Chapter XXII -- Bush Takes The Presidency
Oderint dum metuant
(Let them hate me, provided that they fear me.)
-- Accius, "Atreus" (c. 125 BC), attributed by Suetonius to Caligula.
George Bush's quest for the summit of American political power was so sustained and so unrelenting that it is impossible to assign the beginning of his campaign for president to any specific date. It is more accurate to report that his entire tenure as vice president was consumed by the renovation and expansion of his personal and family network for the purpose of seizing the presidency at some point in the future. During this phase, Bush was far more concerned with organizational and machine-building matters than with ideology or public relations. For most of the 1980's, it was convenient for Bush to cultivate the public profile of a faithful and even obsequious deputy to Reagan, while using the office of the vice president to build a national-electoral and international-overt/covert power cartel.
This arrangement worked very well for Bush, since it gave the Bush camarilla considerable power in the inner councils of the second Reagan administration. But as the 1987-1988 period approached. it also became clear that Bush's public toadying to the Reagan mystique had been so exaggerated as to give rise to his notorious "wimp" problem. Bush could easily have refuted these charges by citing the long series of brutal and bloody covert and semi-covert interventions he had directed in his role as boss of the Special Situation Group, but he judged this impolitic.
Bush started with the knowledge that he was a weak candidate. Reagan had embodied the popular ideology in such a flawless way as to remind everyone of their favorite uncle; whatever the crimes of his administration, whatever the decline of their living standards, the masses could not hate him; this was why Reagan was such an ideal facade for regime that kept getting nastier. Reagan also had an ideological following of people who would support him almost without regard to what he did: Reagan was the beneficiary of the fully justified ideological backlash against the Democrats and Carter, against the Rockefeller-Ford liberal Republicans.
But Bush had none of this. He had no regional constituency in any of the half-dozen places he tried to call home; his favorite son appeal was diluted all over the map. He had no base among labor, blacks, or in the cities, like the Kennedy apparatus. Blueblood financiers gravitated instinctively to Bush, and his lifeline to the post-Meyer Lansky mob was robust indeed, and these were important factors, although not enough by themselves to win an election. Bush's networks could always tilt the media in his favor, but the Reagan experience had provided a painful lesson of how inadequate this could be against a clever populist rival. Otherwise, Bush's base was in the government, where eight years of patient work had packed the executive branch, the Congress and its staffs, and the judiciary with Bushmen. This would give Bush's effort undoubted power, but also an aroma of a modern Bonapartism of a special kind, of a regime in which the government asserts the imagined interests of government itself against the population, a vindictive and tyrannical government set above the people and in direct conflict with them. That would work well as long as the population were atomized and passive, but might backfire if they could find a point of coalescence against their tormentors.
Nor was it only that Bush lacked a loyal base of support. He also had very high negatives, meaning that there were a lot of people who disliked him intensely. Such animosity was especially strong among the ideological Reaganite conservatives, whom Bush had been purging from the Reagan Administration from early on. There would prove to be very little that Bush could do to lower his negative response rate, so the only answer would be to raise the negatives of all rival candidates on both sides of the partisan divide. This brutal imperative for the Bush machine has contributed significantly to the last half decade's increase in derogation and vilification in American life. Bush's discrediting campaigns would be subsumed within the "anything goes" approach advocated by the late Lee Atwater, the organizer of Reagan's 1984 campaign who had signed on with Bush well in advance of 1988.
Elements of Reagan's success posed a very real threat to Bush. There were for example the Reagan Democrats, many of them ethnic, Catholic, and blue collar workers in the mid-west and Great Lakes states who had turned their backs on the Democrats in disgust over the succession of McGovern, Carter, and Mondale and were now supporting Reagan. These voters were not likely to show up in the Republican primaries, but any that did so would hardly vote for Bush. In the general election, there was a real danger that they would be repelled by Bush and return to their traditional Democratic home, as squalid as that had become. Bush would need heavy camouflage to pass muster with these voters. The Bushmen recalled that before they had been Reagan Democrats, many of these intensely frustrated voters had flirted with Wallace in 1968 and 1972. The flag, the death penalty, and an appeal to racism might provide an ideological smokescreen for the patrician Bush.
Bush could not model his effort on Reagan's campaigns from 1968 on. For him, the closest model was that of Gerald Ford in 1976, a weak liberal Republican with powerful network and masonic support, but no issues, no charisma, and no popular appeal. Ford's defeat highlighted many of the pitfalls that Bush faced as he prepared for 1988. Ford and Carter had been locked in a virtual dead heat as the voters went to the polls. An honest count would have given Ford the election, but ballot-box stuffing by the Democratic machines in Ohio and New York City had given Carter the palm. Bush therefore had to pay attention to any marginal factors that might tilt a close race in his favor. Was it a coincidence that, during 1985 and 1986, the Democratic machines in Ohio and New York were decimated by scandals and indictments, much to the dismay of Ohio mob banker Marvin Warner, and Stanley Friedman and the late Donald Mannes, the corrupt borough presidents of the Bronx and of Queens? For Bush, these reckonings were simply the most elementary precautions, and a harbinger of what would befall rival candidates as the primaries drew nearer.
