The Daily - The Legacy of George Bush

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

George Bush rode the Reagan revolution to the White House, where he had one of the highest approval ratings of any president, and where he successfully oversaw the end of the Cold War. So why was he denied a second term? Guest: Peter Baker, who covers the White House for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the legacy of George Herbert Walker Bush. He rode the Reagan Revolution to the White House, where he had one of the highest approval rates of any president, and where he successfully oversaw the end of the Cold War. So why was he denied a second term? It's Monday, December 3rd. And I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America,

for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of light. This is my mission, and I will complete it. Well, George Bush came from a family in New England, son of a senator who had been part of the investment bank, Brown Brothers Harriman, went to the best schools of the East Coast, Spanish Country Day School, Phillips Andover, eventually Yale. But like a lot of the Bushes, he felt a need to prove himself

as more than just a product of his family. Peter Baker covers the White House for The Times. From the NBC newsroom in New York, President Roosevelt said in a statement today that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from the air. I'll repeat that. President Roosevelt says... When World War II broke out, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, he raced to sign up.

The day Pearl Harbor was bombed, December 7th, 1941. I was 17 years old. It was a Sunday. Walked by the chapel. Somebody came running by and yelled that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Went into the Navy as a pilot. The youngest combat pilot in the Navy at the time during the war. I knew fact certain that I wanted to serve duty, honor, country.

But I hate telling you this because I don't want to be sounding like I'm different. I'm not. Shot down at one point in a bombing run over the Pacific. Two men in his plane died in that crash. He plunges into the water but is rescued by a submarine, which just happens to be nearby. I wonder if I could have done something different. I wonder who got out of the plant. I wonder why the chute didn't open for the other guy. Why me? Why am I blessed? Why am I still alive?

That has plagued me. And what happens after he's rescued and he leaves the Navy? Well, he comes back to the United States. He marries his high school sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, takes his family, his young family, including a young boy named George Walker, puts them in a student banker, drives them down to Texas where he's going to make his own way.

He wants to find a way to prove himself as a businessman, and Texas is the place to do it. He has help from the family, of course, but he basically sets up a house in Odessa that's a duplex, a small place. They share a bathroom with the people next door. The people next door happen to be a mother and daughter prostitute team. It's not the life of privilege that you think of when it comes to the Bushes. And he's out there hustling business. He forms his own company. And he's lucky. He gets a break and he becomes a millionaire through the work that he does there in Texas. So how exactly does he enter politics? As a father and a family man, I know you and I share a lot of worries about the future of our state and nation.

I certainly hope, and I'll bet you do too. Well, there's a history of politics in public service in his family. His father was Prescott Bush, a senator from Connecticut, one of those who stood up to Joseph McCarthy. Bush, a senator from Connecticut, one of those who stood up to Joseph McCarthy. And in that same tradition, George H.W. Bush, having made his fortune in Texas, enters public life there. Both George and Barbara Bush campaign hard during the week. On Sunday, however, they try to be with their children after church services at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, where Barbara teaches Sunday school. The Bush clan and some of the neighborhood kids gather in the backyard where the youngsters

run up the American and Texas flags. Baseball is the Bush game. In fact, you might call them a Bush league. George says Jeb's going to be a real athlete. And he's trying to accommodate himself to a state that is conservative to begin with and turning more so. I'd like my children to be able to pray in school if they want to. And I'd like that right to be a part of our Constitution.

He's in a place where he needs to tilt to the right at various points. In particular, he speaks out against the Civil Rights Act that Lyndon Johnson pushed through Congress. He told a pastor in later years, I took some far-right positions in that last race and I hope I never do it again. He did win a seat in the House, pretty handily, in the Houston area. He held that for four years. George Bush, the happy family man, is now George Bush, Republican candidate for the United States Senate. He gives up his House seat in 1970 to run for Senate.

