mic be turned off, which prompted Reagan to win the night in an instant when he declared “I am paying for this microphone, Mr Green.” The moderator’s name wasn’t Mr. Green, but that was forgotten as the audience cheered and nothing else that was said that night was remembered.

The following day, New Hampshire voters went to Reagan in droves and Bush lost in a landslide. He tried to stay in the race, scoring some late upsets, but it was a losing effort. When conceded on May 26, he thought his political career was over.

But it wasn’t.

When the Republican convention convened 2 months later, Reagan tried to get ex president Gerald Ford to be his vice president. This would have been a bold stroke. Reagan’s primary challenge against Ford was a big reason Ford had lost the white house 4 years earlier. Nothing would do more to secure moderate Republican support than getting Ford on Reagan’s ticket now, and Reagan was so serious about it that he offered Ford an actual peace pipe backstage at the convention. But then, the night before a Vice presidential candidate had to be announced, Ford gave a televised interview where he was asked if Reagan planned to make him a co-president if he joined the ticket. Ford said no, but the fact that the question was asked at all shocked Reagan into thinking better of it. Ford officially withdrew from consideration, and Reagan called George Bush, who was in his convention hotel room with his family, to offer him the vice presidential nomination.

Bush said ‘ok.’

Four months later, Reagan won the presidency and Bush won the vice presidency, and perhaps most importantly, Bush’s good friend James Baker became Reagan’s Chief of Staff, which paid off immediately when Baker presented Bush with the following 4-point memo.

1. You and the President will have a scheduled weekly luncheon —no staff, no agenda;

2. You will automatically be invited to all presidential meetings;

3. You will receive a copy of all memoranda going to the President;

4. You will have the present Vice-President's [West Wing] office.

Bush was going to be much more involved than the typical vice president.

But that involvement had risks.

Remember the Iran-Contra scandal? Where the Reagan administration illegally sold arms to Iran, then illegally sent the proceeds to anti-communist rebels in Latin America? Nobody knows Bush’s exact level of involvement in Iran-Contra, but he did once tell his diary, quote “I'm one of the few people that know fully the details” and hand-written notes suggest he favored the arms for hostages deal with Iran.

After 2 terms in the supporting role, it was time for Bush to again run for the top job. Welcome to the election of 1988.

Despite having served as Reagan’s loyal vice president for 8 years, the conservative wing of the Republican Party still didn’t trust Bush. Shoot. They hated him! In 1984, 64% of conservatives had wanted Reagan to remove him from the presidential ticket. And now, in 88, they campaigned against him hard.

Bush recorded the following in his audio diary: “There's something terrible about those who carry it to extremes. They’re scary. They're there for spooky, extraordinary right-winged reasons. They don't care about Party. They don't care about anything. They're the excesses. They could be Nazis, they could be Communists, they could be whatever. In this case, they're religious fanatics and they're spooky. They will destroy this party if they're permitted to take over.”

Iowa, which had gone for Bush over Reagan in 1980, went against Bush in 88, but New Hampshire stayed in the Bush win column. Then, a weird thing happened, a New York real estate mogul named Donald Trump reached out to say he was available to serve as Bush’s Vice President. Bush politely said no, and thought the overture was “Strange and unbelievable.”

After New Hampshire, Bush just about won out the rest of the way, but he knew the right-wing of his party still wasn’t fully behind him, and he knew he’d need them to beat Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the general election, so, at the 1988 GOP convention, he said this.

AUDIO – Read my lips, no new taxes.

He would… come to regret that.

The 1988 general election was shaping up to be a tough one. 6 months out from election day, polls showed Dukakis had a 13-point lead, while Bush was seen as weak and wimpy. Voters were souring on Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal and Bush’s nebulous role in it.

The bush team, led by future Fox News president and former Nixon aide Roger Ailes, and gutter-fighter strategist Lee Atwater, said Bush was pretty well defined in the public’s mind and it would be hard to change how people felt about him. But Dukakis was a new entity, and if they moved fast, they could define Dukakis to the masses before Dukakis could do so himself.