Bush also had to look back at his performance in the 1984 campaign, hardly an epic effort. Bush had gotten in some trouble because he had refused categorically to rule out a tax increase in terms as adamantine as Reagan's. Bush tried to wiggle out of press conferences where this came up: "No more nit-picking. Zippity doo-dah. Now it's off to the races," was his parting shot as he sought to exit one press conference where he was being grilled. Otherwise Bush was the ultra-orthodox Reagan cheerleader, judged "fawning" by Witcover and Germond: "he had the reputation of being a bootlicker, and his conduct in office did nothing to diminish it." [fn 1] Columnist Joseph Kraft wrote of Bush: "the patrician has tried to be a populist. He comes across, in consequence, as puerile." [fn 2]
Bush's big moment was his vice presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro. During the debate, Bush remarked that the marines who had been killed in the bombing of their Beirut, Lebanon barracks in October, 1983 had "died in shame." On the morning after the debate, Bush went to Elisabeth, New Jersey for a rally with longshoremen. He said to a man in the crowd that "we tried to kick a little ass" in the debate with Ferraro. Then he saw that a microphone suspended from a boom was within earshot. "Whoops! Oh, God, he heard me! Turn that thing off," said the tough guy of the royal "we." Barbara Bush got in on the act with her quip that Ferraro was a "four million dollar --- I can't say it but it rhymes with rich." Britisher Teeley added that Ferraro was "too bitchy." [fn 3] In the most stupefied election of modern times, these slogans were the stuff of which great issues were made.
The Washington Post went after Bush as "the Cliff Barnes of American politics," a reference to a character in the soap opera Dallas whom the Post found "blustering, opportunistic, craven, and hopelessly ineffective all at once." Others, foreshadowing the thyroid revelations of 1991, talked about Bush's "hyperkinesis." Even the unsavory George Will commented that "the optimistic statement 'George Bush is not as silly as he frequently seems' now seems comparable to Mark Twain's statement that Wagner's music is better than it sounds." [fn 4]
There was thus very little hope that Bush could help himself by campaigning effectively. But did George have any new achievements in his resume that he could point to?
There were few that he would or could talk about. In the context of his "you die, we fly" role as Reagan's official surrogate at state funerals, he had met the new Soviet leader Yuri Andropov at Brezhnev's funeral for a "spook to spook" conversation, as Bush said. He had then met Michael Gorbachov at Andropov's funeral in the spring of 1985. But Bush would not want to play up his role in turning the "evil empire" Reagan of the first term into the summit-going "useful idiot of Soviet propaganda" of the second term, since this would stir up problems along Bush's right flank.
All Bush could talk about were his foreign trips. When Brezhnev died in November, 1982, Bush had been in Africa, whence he diverted to Moscow. This was a trip to seven black African states, including Nigeria and Kenya. When he got back to Washington he tried to capitalize on the African junket, which was undertaken in the spirit of the Reagan Administration's "constructive engagement", meaning in practice offering various rewards and inducements to the Pretoria regime while gently prodding them to withdraw from Namibia. In both Lagos and Nairobi, Bush was denounced for establishing a US-sponsored linkage between the departure of Cuban forces from Angola and the termination of the South African protectorate over Namibia. [fn 5]
In the summer of 1983, Bush went to Scandinavia, accompanied by scores of Secret Service agents and aides, bulletproof limousines, and White House communications equipment. Bush's staff were trying to plan photo opportunities and television perspectives in the tradition of Michael Deaver and Dr. Goebbels. During a visit to a memorial to the monument to Denmark's World War II resistance fighters, a US Navy officer on Bush's staff instructed the Danish protocol chief that Danish Prime Minister Schluter and other Danish officials had to be "herded" to one side as Bush strode toward the monument: a boorish insult, to say the least. (Bush's traveling entourage has gotten progressively uglier over the years, as we are reminded by the Bush party's clash with Swiss security officers at Geneva Airport during Bush's meeting with Hafez Assad in the fall of 1990. Hyperthyroid at the top infects the people further down the line.)