At the request of President Nixon, the liberal Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough seemed vulnerable, and George Bush gives up his House seat to take him on. The problem is that Yarborough loses in a primary, in the Democratic primary, to a more conservative Democrat, Lloyd Benson. And therefore, George Bush can't get to the right of Lloyd Benson the way he could have Ralph Yarboe, and he loses the election. At that point, he's basically out of a job. He's

looking for a place to land, and Nixon feels like he owes him. He gives him what would become the first of a series of appointed offices that really propel Bush onto the national stage. He sends him to the United Nations as an ambassador. Given the financial difficulties in which the United Nations already find itself, and given other concerns to which we've alluded. Later, Bush becomes chairman of the Republican Party and somehow manages to emerge from the Watergate scandal intact. Under President Ford, the successor, he becomes envoy to China and then later CIA director. This agency is the finest intelligence agency in the world. They will have my total support and I'll work hard at that.

All these positions give him a promise and a network that enable him to begin thinking about running for the presidency. Bush started campaigning earlier. He's been at it almost two years, yet he's still the least known of all the leading contenders, still struggling to be recognized. Nice to see you. Hi. Hi. Again, again, again, again. Oh, come on, let's go in.

And when George H.W. Bush decides to run for president, how does he campaign? What kind of Republican is he at this point? George Bush runs as the moderate in the race. He is for abortion rights. Bush ran against Reagan's version of economics, the idea that you could cut taxes, increase spending on the military, and still reduce the deficit.

In fact, he called it voodoo economics. This type of what I call a voodoo economic policy, it just isn't going to work. Meaning it didn't add up, it didn't make sense, it was all hocus pocus. There's something out there on that Reagan thing. I can't prove it to you. He's strong in the polls. I will say nothing to tear him down, but there's some erosion. I think it could be the Teddy Kennedy syndrome.

Way out three to one before you join battle, and then whip, down you go. I think it's going to erode that Reagan strength. He, in effect, is the next generation of Gerald Ford trying to take back the party at a moment when the conservative movement is on the rise. And he has some success. He surprises Reagan in the Iowa caucus.

He has the big mo, he calls it, meaning momentum heading forward. What you do need is a base. Where is your constituency? Who out there is willing to die for George Bush? To use a Texas phrase, there are people who say, George Bush is a nice fellow,

but he's all hat and no cattle, which is to say he has no base. But ultimately, he can't overcome the rising conservative tide that Reagan represents and Reagan defeats him for the nomination in 1980. So what happens to Bush? Bush at this point thinks his career is kind of shot. He heads to the convention in Kansas City.

It looks like Reagan is actually going to put Ford on the ticket of all things. But at the last minute, suddenly there's a phone call in his suite. Bush is there. He's drinking a Stroh's beer and kind of drowning his sorrows. And it turns out it's Reagan. He's calling to offer him the number two position on the ticket. Oh, Walter, I am just being told by a high lieutenant that the choice is Bush. I am being told that the choice is Bush.

He's telling me I can go with it. I'm being told by a high lieutenant that the choice is Bush. I am being told that the choice is Bush. He's telling me I can go with it. I'm being told for sure. Apparently the deal fell through. Thus we stall. That's the most amazing piece of news we've heard since we heard it was Ford. And he asked Bush, you know, we have some different positions. Are you able to accommodate yourself to mine? And he mentions abortion specifically.

And Bush says, that won't be a problem, sir. All around me, everybody's yelling Bush, Walter. Bush, they're telling me Bush, Walter. And so you see a new Bush that emerged, become the vice presidential running mate and the vice president for Ronald Reagan. No longer is he for abortion rights, voodoo economics, that phrase is out the window.

In fact, he denies he ever said it. Well, what I said back then, it's very hard to find. Actually, let me start over. One, I didn't say it. Nobody, every network's looked for it and none can find it. It was never said. I challenge anybody to find it. Challenge accepted. Challenges reporter to ever find a video of him saying it, which of course they do. This afternoon, the vice president's office corrected the record one more time. Last night in Houston, they said the vice president was only kidding. So he was running in many ways

against the new conservatism that Reagan represented. And suddenly, because he's now asked to be the number two in that ticket, he's embracing it and joining it. Exactly right. One of the things he did rather remarkably throughout his career was to accommodate himself to the changing realities around him. And the changing reality was that Ronald Reagan was on the ascendance. The party wanted somebody like Ronald Reagan. And he was willing to do that. He tries to make himself a loyal number two and cast himself as a fellow conservative heading toward the White House.

and cast himself as a fellow conservative heading toward the White House. So how do we get Bush from vice president to president himself? Well, Bush spends eight years entirely loyal to Reagan. He never publicly in any way offers any distance himself from the president. Even in private, he makes a point of never allowing light to shine between the two of them. And so he runs as a loyal lieutenant. He runs as the third term of Ronald Reagan, in effect, in 1988. I'm the one who will not raise taxes.