They decided to define him as dangerously soft on crime.

The thing is, Massachusetts, which Dukakis was governor of, had a prison weekend leave program that had been set up by a previous Republican governor. That leave program was sometimes abused to tragic ends. 11 inmates had gone AWOL during their leaves and 2 had committed murders during Dukakis’ governorship. As the Republicans dug into this, they learned the story of Willie Horton Jr., a convicted first-degree murderer who had been granted a weekend pass in April 1987, fled to Maryland, then raped a woman twice at knife point after pistol whipping, stabbing and tying up her fiancé. It just so happened that Horton was also black.

The campaign’s deputy press secretary kept a mugshot of Horton in his office bulletin board and Atwater said, quote, “if I can make Willie Horton a household name, we’ll win the election.” And Roger Ailes joked to a reporter “the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.”

The Bush team’s focus on Horton paid off in the second presidential debate when the moderator asked Dukakis if he would still oppose the death penalty even if his wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered. Dukakis reiterated his view that capital punishment was not a deterrent, and national audiences saw weaknesses. If he wouldn’t protect his wife, would he protect them?

It was a dirty campaign, but it worked. On November 8, 1988, Bush became the first sitting VP to win the presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836! Carrying 40 of 50 states and 53.4% of vote - a 426 to 111 drubbing in the Electoral College.

And that’s how Bush won the presidency.

And so, on January 20, 1989, 64-year-old George Bush, a former congressman, party chair, UN ambassador, vice president, spy boss, oilman, and war hero, became the first vice president to win the white house in 152 years. But what did the world, and the country, look like when Bush became president? Let’s look around.

Domestically, the country was doing pretty well. Unemployment was down, GDP was up, but the national deficit was up, too. Hmmm. Bush would have to do something about that. Oh, and a NASA scientist testified to the U.S. Senate that man-made global warming had begun.

Internationally, the first international internet cable had just been laid between New Jersey and Sweden, one of the world’s first well-known computer viruses was unleashed by a Cornell Graduate student who was curious if it could be done, and nobody knew it, but the Cold War was about to come to a dramatic end.

As recently as the 1970’s, the Soviet Union had still looked like a country that could win the cold war between international capitalism and communism headlined by the United States and the Soviet Union.

But that moment of strength was a mirage. Like Russia today, the soviet union was a major exporter of oil. When arab embargos pushed the price of oil up in the 70’s, the soviet economy boomed and it looked like a behemoth. When oil prices returned to earth in the 80’s, the soviet economy went bust. By 1989, that crashing economy was causing economic distress from the iron curtain to communist China.

And oppressed peoples, tired of laboring under distant dictators, began to rise up.

It started in China.

On June 3, 1989, student protestors swelled in Tiananmen square, a large plaza just outside Beijing’s Forbidden Palace, after a popular reformer died. Spooked by the size of the protests, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who Bush personally knew from his days in China, responded harshly. The Chinese army took to the streets of Beijing and attacked the protestors, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. The image of a lone man standing up to a column of tanks flashed around the world.

Americans were horrified and called for sanctions, but Bush chose stability over escalation and did nothing. He hoped that by staying friendly with Deng, he could influence China to adopt western-styled capitalism. And then, quote, “if people have commercial incentives, the move to democracy becomes inexorable.” This guided his calm hand, but it would prove wrong with time, and the United States likely missed its best chance to influence a democratization of China.

But the brutal response in China didn’t stop uprisings from breaking out in Europe’s communist states.

One June 4, 1989, a day after the Tiananmen square crackdown, Polish voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly rejected the country’s communist leaders. Elections had long been a phantom formality in eastern Europe – the communists were often the only party in town – but, in one of the great ironies of the cold war, the collapse of European Communism had been started by a polish trade union just a few years earlier.

The union, named Solidarity, had formed in response to communism’s economic failings in the 1980’s. In 1989, Polish voters swept it into power.