In Iceland, Bush gave a speech so generic that it was not clear if he had lost track of what country he was in. In Stockholm, he clashed heatedly with Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme over the US "contra" covert action programs in Central America. A few years later Palme was to be assassinated, and many attribute his death to his very detailed knowledge of the European dimension of Iran-contra. But for Bush the trip was a big success: he got to play tennis doubles with Bjorn Borg, and went fishing off Iceland. [fn ]
In May of 1984, Bush was off to India and Pakistan. Indira Gandhi was rightly suspicious of Bush, and had recently commented about bad US-Indian relations: "What can be done? The problem is the orientation of the [US] administration." [fn 7] The policy which Bush presented to Mrs. Gandhi included sharp cutbacks in residual US aid and US sabotage of loans to India by the international agencies. In November, 1984, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated.
In March, 1985, Bush's handlers staged a globetrotting photo opportunity to begin building up their man for 1988. Bush flew to the Sudan, to Niger, and to Mali, where he was overtaken by word of the death of Konstantin Chernenko, the Soviet leader. Bush's "you die, we fly" operation took him at once to Moscow, where he met with Gorbachov, Nakasone of Japan, Helmut Kohl of Germany, Margaret Thatcher, Rajiv Gandhi, and Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan. Then it was on to post-invasion Grenada, followed by Bush's appearance at the inauguration of the new civilian government of Brazil. Here Bush dodged Danny Ortega, the leader of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime, who wanted to confront Bush on US policy in the region. The ninth and last stop on Bush's junket was Honduras, where Bush visited with President Roberto Suazo Cordova, a key player in the world of contra policy. [fn 8]
Naturally, there was more to each one of these stops than met the eye. The insipid platitudes of Bush's public speeches were matched more often than not with vicious covert activity. Often the verbiage was at variance with the real policy, or soon would be. In 1981, Bush had been Reagan's envoy to an inauguration of President Marcos of the Philippines. Bush's toast to Marcos, "We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic process" had been castigated by the liberal press (the New York Times called it "a real clanger"), but when the line changed and it was time for the US government to overthrow Marcos, it was the Bush apparatus that did it with the "people power" of the US-guided enrages of Manila.
One small window on the real dimensions of Bush's vice presidential travel agenda is provided by the visit to the Sudan just mentioned. During this trip, Bush was accompanied by televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell, two Elmer Gantries of the video ether, each with strong intelligence connections. Robertson made the trip with Bush, while Falwell was already in the country on a mission of his own in the framework of the ongoing famine in the Sahel region. Robertson brought a camera crew from his CBN network, which got a demagogic shot of Bush and Robertson slowly descending from Air Force Two in Khartoum while the band played "Hail to the Chief." Robertson was bringing relief supplies. On March 6, 1985, he told CBN that he was working with the genocidal US Agency for International Development on relief projects. Reliable Sudanese sources report that US AID policies are designed to exacerbate mortality in areas where they are applied.
Bush's urgent purpose was to arrange the overthrow of the President of the Sudan, Jaafar Nimiery, whom Wall Street wanted deposed. Bush seems to have some difficulty in planning and executing a swift and effective coup d'etat. His response to the Moscow putsch of August, 1991, "Coups can fail," reflected his own bitter experience, in Panama in October 1990 and in the case in point in the Sudan. The CIA was backing a group of junior officers who wanted to take power, but they dawdled too long. They waited until Nimiery left the country on a one-week visit to the United States. Then, instead of seizing the obvious nodal points, they spent a full week in orchestrating a typical CIA "people power" upsurge, with demonstrations in the streets of the capital and a strike by 10,000 doctors, teachers, bankers, and judges. Nimiery was by now flying back from the US. This inordinate delay allowed a group of senior officers who were not US puppets plenty of time to develop their own plan for a pre-emptive seizure of power. The senior group, led by General Abdul Rahman Swareddahab, acted decisively on April 6, 1985, catching Bush's junior officer clique flat-footed. [fn 9] The lustre was gone from Bush's reputation as a golpista, and it has never really returned.
Bush's trip to Khartoum was also designed to serve the Israeli Mossad. During his visit, Bush secured the consent of Nimiery to an Israeli airlift known as "Operation Moses," which transferred thousands of Ethiopian Jews from the Sudan to Israel. The Israeli presence was linked to the plan to topple Nimiery.
In July, 1985, Bush was President for a Day, when Reagan transferred his powers to the vice president before undergoing anesthesia in the course of an operation to remove an intestinal polyp. Bush had flown to Kennbunkport on July 12, the same day that Reagan was admitted to Bethesda naval hospital for an examination. When it was found that Reagan would require an operation the next day, Bush flew back from Kennbunkport to get his hands on the long-awaited levers of power. At 10:32 AM, Reagan signed letters to House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Senate President Pro Tempore StromThurmond passing the helm to Bush. Reagan's operation began slightly before noon, and Bush was acting president when he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base about half an hour later. Bush got to his home at the Naval Observatory and spent the rest of the day there. His staff said that nothing presidential happened before Reagan awoke from his anesthesia at 7:22 PM and signed a paper resuming his powers.