He utters a phrase at his convention speech in which he says, not only will he not raise taxes, he says, at his convention speech in which he says, not only will he not raise taxes, he says, Read my lips. No new taxes. He is a full-fledged adherent to what he once called voodoo economics. He's trying to reassure the party that doesn't really believe that he's a Reagan conservative, that in fact he's on their side. He will not waver.

He will, in fact, stand with them on this great economic argument that continues to dominate the conversation. We're back at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. Vice President George Bush, nominee for president of the United States of this Republican Party. Now an opportunity to deal with something that has haunted him for the last eight years, that he's not his own man, that he's best at serving others. But this party now belongs to George Bush. So Bush secures the nomination in 1988. And who is he running against?

He's running against Michael Dukakis, who's the governor of Massachusetts. This election is not about ideology. It's about competence. A liberal, but somebody who is premising his campaign on the idea of competence, not ideology. What ends up happening is that President Bush, and then Vice President Bush, needs to find a wedge issue to take down Michael Dukakis. And this is one of the essential conflicts in Bush as well. This idea that, you know, gentility and civility are all well and good in politics, but when it comes to the campaign trail, a willingness to go pretty darn tough. And so they go after Dukakis on the Pledge of Allegiance, on the flag, a very patriotic-based campaign. There's a furlough program that the

state of Massachusetts has that allows prisoners to leave for the weekend passes. And one of them is given to a man named Willie Horton, who ends up committing a brutal crime while on one of these passes. Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man, and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime. And it's effective. It is brutally effective. And in some ways, it seems almost anti-Bush in its viciousness. And yet, that's the conflict within him, willingness to do what needed to be done in order to get elected.

Because once he's elected, then he can turn back if he wants to the more civility-based, dignified politics that he would prefer. It's the first time, actually, a sitting vice president gets elected since Martin Van Buren way back in the early 19th century. So what kind of presidency is George H.W. Bush's presidency once he's in office? Well, it becomes intensely foreign-focused. The international stage is in the middle of a rather extraordinary period of transition. Fellow citizens, last night I ordered U.S. military forces to Panama. First, there's the short-lived war in Panama with Manuel Noriega that often gets forgotten. Just two hours ago, Allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue as I speak. Of course, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and President Bush rallies a whole big international coalition to force him out,

sends American troops, 500,000 American troops to the desert in the biggest military clash since the Vietnam War, with the idea of, in effect, purging the Vietnam complex that has sort of hobbled the country since then, that there could, in fact, be military success. No president can easily commit our sons and daughters to war. They are the nation's finest. And then there's the Cold War, which is coming to an end on his watch. The Berlin Wall falls. And of course, I welcome the decision by the East German leadership to open borders to those wishing to have greater travel. He's there when this great transition happens and helps manage it in a steady, calm, and effective way that, you know, as Robert Gates once said,

there's not a lot of experience in history with empires falling apart in a peaceful way, and George Bush was there to help make that happen. You know, in what you just said, this is a sort of great victory for our side in the big East-West battle, but you don't seem elated, and I'm wondering if you're thinking of the problem...

I'm elated. I'm just not an emotional kind of guy. Well, I'm elated, like a foreign policy success and significant success. So what is his political standing after all these conflicts? Well, George Bush in the polls races up to about 89% in approval rating. I think no president to date had ever seen anything like that. The country was really behind him. And yet, it begins to fade. Fades into a sort of sense that he wasn't really necessarily paying attention to things at home.