Hungary, too, wrestled with how to respond to citizens hungry for change. It didn’t want to risk a violent crackdown like China had employed, and it didn’t want to risk electoral defeat as Poland had experienced, so it tried a third tactic – why not let out a little steam? The Hungarian government removed the barbed wire fencing that had long separated it from capitalist Austria, and the Hungarians who wanted to flee fled.

But… they weren’t the only ones running out.

All across the eastern bloc, citizens tired of communist oppression realized, if I take a vacation to Hungary this summer, I can cross into Austria and escape.

And just like that, Hungary became the most popular vacation spot in communist Europe.

In communist Eastern Germany, this flight of citizens caused a leadership crisis that toppled the long-time leader. As a new government scrambled to take shape, a member of the new cabinet made a rather grave error during a live press conference – he misread his notes.

He said the Berlin Wall was open to all traffic effective immediately.

In reality, it was not open to traffic. But all of a sudden, tens of thousands of east Berliners were marching on the wall, seeking to get through, and the soldiers manning the wall had no idea what to do.

In that moment, everything could have gone wrong. The soldiers could have started shooting. It could have been a massacre. History could have taken a different turn.

But the soldiers didn’t shoot. They opened the gates instead.

And that’s how, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. More and more East berliners walked through or climbed over the wall to reunify with West Berliners, and they sang, and they danced, and they brought out their hammers and chisels as the wall began to fall.

Fun fact, my first childhood memory is walking downstairs one night to get water and finding an empty room with a tv that had been left on. On the tv, I watched as a jubilant crowd climbed over and tore down a wall.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a happy surprise to Bush. He’d been sitting at his desk in the middle of the afternoon when an aid walked in and said, “The wall had been opened,” and then he watched with the world as it came down on TV.

But he didn’t watch for long. Bush saw this for what it was, a great opportunity and a grave risk. The CIA had warned Bush that Soviet premiere Gobachev’s reforms were destabilizing the soviet union. There could be a conservative reaction – what if the generals took things into their own hands to keep the soviet empire in place?

2 years later, they did exactly that.

It was August 19, 1991, and Bush was handed reports from Moscow that didn’t make sense.

Soviet State media was reporting that Mikhael Gorbachev had resigned effective immediately for health reasons. Health reasons? That would have been news to Bush, who knew Gorbachev was in great shape. This was no resignation. This was a coup.

Bush quickly rallied western leaders around a unified response: The west supported Gorbachev and his reforms. It wanted to speak to Gorbachev. It didn’t want war.

And then a new player entered the picture. Boris Yeltsin, the recently elected president of Russia – yes, there was a Russia within the soviet union. Yeltsin had taken to the streets to rally the people of Moscow against the coup, at one point standing atop a tank to speak out against it.

With the west playing it cool but firm and Yeltsin leading a peoples’ revolt on the street, the coup plotters blinked and backed down.

On August 21, two days after the coup began, Bush received a call from Russia - it was Gorbachev. He’d been freed and the coup had failed, thanks in part to Yeltsin’s defiance and in part to the plotters’ incompetence. 

But while Gorbachev may have been physically alive, he was politically dead. Four months after the coup, Gorbachev resigned as head of the communist party and announced the party itself should be dissolved. By saving Gorbachev, the crafty Boris Yeltsin had effectively taken his place.

On Christmas Day, 1991, Bush received the most unexpected of Gifts. Gorbachev was on the phone. He said the Soviet experiment was over. The soviet nuclear arsenal would be transferred to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. “I can assure you that everything is under strict control,” Gorbachev promised. “There will be no disconnection. You can have a very quiet Christmas morning.” The Cold War was over.

But other wars had already begun.

On August 1, 1990 – after the fall of the Berlin wall, but before the attempted Russian Coup – Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and captured the tiny nation in a day.

Ok. Why?

Hussein had ruled Iraq with a blood-stained fist since 1979. He was a throwback dictator in the mold of Hitler or Stalin, the kind of leader who thought you should take what you wanted by force. He’d waged a brutal and unsuccessful war against Iran through most of the 80’s - half a million men had died and all Saddam had managed to do was to put himself massively in debt to the Kuwaiti’s, who had bankrolled the war through loans.