Had nothing presidential really happened? As Jack Anderson wrote some years later, it was really "nothing...unless you're talking to former president Gerald R. Ford, the king of pratfalls." It appears that Bush, doubtless overcome by the euphoria of power, had slipped while playing tennis and hit his head rather seriously. According to some high-level White House officials polled by the Jack Anderson column, the manic Bush had actually been "unconscious" for a time, but never "incapacitated." "It wasn't serious enough to be checked," according to a Bush aide, and Bush "slept it off." [fn 10] Not much here for a campaign speech celebrating Bush's experience, which now included a brief encounter with the dizzy apex of power itself.
For Reagan's State of the Union message in January, 1986, Bush's handlers worked hard to prevent him from "squirming, yawning, slumping, gazing into space and mostly looking...bored by his president." Bush was drilled into rapt attention for the Great Communicator's words by viewing embarrassing film clips of himself presiding over earlier joint sessions of the Congress. [fn 11] Otherwise, Bush had won some notoriety for changing his watchbands to match his suit. [fn 12]
More than anything, Bush wanted an early endorsement from Reagan in order to suppress or at least undercut challenges to his presumptive front-runner status from GOP rivals in the primaries; it was already clear that Senator Bob Dole might be the most formidable of these. Bush feared Dole's challenge, and desperately wanted to be anointed as Reagan's heir-apparent as soon as possible before 1988. But Reagan had apparently not gotten over the antipathy to Bush he had conceived during the Nashua Telegraph debate of 1980. According to a high-level Reagan Administration source speaking in the summer of 1986, "more than once the president [told Bush], 'Obviously, I'm going to stay neutral until after the convention, and then I'm going to work for whichever candidate comes out on top." [fn 13] Despite Bush's "slavish devotion," Reagan wanted to keep the door open to his good friend, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, whom Reagan apparently thought was getting ready to run for president. One can imagine Bush's rage and chagrin.
As the months went by, it became clear that there was no love lost on Bush by Reagan. Bush was running much of the administration, but he was not running Reagan in certain matters, and this seemed to be one of them. In the late summer of 1987, Reagan granted a magazine interview in which he seemed to praise Bush: "I don't know that there has ever been a vice president who has been more completely involved in all that goes on than this vice president." In the middle of Iran-contra, that might not have been exactly what Bush wanted. The Reagan was asked to cite examples. "I can't answer in that context," replied Reagan. Bush had grown up in the liberal GOP paradise of the Eisenhower years, and he could not help remembering old Ike's disparaging answer to a similar question that had invited him to name some decisions Vice President Nixon had participated in. "If you give me a week, I might think of one," quipped Ike. [fn 14]
Reagan stubbornly refused to come out for Bush until the endorsement could no longer help him in the Republican primaries. Reagan chose to wait until Super Tuesday was over and the rest of the Republican field had been mathematically eliminated. Reagan actually waited until Bob Dole, the last of Bush's rivals, had dropped out. Then Reagan ignored the demands of Bush's media handlers and perception-mongers and gave his endorsement in the evening, too late for the main network news programs. The scene was a partisan event, a very large GOP Congressional fundraising dinner. Reagan waited to the end of the speech, explained that he was now breaking his silence on the presidential contest, and in a perfunctory way said he would support Bush. "I'm going to work as hard as I can to make Vice President George Bush the next president of the United States," said old Ron. There were no accolades for Bush's real or imagined achievements, no stirring kudos. Seasoned observers found Reagan's statement "halfhearted...almost grudging." [fn 15]
Some day we may know how much of the public denigration of Reagan in accounts both true and invented, including studies showing mental impairment that surfaced in late 1987 and early 1988, was due to the efforts of a Bush machine determined to create the impression that a president who refused enthusiastically to endorse Bush was a mental incompetent. Had the Discrediting Committee been unleashed against the President of the United States? It would not be the first time.
Reagan's endless reticence meant that Bush had to work especially hard to pander to the right wing, to those people which he despised but nevertheless needed to use. Here Bush stooped to boundless public degradation. In December, 1985 Bush went to Canossa by accepting an invitation to a dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire held in honor of the late William Loeb, the former publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. We have already documented that old man Loeb hated Bush and worked doggedly for his defeat in 1980. Still, Bush was the "soul of humility," and he was willing to do anything to be able to take power in his own name. Bush gave a speech full of what the Washington Post chose to call "self-deprecating humor," but what others might have seen as groveling. Bush regaled 500 Republicans and rightists with a fairy tale about having tried in 1980 to woo Loeb by offering rewards of colored watchbands, LaCoste shirts and Topsider shoes to anyone who could win over Bill Loeb. The items named were preppy paraphernalia which Loeb and many others found repugnant.