He was paying attention to what was happening in the world. Big things were happening across the planet. And while he was doing that, his country was changing behind him. The godless liar Saddam Hussein is nothing more than a hyena in the skin of a lion. He was parodied on Saturday Night Live famously by Dana Carvey. America's no sheep ready to be seized by a hyena. Rather, it's a great scorpion, which deals a deadly sting to those who would crush it.

Stinging, stinging, stinging. Once Soviet Union was gone, people were much more focused on what was happening in their own community. And what was happening in their own community was the beginning of a recession. The economy was beginning to turn downward. People were losing their jobs. He didn't seem to understand

what was happening for people who were unemployed. On Capitol Hill, he forges a plan with the Democrats to bring down the deficits of the Reagan era, but that includes tax increases along with spending cuts. And so he's just broken his no new taxes pledge, which turns his own Republican Party, at least the more conservative elements, against him.

And with all of his difficulty connecting with troubles at home, suddenly along comes a challenger from the Democratic Party. I believe with all my heart that together we can rekindle that American dream. We can usher in a new era of progress, prosperity, and renewal, an era of opportunity greater than anything any generation of Americans has ever known. A young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, who is gifted at exactly that. This is not just a campaign for the presidency. governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton, who is gifted at exactly that. This is not just a campaign for the presidency. It is a campaign for the future, for the forgotten,

hardworking people of America, for their children, for all of those who deserve a government that's on their side, fighting for a better tomorrow. Able to connect with voters on domestic issues in a way that President Bush isn't able to, and they have these debates. We have a question right here. In which he was asked, how does the deficit affect you? Yes, how has the national debt personally affected each of your lives? And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them. He thought the questioner really met the deficit when she met the economy. Well, I think the national debt affects everybody.

Obviously, it has a lot to do with interest rates. She's saying you personally. On a personal basis, how has it affected you? Has it affected you personally? Well, I'm sure it has. I love my grandchildren. I want to think that they're going to be able to afford an education. I think that that's an important part of being a parent. Maybe I won't get it wrong. Are you suggesting that if somebody has means that the national debt doesn't affect them? I'm not sure I get it. Help me with a

question and I'll try to answer it. I've had friends that have been laid off from jobs. I know people who cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their homes. And he didn't give an answer that struck people as understanding what everyday Americans were feeling. You ought to be in the White House for a day and hear what I hear and see what I see and read the mail I read and touch the people that I touch from time to time. This becomes a kind of famous moment in that campaign that, as I recall, highlights how differently he is perceived as a candidate than his rival. Exactly. I'll tell you how it's affected me.

Bill Clinton famously shows that he can, quote, feel your pain, right? I feel your pain. In my state, when people lose their jobs, there's a good chance I'll know them by their names. When a factory closes, I know the people who ran it. When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them. George Bush was seen checking his watch during one of their debates as if he was not fully engaged in the enterprise he was involved with at that very moment. fully engaged in the enterprise he was involved with at that very moment. And so what ultimately happens in that face-off? So George Bush ends up winning only 38 percent of the ballots cast, the lowest of any incumbent president since William Howard Taft.

On this day, with high hopes and brave hearts in massive numbers. The American people have voted to make a new beginning. So George Bush, who'd been riding high just a year earlier after the end of the Cold War, after the end of the Gulf War, is thrown out of office, a little like Winston Churchill at the end of World War II. As for me, I plan to get, I'm going to serve and try to find ways to help people, but I plan to get very active in the grandchild business.

And in finding ways to help others. Bush was devastated. This was a humiliation for him. In our system, a one-term president is seen inevitably as a failure. And I think that for Bush, it was crushing that the public had repudiated him, had rejected him after all he thought he had done. I actually, I was staying in the Lincoln bedroom last night, and I couldn't resist getting on the phone, and I called up the Secret Service as the president. Feel like gone jogging tonight.