But do you know what’s better than paying your debt? Invading the bank.

When Bush first heard of the invasion, he wasn’t sure how he wanted to respond. Invading your neighbor is bad, but Iraq is really far away. Why should the United States get involved?

He quickly found 2 reasons.

First, Saddam was an expansionist dictator, and if World War II had taught Bush’s generation anything, it was that it’s best to stop expansionist dictators before they gather steam.

Second, The conquest of Kuwait put an estimated 20% of the world’s oil in Saddam’s hands. If Saddam kept going and conquered Saudi Arabia, which he easily had a large enough army to do, he’d have 45% of the world’s oil. Bush was not about to let one madman have that much power and wealth.

But Bush knew the United States could not go it alone. He’d need the rest of the Arab countries on board, and he was shocked to find they were ok with just letting Saddam have Kuwait. Not because they supported Saddam, but because they didn’t believe American security promises.

They pointed to the Americans’ weak response to the Iranian revolution under carter, and they pointed to Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon after a terrorist had killed 241 marines with a truck bomb in 1983

These 2 actions had the Saudi’s convinced - The Americans had no backbone.

So defense secretary Dick Cheney – yeah, that dick Cheney - reassured them, if we come to fight Saddam, we’ll come with 150,000 men, we’ll come to win, and we’ll stay til you tell us to leave.

So Saudis said, ok.

With the Saudis aboard, Bush gave a press conference where he flashed his stiffening resolve and growing confidence “This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”

And then Bush’s international experience began to pay off. 35 nations vowed to lend military support against Iraq. In a sign of how swiftly times were changing, even China and the Soviets were onboard. But the American people were still nervous. Saddam had one of the world’s largest armies. It was battle tested from its invasion of Kuwait and its long war with Iran. The United States hadn’t won a major land war since world war II. Saddam had chemical weapons and was rumored to be seeking nukes. More than a few feared Iraq could win this thing and, oh yeah, Congress still hadn’t authorized Bush to go to war. Many wanted him to try sanctions first. Jimmy Carter was lobbying the UN to oppose an American intervention.

But that didn’t stop Bush from redeploying troops to the region. He didn’t need congress to do that. Bush was an acolyte of the Powell Doctrine, a list of criteria developed by Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell after Vietnam that basically said: define the mission, then apply overwhelming force to carry it out. The mission would be to oust Saddam from Kuwait, and the overwhelming force would be a half million American soldiers.

But still, Congress didn’t vote for war.

Privately, Bush told his diary that he would invade Iraq whether Congress voted for it or not, and he feared Congress might impeach him if he tried. Why risk an invasion without Congress’s support? Because Bush had read reports of Saddam’s army raping, pillaging, and murdering Kuwaiti’s and he felt sure that Saddam represented a moral evil that must be fought.

At the UN, Jim Baker, now secretary of state, secured a resolution calling for Saddam to withdraw Kuwait by January 15, 1991.

But would Congress come along?

On January 8, 1991, Bush formally asked Congress for authority to use force in Iraq.

Four days later, they gave it to him. The vote was 250-183 in the house and 52-47 in the senate.

As the January 15 UN deadline for Saddam to withdraw neared, it became increasingly hard for Bush to focus. He saw news reports of fathers hugging their sons at train stations, sending them off to war, and remembered his own sendoff 50 years before, when he’d seen his father cry. His mind was with the troops, forecasts of potentially vast casualties in the desert, and the mission he was about to send them on

On January 16, Bush took to TV to say.

“____announced war____”

The war was on. American forces were beginning their attack on Iraq.

All Bush could do was wait.

Can you imagine how it felt?

At 5 am the next morning, Bush went to the situation room to hear the first reports from the war. And the reports were good. Better than good. They were great. Everything was going according to plan – which never happens in war. The American-led coalition had obtained air superiority and destroyed Iraq’s command and control network. They were bombing Iraqi positions willy-nilly without opposition, softening up for the ground invasion to come.