Bush quoted what Loeb had said about him: "hypocrite...double-standard morality, involved up to his neck in Watergate...unfit to be the Republican nominee...incompetent; liberal masquerading as a conservative; a hypocrite...a spoon-fed little rich kid who has been wet-nursed to success," and so on from the series of 1979-1980 editorials. Bush then praised the author of these words as a man of "passionate conviction and strong belief...In never mincing his words or pulling his punches, Bill Loeb was part of a great tradition of outspoken publishers." Some of the assembled right-wingers repeated the line from the Doonesbury comic strip according to which Bush "had placed his manhood in a blind trust." Loeb's widow Nackey Scripps Loeb was noncommittal. "We have decided on a candidate for 1988--whoever best fights for the Reagan agenda," she announced. "Whether that person is here tonight remains to be seen," she added. [fn 16]
Lawfully, Bush had earned only the contempt of these New Hampshire conservatives. In October, 1987, when the New Hampshire primary season was again at hand, Mrs. Loeb rewarded Bush for his groveling with a blistering attack that featured reprints of Bill Loeb's 1980 barbs: "a preppy wimp, part of the self-appointed elite," and so forth. Mrs. Loeb wrote, "George Bush has been Bush for 63 years. He has been Ronald Reagan's errand boy for just the last seven. Without Ronald Reagan he will surely revert to the original George Bush." Mrs. Loeb repeated her late husband's 1980 advice: "Republicans should flee the presidential candidacy of George Bush as if it were the black plague itself." [fn 17]
Displays of this type began to inspire a more general public contempt for Bush during 1987. Bush was coming across as "deferential almost to the point of obsequiousness," "too weak, too namby-pamby." George Will, anxious to pick a winner, began to ridicule Bush as a "lapdog." The "wimp factor" was beginning to torment Bush. Old Bill Loeb was still making Bush squirm. Two veteran observers pointed out: "Reagan's own physical presence and self-confidence made Bush in contrast seem even weaker, and Bush's penchant for the prissy remark at times cast him as the Little Lord Fauntleroy of the campaign trail.." Bush said he was running a negative campaign so as not to leave the Democrats a monopoly on "the naughty stuff." [fn 18]
All of this culminated in the devastating Newsweek cover story of October 19, 1987, "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor.'" The article was more analytical than hostile, but did describe the "crippling handicap" of begin seen as a "wimp." Bush had been a "vassal to Kissinger" at the United Nations and in Beijing, the article found, and now even Bush's second term chief of staff said of Bush, "He's emasculated by the office of vice president." To avoid appearing as a television wimp, Bush had "tried for the past 10 years to master the medium, studying it as if it were a foreign language. He has consulted voice and television coaches. He tried changing his glasses and even wearing contact lenses. [...] Bush's tight, twangy voice is a common problem. Under stress, experts explain, the vocal cords tighten and the voice is higher than normal and lacks power." According to Newsweek, 51% of Americans found that "wimp" was a "seriously problem" for Bush. The magazine offered various sophomoric psychological explanations of how Bush got that way, mainly concentrating on his family upbringing. Here Bush was allegedly taught to conceal his sociopathic drives beneath a veneer of propitiation and sharing, as in his childhood nickname of "Have Half" George.
The Newsweek "wimp" cover soon had Bush chewing the carpet at the Naval Observatory. Bush's knuckle-dragging son George W. Bush called the story "a cheap shot" and added menacingly: "...I'd like to take the guy who wrote that headline out on that boat," i.e., the Aronow-built Fidelity in which Bush was depicted on the Newsweek cover. Which sounded very much like a threat. George W. Bush also called Newsweek Washington bureau chief Evan Thomas to inform him that the Bush campaign had officially cut off all contact with Newsweek and its reporters. The decision to put Newsweek out of business was made by candidate Bush personally, and aborted a plan by Newsweek to publish a book on the 1988 campaign. The press got the message: portray Bush in a favorable light or face vindictive and discriminatory countermeasures.
Bush campaigns have always advanced on a cushion of money, and the 1988 effort was to push this characteristic to unheard-of extremes. In keeping with a tradition that had stretched over almost three decades, the Bush campaign finance chairman was Robert Mosbacher, whose Mosbacher Energy Corporation is one of the largest privately held independent oil companies in Texas. Mosbacher's net personal worth is estimated at $200 million. During the 1988 campaign, Mosbacher raised $60 million for the Bush campaign and $25 million for the Republican National Committee. It was Mosbacher who formed the Team 100 corps d'elite of 250 fat cats, among whom we have seen Henry Kravis. The trick was that many of these $100,000 contributors were promised ambassadorial posts and other prestigious appointments, a phenomenon that would reach scandalous proportions during 1989. In 1984, Mosbacher's son Rob Jr. ran a strong but losing race for the senate seat vacated by John Tower.