In the president. Feel like gone jogging tonight. In the nude. Even in defeat, of course, you still have the old Bush, and he brings Dana Carvey of all people to the White House to perform for the White House staff. This is very, very strange. It's a hysterical moment

when Carvey does his George Bush with George Bush standing next to him in a very light moment. It shows you, I think, his character, his sense of grace and his desire to leave office with his chin held high. And his staff reassured that life would go on, the country would survive and they should feel proud of what they had done. The way to do the president is to start out with Mr. Rogers. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Then you add a little John Wayne. Here we go, let's go over the ridge.

You put them together, you got George Herbert Walker Bush. I'm struck that Bush both defies the rules in getting elected because vice presidents don't usually get elected and then defies the rules in not getting reelect at the time. And it was a moment where politics were changing as well, a moment where you saw this new generation of Republicans on the rise, the Newt Gingrichs of the world. So you saw a different type of Republican coming to the fore, a rejection in a way of Bush-style Republicanism. And we see the ripples of that playing out even to this day. You mean the Republicanism that began to form kind of under George H.W. Bush's feet

and that he failed to recognize is the Republicanism that brings us to today? Yeah, there's a straight line from the rise of the conservative movement under President Bush to today. And you have a middle ground between George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, President George W. Bush, who is more conservative and yet still trying to be faithful to the traditions of his family in terms of civility and at least some measure of bipartisanship. But ultimately, of course, Donald Trump is a rejection to both of them. The one person he most runs against when he runs for president is Jeb Bush, the next son. And Donald Trump succeeds at not only defeating Jeb Bush, but in effect, defeating the whole Bush

family. Peter, I'm really struck by one thing that George H.W. Bush said to his biographer, John Meacham, that relates to all this. He said, quote, I am lost between the glory of Reagan, monuments everywhere, trumpets, the great hero, and the trials and tribulations of my sons. Yeah, it's a great line. Very self-aware.

You don't have a lot of presidents who were that willing to be introspective that way. I think he understood that he would never measure up to Reagan in history, that Reagan was such a dynamic figure. And he understood that his son was going to always be a figure of some controversy in history, that we're going to debate the merits and drawbacks of the 43rd president. And here you had in between, you know, a relatively modest man, served only four years, but four of the most important years in our modern history, and somebody who, at least with the passage of time,

I think has come to stand on his own, not just as the middle ground between those two presidents. Peter, as someone who's covered all of these presidencies that we have been discussing in this conversation, starting with George H.W. Bush, what are you thinking about today, on Sunday? Well, you know, the loss of George H.W. Bush is sort of the loss of the president's club. You know, he was the one that all of the presidents living today looked up to in some way or another.

He was the father of one of them, sort of the surrogate father in a way of another one, Bill Clinton, who became quite good friends in their post-presidential lives. And Barack Obama, in some ways, went out of his way to praise Bush 41 and his foreign policy. In fact, I remember vividly traveling

with President Obama to Houston in 2014. He was going there for a political event. And we got off Air Force One, and who was there waiting on the tarmac, sitting in a wheelchair, but George H.W. Bush. And I was the pooler that day. And I went up to him and said, Mr. President, why are you here? He says, when the president of my country comes to visit my hometown, I come out to welcome him. And that was George H.W. Bush. It didn't matter to him that Barack Obama was a Democrat. It mattered to him that Barack Obama was president.

Peter, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Over the weekend, President Trump announced that he would send Air Force One to retrieve President Bush's coffin in Houston and bring it to Washington. There, his body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda before a funeral on Wednesday at the National Cathedral. Several former presidents, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama,

are expected to attend, along with President Trump. Afterward, George H.W. Bush will be buried at a family plot in Texas, next to his wife, Barbara, who died in April, and his daughter, Robin, who died at the age of three. We'll be right back. Transcription by CastingWords France was in crisis on Sunday after a third weekend of nationwide protests turned violent, resulting in more than 250 injuries, 400 arrests, and fires across Paris. The protests are being held by working-class people, angry about a planned increase in fuel prices,

and by their dwindling purchasing power. increase in fuel prices and by their dwindling purchasing power. The demonstrations have reminded many in Paris of the violent street clashes between citizens and police that shut down much of the country in 1968. On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron toured damaged neighborhoods in Paris, where he was both booed and cheered, as his government debated whether to declare a state of emergency. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.