But Saddam did have one wild card to play. That night, Iraq launched 10 SCUD rockets at Israel. Saddam’s hope was that Israel would strike back, the American coalition’s Arab partners would abandon it, and the Americans, with no safe supply base, would be forced to withdraw. So Bush got personally involved, calling the Israeli prime minister and urging him not to respond – I know Saddam is bombing your cities, but you just have to let us fight this war without you.

Saddam continued to fire missiles at Israel through the war, but Israel never responded. Bush’s personal diplomacy held the coalition together.

On February 22, 1991, after more than a month of Air strikes to soften Iraq’s defenses, Bush announced that Saddam had until the following day to withdraw or a ground invasion would begin. To make sure Iraq didn’t use its chemical weapons, the Iraqi’s were told that the United States would nuke Baghdad if they did. This was likely a bluff, but it worked. The following day, February 23, the United States army launched a wide flanking maneuver through the deserts of western Iraq to strike Saddam’s armies in side and rear and the Iraqi army folded – 20,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, 60,000 were taken prisoner, and only 148 Americans were killed – one of the most lopsided wars in history.

And just like that, a Congress that once said ‘maybe we shouldn’t go in…’ began to say ‘Maybe we should go all the way… Maybe we should remove Saddam from power.’

But Bush said no. Remember the Powell doctrine! Have a clear mission, achieve it with overwhelming force, achieve it fast. To remove Saddam from power might require capturing Baghdad and occupying the country. The whole war could turn into a quagmire! He wasn’t dumb enough to do that.

100 hours after the ground war began, Bush announced victory. The mission, ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, had been accomplished. The only blemish of the war was what happened after it ended, when Americans encouraged Iraqi’s to rebel on their own accord, and some Shiites and Kurds did, only to be massacred by the remnants of Saddam’s army.

Despite that tragedy, the American public celebrated what had been a glorious little war. Bush’s approval rating soared to 89% - higher than any president in the history of the polls – and yet, Bush himself grew despondent.

The Gulf war, in the end, had been easy.

The Cold War, too, was coming to an end without Bush so much as lifting a finger.

But republicans in congress… That was a nightmare. A nightmare that threatened bush’s president and the American economy.

What was going on.

Well, it all goes back to that little promise from the campaign. ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’

The problem was that Bush needed to raise taxes.

Why?

Remember from the Reagan episode, how Reagan had cut taxes without cutting spending, and that had led to the largest budget deficits since World War II? Yeah. That was starting to cause problems. From 1789 to 1981, the United States had accrued $900 billion dollars of national debt, mostly from World War II and the economic recession of the 70’s.

Then, in 8 years of Reagan’s presidency, another $2 trillion dollars was added to the debt. Yeah. Reagan accrued more debt than every previous president combined times 2.

And now the chairman of the Federal Reserve wanted Bush to do something about it.

And he had the power to make Bush listen. The federal reserve sets interest rates. Lower interest rates encourage lending and fuel economic growth. Higher interest rates discourage lending and can shrink the economy or even cause a recession. In 1990, the rate was around 8% - compared to 5% today - and folks were fretting that the economy was going to suffer if it didn’t go down.

The federal reserve chairman said rates would only go down if Bush cut the deficit.

And there were only three ways Bush could do that.

One, he could cut military spending, which republicans wouldn’t allow (plus, you know, he needed money for that war with Iraq);

Two, he could cut social safety net programs, like social security and medicare – which democrats wouldn’t allow;

Or three, Bush could raise taxes, which some members of both parties did want him to do, but it would mean going back on his ‘no new taxes’ pledge.

And so Bush punted. And punted again. And kept on punting. But you don’t win a football game by punting. And then a play clock was added. Thanks to a new interpretation of old rules by Jimmy Carter’s attorney general a decade earlier, if a budget was not passed by October 1, the federal government would shut down.