Mosbacher by the mid-1980's had become a director of the biggest bank in Houston, and a member of the most exclusive clubs in the city. He was a central figure of that cabal of financiers and oil men which in the postwar years was called "the Suite 8F crowd," and which has since evolved into new forms. Mosbacher, Baker, and Bush are now at the center of the business oligarchy that runs the state of Texas.
Mosbacher was also a celebrity. When he was between his second and third marriages during the early 1980's, he was billed as Houston's most eligible bachelor. His third wife Georgette, a cosmetics entrepreneur, was the star of the Bush inaugural as far as the photographers were concerned. The Mosbachers habitually flew around the country in their own private jet, and maintained homes in New York, Washington DC, and the expensive River Oaks section of Houston.
During the mid-1980's, Mosbacher reportedly lined his pockets to the tune of $40 to $50 million through a scam called the Houston Grand Parkway. Mosbacher's gains derived from the Texas Transportation Corporation Act, which provided for the de facto privatization of highway building in conformity with the ideological tenets and fast-buck mentality of the Reagan-Bush economic climate. Local landowners were empowered to set up "transportation corporations" which would solicit donations of the rights-of-way of new roads, and which would fund the engineering studies for the roads. If right-of-way and design plans were approved, the state would proceed to actually build the roads.
In practice this became a gigantic speculation at the center of which lay Mosbacher's Cinco Ranch, a property he had acquired for $5 million in 1970. One provision of the bill was that many small landowners in the general area of the proposed rods would be hit by special road assessment tax levies of up to eight times the value of their property. Mosbacher cashed in by selling off his Cinco Ranch for $84 million, the highest price in Houston's history. The leap in the value of the land was made possible by the Grand Parkway passing right through the center of Mosbacher's ranch, a route that had been designed by a Mosbacher old boy network that reached into the Texas highway department. [fn 19]
Mosbacher's network for the Houston Grand Parkway caper included Harris County Commissioner Robert Y. "Big Bob" Eckels, whose personal friendship and close political ties with George Bush were well known. [fn 20] Eckels was a landowner who stood to benefit from the new road-building projects permitted under the new law. Eckels was also a dedicated GOP activist who made the Harris County government into a de facto arm of the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984. In 1985, Houston press reports showed that Big Bob Eckels had deployed county government employees, county government telephones, and county computer equipment to organize and service a group calling itself National Conference of Republican County Officials which, according to Roanoake County, Virginia Treasurer Fred Anderson, functioned as "a working arm for the White House and the national [Republican] party." [fn 21] Eckels later admitted that he had also spent at least $20,000 of his own funds for "a world" of mailings for the Reagan-Bush ticket and had not reported these expenditures to the Federal Election Commission. Eckels was convicted on misdemeanor charges of accepting a gift from a county contractor in the form of a road on his Austin County tree farm. Eckels had been indicted six times while still in office, on various charges.
By June, 1989, Eckels was in semi-retirement on his tree farm, but was telling the press that he was working on his autobiography which he assured a reporter would not be just a "muck-raking deal." [fn 22] This book project was widely viewed in Houston as an attempt by Eckels to develop a retaliatory capability to ward off possible further attacks by his own former partners.
Big Bob Eckels may have been serving George Bush in other ways as well. In the spring of 1985, Houston attorney Douglas Caddy says he was told by Richard Brown of the International Intelligence Network Corporation that "a secret Reagan-Bush campaign fund" with "$1.5 million in it" had been uncovered following the 1984 presidential campaign. Caddy alleged that Brown told him the fund was "controlled by Harris County Commissioner Bob Eckels." According to Caddy, Brown further alleged that "IRS Criminal Intelligence knows about it." According to Caddy, Brown was a person with links to both the FBI and the IRS. Caddy also asserts that a report of the existence of the secret fund was also repeated to him by private investigator Clyde Wilson. [fn 23] During May 1988 and June 1989, Caddy wrote to the FBI and the FEC on the matter. The FEC declared the allegations Matter Under Review (MUR) 2925, but later decided in February 1991, despite "reason to believe" Caddy's charges, to take no action. [fn 24] During 1989, Caddy was hit by an Internal Revenue Service audit which led to an IRS assessment of hundreds of thousands of dollars of penalties against him, a lien on his property, and other measures. In Caddy's view, this audit was a retaliation against his having raised the issue of the $1.5 million Reagan-Bush campaign fund.
Further investigation of this potentially embarrassing complex of allegations was greatly hindered by the death of Robert Y. Eckels on December 24, 1989.