And with the economy showing signs of recession, that budget had to be balanced, or rates were going to stay high, and Bush was going to face an economic reckoning.

In May of 1990 – 5 months before the budget deadline – Bush’s team began negotiating with Congress, but struggled to find a deal. May slipped by. June slipped by. July slipped by. Then August. Then September! On September 30, one day before the government was set to close, a compromise was finally revealed. We’ll raise taxes, which democrats want, in exchange for cuts to medicare, which republicans want, and then the Fed will lower interest rates, which all of us want!

The Democrats said yes. The republicans said yes. Except for one republican.

Newt Gingrich said no.

You might recognize that name.

In 1990, Newt gingrich was the Republican whip from Georgia. It was his role to make sure Republicans voted the way leadership - or newt - wanted them to vote. Newt was willing to fight with ANYONE. Preferably democrats, but ANYONE. And in 1990, he was willing to fight Bush to oppose any increase in taxes.

And Bush’s advisors didn’t disagree with him. Roger Ailes said that if voters knew one thing about Bush, it was that he was a man of his word, and this would destroy that. Vice President Dan Quale said running on tax cuts was the lone reason Republicans had won big nationally in 1980, 84, and 88.

Suddenly it wasn’t just Newt voicing opposition. It was a conservative brushfire.

As the conservative wing of the republican party broke out into revolt, Bush tried to remind them – hey, guys, Reagan raised taxes plenty of times. Bush took to TV to say it would be “economic chaos if we fail to reduce the deficit.” But the Gingrich republicans refused to listen. A Newt ally said Republican congressmen could distance themselves from the president on taxes, and Bush was ticked.

And out of time.

A stopgap spending bill was passed to keep the government open for 5 more days so votes on the larger bill could be scheduled.

The morning of October 5, the day before government funding was to run out, legislators filed into Congress to vote…

And they defeated the compromise. 254 to 179, 149 democrats and 105 republicans banded together to defeat the bill while only 108 democrats and and 71 republicans voted for it.

Everyone was shocked. Was the first government-wide shutdown about to happen? Another stopgap was hurriedly passed – 5 more days to negotiate! But Bush said enough was enough. He vetoed the stopgap and the house fell 6 votes shy of overriding his veto. On October 6, a Saturday, the United States federal government began to shut down.

And then, the morning of Monday, October 8, 1990, as the nation began its first week without an open federal government, the Democratic majority united to pass a spending bill that had almost everything it wanted and almost nothing the republicans wanted – the cuts to Medicaid were gone, larger tax increases were in, and George Bush signed it into law – he felt he had no choice. Newt Gingrich, in his pursuit of a total win, had surrendered a fair compromise, and ended up with a total loss.

Two years later, the economy was in a recession. The reserve had lowered its rates, but it was too little, too late. If Bush had tackled the deficit earlier in his administration, he might have been more successful. Conservative republicans never forgave him for raising taxes, but they had never trusted him in the first place. Pat Buchanan, a former assistant to Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, challenged Bush in the primaries, and then billionaire Ross Perot challenged him as a third-party candidate in the general. Bush’s approval ratings – so high after defeating Saddam – plummeted from 89% to 29% in 16 months. It was all enough for a little-known governor from Arkansas to defeat Bush after just one term.

On January 20, 1993, George Bush left the white house for the last time.

There’s one more story I want to share from the Bush years in the white house.

At the same time Bush was navigating all his challenges, global and domestic, he also faced a tragedy of a more personal nature.

Bush’s father, Prescott, had died in 1972, but his mother was still alive and 88 years old when he became president.

But … she didn’t really know he’d become president.

Dorothy was suffering from dementia. The son she had born and raised had reached the pinnacle of political achievement, the presidency of the united states, but when he wheeled her through the white house, she wasn’t sure where they were, or who he was.

She died November 19, 1992, 16 days after Bush lost his reelection, unaware that her son had become president of the United States.

Ok, so how had the country, and the world, changed during the 4 years of the Bush administration.

A lot.