Bush's big money campaigning was especially dependent upon Texas oilmen, whose largesse he required to stoke his political machine. Bush was running a political action committee called the Fund for America's Future which raised $3.9 million in off-year 1985, a hefty sum. Of that take, about a fifth was raised from 505 Texas donors, with Texans giving more than the residents of any other state. $135,095 of Bush's money harvest came from persons who could be clearly identified as oil industry figures, and the rakeoff here was probably much greater. When the price of a barrel of oil fell during this period from $39 to $12, Bush had a big problem. His donors began to squawk.
Overall, the collapse of the oil price, itself a result of the world-wide industrial depression, was a boon to the bankrupt US dollar. The insolvent greenback was shored up by this new subsidy, which restored a little of the currency's ability to command some real commodities in the real world. But for Bush's immediate cronies and money-minded political base, it was a disaster. "You've got to figure George was getting banged around by all his oil friends, particularly the drillers, who have been hurt the most," a Congressional Bushman told the Washington Post. [fn 25] Sure enough, Bush's old pal Bill Liedtke, now the president of POGO Producing in Houston, a drilling company, confirmed that his man was highly attuned to the issue: "George understands very well that you're going to lose a certain percentage of production permanently if the price goes too low. Ever since I have known him, back to the Eisenhower era, he has been very sensitive to the connection between a strong [oil] industry and national security." [fn 26] Robert Mosbacher, Bush's moneybags, confirmed this view in spades: "I always find that when I talk to George about the oil and gas business, he's up to speed. He has two sons in the business, and he stays in touch through them."
The collapse of the oil price posed a real problem that should have been answered by introducing an oil tariff with a trigger price of $25 per barrel, so that the domestic price of oil would never fall below that figure, as was proposed at the time by Lyndon LaRouche and a few spokesmen for the oil patch. That would have been the equivalent of setting up a parity price for oil, and would have given domestic producers solid certainties for long-term development and planning. But the Reagan Administration in general was still wedded to the president's irrational fetishism of "the magic of the marketplace," and would violently oppose anything smacking of dirigism or re-regulation.
Bush was not interested in a parity price for oil. He rather took advantage of a scheduled trip to the Middle East, during which he was supposed to be discussing regional security matters, to talk up the price of oil with his long-time crony King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Bush expressed his concern about "the free fall" of oil prices and talked with Fahd about "how [the Saudis] feel there can be some stability to a market that certainly can't be very happy to them." He denied that he had come to Saudi Arabia on a "price-fixing mission," but invoked national security. Bush lectured Saudi Oil Minister Zaki Yamani about the saturation of the world oil market. The implication was clear: the Saudis were supposed to cut back their production. [fn 27] It was a few weeks later that the US bombed Libya.
Bush sanctimoniously claimed that his remarks had nothing to do with the quest for political advantage. His performance may have played well in the oil patch, but reviews elsewhere were not laudatory. A White House official said that "poor George" had committed "a gaffe" that was sure to hurt him in New Hampshire. Reagan was still very committed to free market forces setting the price of oil, was the word in this quarter. Up in the rust bowl, the Detroit News headlined: "Bush to Michigan: Drop Dead." A Dole spokesman gloated that "given Bush's background, the last thing he needs to be doing is carrying water for the oil industry and the international banks....It was as if his whole resume was talking."
Once again, as so frequently in his career, politics was proving unkind to the hopes of George Bush. By the spring of 1987, Bush was "catching the dickens" out on the hustings for his Iran-contra activities. On the Democratic side, Gary Hart, the former senator from Colorado who had run second to Mondale through the 1984 primaries, was emerging as a clear front-runner. With his own efforts foundering, Bush had every reason to fear succumbing in a long season of photo opportunities in competition with Hart. But if politics was fickle, there was always the bedrock of covert action.
Gary Hart talked about being the candidate with new ideas, but he had an immense vulnerability. He was a habitue of Turnberry Isle, a 234 acre earthly paradise located north of Miami. Part of the complex was a 29 story condominium. Turnberry was frequented by celebrities of the sports and entertainment world, by politicians and by Mafiosi like Joey Ippolito, a convicted marijuana kingpin. The developer and manager of Turnberry was Don Soffer, who was also the owner of a yacht named the Monkey Business. (After the February, 1987 murder of Don Aronow, Soffer received a telephone call, from a person who told him, "You're next." Soffer hired extra bodyguards and went for a one-week Atlantic cruise on the Monkey Business.) Soffer was a friend of Don Aronow. Ben Kramer was also a frequent visitor to Turnberry Isle. The establishment employed a staff of hostesses who were termed "Donnie's girls" or "the party girls". According to some, these hostesses doubled as luxury prostitutes for the Turnberry clientele of wealthy male patrons.