Globally, the cold war was over. The Berlin wall had fallen. The Eastern Bloc had fallen. The soviet Union had fallen! With China in turmoil, the United States reigned supreme. An American Century appeared on the horizon.

Domestically, the fall of America’s great enemy, the soviet union, seemed to have the same effect on Congress that the fall of Carthage had once had on Rome. This was no longer a competition between the United States and Russia for hegemony over the world. The United States had won that. This was now a fight between republicans and democrats for control of the last super power on earth – all the power in the world to whoever won the white house. And, to a rising tide of new politicians, who had not huddled together through the great depression, who had not struggled together through World War II, there was no American brotherhood. There was just winner takes all. To the victor would go the spoils.

In other news, the Simpsons debuted in 1990! The first GPS satellite went into orbit in 1989. Nintendo launched the Gameboy in 1990, Scientists discovered a hole in the ozone that year. And the world’s first website was launched in 1991. Sensibly enough, it contained instructions on how to create more web pages.

Oh, and one more thing – remember that bit I’d mentioned about the Iran-Contra scandal earlier? How Bush had told his diary that only he knew the whole story? Well, on December 24, 1992, an independent counsel was still looking into that scandal and six men were in his cross-hairs, including the former secretary of Defense. Bush pardoned all six, effectively killing the investigation. We’ll never know what Bush and Reagan knew or when they knew it. That secret has gone with them to the grave.

After leaving office, Bush lived a good long time, and he got to see and do some incredible things. Still remembering the fear of being shot down over the pacific and losing his crew, he chose to face that fear, parachuting out of airplanes on his 75th, 80th, 85th, and 90th birthdays. In 2001, he watched his son become president of the united states. He became friends with the man who had beat him, Bill Clinton, and after both presidents had left office, whenever disasters struck, they would travel the world together to raise money for those who had lost so much.

On Nov. 30, 2018, George H.W. Bush died of Parkinsons disease at his home in Houston. He was 94 years old. As his casket was loaded onto a train for one last tearful farewell, the national news couldn’t help but compare him to the man who was then in the office, Donald Trump, and the gulf between them.

Ok. That was a long and fascinating life. If you’re going to remember 3 things about Bush, I would recommend.

1.)  He presided over the end of the cold war and helped make sure it was a peaceful end by refusing to gloat and by offering friendship and aid to the political leaders of a faltering east.

2.)  He worked across Washington and across the globe to confront Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, orchestrating one of the most successful wars in American history. In doing so, he attempted to signal the United States would stand with oppressed peoples against the oppressors, with victims against bullies, and aimed to create a pax americana that could nurture future generations.

3.)  Read my lips, no new taxes. Bush raised taxes in a bid to resolve the runaway deficit that had started under Reagan, but conservative republicans never supported him, never forgave him, and because he’d waited too long to face that threat, he lost reelection anyway.

But what can Bush teach us about leadership? Well, I haven’t gotten much into it, but Bush was a fantastic writer of letters. The man who struggled to find words in public knew what to say on paper and was gracious in reaching out to friends and rivals alike with words of comfort, support, and companionship whenever they were needed. This personal diplomacy is why Bush was able to rise as high as he did. The public rarely saw it, but he was a sweet, emotional man, and he cared deeply about others. And when you care about others, they’ll care about you.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Abridged Presidential Histories.

If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on your podcast-listening platform of choice.

If you’d like to support the show, you can look it up on Patreon, or go directly to www.patreon.com/abridgedpresidentialhistories. It helps me buy books and pay to host the show.

The music in today’s podcast is a public domain recording of the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps.

The primary biography for today’s episode was Destiny and Power, the American odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, but Jon Meacham.

In our next episode, We’re going to take a deeper look at the end of the cold war and the role Bush played in shaping the new world order. Ukraine’s independence, Germany’s reunification, Bush’s restraint when the international advantage was all his - we’ll discuss it all with my good friend historian Jeff Engel, author of “When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War”

next time, on Abridged Presidential Histories.