Among the employees of Turnberry was the sometime model Donna Rice. Another woman, Lynn Armandt, was in charge of the staff of party girls, and also had retail space for a bikini boutique in an upscale and remunerative Turnberry shopping complex. Lynn Armandt was the widow of a reputed Ben Kramer associate, a Miami drug dealer and underworld figure who had disappeared and never been found. The car of Armandt's husband was eventually found, riddled with machine-gun slugs and stained with blood. In the glove compartment, investigators found the telephone number of Ben Kramer.
When federal agents raided Ben Kramer's Fort Apache Marina on August 28, 1987, they examined the contents of Kramer's safe and found the original manuscripts of early primary stump speeches by Gary Hart. [fn 28]
At 8:30 PM on the evening of Monday, April 27, 1987, journalist Tom Fiedler, who had just written a story on the rumors of sexual promiscuity that had begun to surface around the Gary Hart campaign, received a telephone call at his office. It was just after Gary Hart had told E.J. Dionne of the New York Times, "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me. go ahead. They'd be very bored." An extensive and well-organized network in the media was hyping the story that Hart was promiscuous. The telephone call received that day by Fiedler was from a woman who told him, "Gary Hart is having an affair with a friend of mine. We don't need another president who lies like that." The next morning at 10:30 AM the same woman called back with the report that her female friend was likely to accept an invitation to spend the weekend with Gary Hart at his Washington townhouse, and that the friend was likely to make the trip by air Friday evening. Published sources and unnamed aides in the Gary Hart campaign have identified Lynn Armandt as the woman who made this call to Tom Fiedler of the Miami Herald, although Fiedler denies this is true. [fn 29]
These telephone calls led to the stakeout of Hart's townhouse by Fiedler and other reporters of the Miami Herald who came upon Hart together with Donna Rice, detonating the scandal which destroyed Hart's candidacy.
The woman caller described herself as a liberal Democrat but a foe of mendacity. She told Fiedler that she and her girlfriend had spent time on a yacht with Hart and an older man named Bill who was supposedly Hart's lawyer. This turned out to be a cruise by Hart, Donna Rice, Lynn Armandt and Hart's lawyer William Broadhurst plus a crew of five on board the Soffer-owned "chartered yacht" Monkey Business to Bimini and back in the springtime. Donna Rice later confirmed she had met Hart at Turnberry.
William Broadhurst or "Billy B." was a Washington lawyer and Hart backer who served the candidate as an operative on the campaign trail. Broadhurst had a Capitol Hill townhouse near Hart's. Broadhurst later explained that Lynn Armandt had come to Washington to consider his offer to be a social director for his lobbying and entertaining activities in Washington. Broadhurst said that Donna Rice had come along with her friend Lynn Armandt, and that both women had stayed overnight at his house, not at Hart's. Lynn Armandt soon left Washington after the story had broken, and the Hart campaign people said they never heard from her again.
There is no need to recount the ostracism and revelations that followed, leading to the destruction of Gary Hart as a political figure. Nor is it our intention here to defend the lost cause of the decidedly unsavory former Senator Hart. But given the situation of the Bush campaign in April-May, 1987, we are reminded by Seneca's "Cui prodest" proposition that the Bushmen as prime beneficiaries would necessarily qualify as prime suspects if any "naughty stuff" were to overtake Hart, as it did. Our suspicions can only be heightened by the obvious degree to which Bush, Aronow, Kramer, Soffer, Armandt, and Rice must be seen virtually as one interrelated social amalgam in the setting of Miami, Thunderboat Alley, Turnberry Isle, and the Monkey Business. Perhaps an old score was being settled here as well, dating back to December, 1975, hearings in which Gary Hart had taunted Bush about the Liedkte money laundering apparatus referenced in Richard M. Nixon's "smoking gun" tape.
James Baker was the titular head of the Bush campaign, but the person responsible for the overall concepts and specific tactics of the Bush campaign was Lee Atwater, a political protege of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond had been a Democrat, then a Dixiecrat in 1948, then a Democrat again, and finally a Republican. The exigencies of getting elected in South Carolina on the GOP ticket had taught Thurmond to reach deeply into that demagogue's bag of tricks called the wedge issues. Under Thurmond's tutelage, Atwater had become well versed in the essentials of the Southern Strategy, the key to that emergent Republican majority in presidential elections which Kevin Phillips had written about in 1968. Atwater had also imbibed political doctrine from the first practitioner of the Southern Strategy, the dark-jowled Richard M. Nixon himself. In January 1983, for example, Lee Atwater, at that time deputy director of the White House office of political affairs (and a creature of the Bush-Baker connection), met with Nixon for three and a half hours in Columbia, South Carolina. Nixon held forth on three points: the decisive political importance of the Sun Belt, the numerical relations within the Electoral College, and the vast benefits of having no primary competition when seeking re-election. Atwater found that Nixon knew the Electoral College like the back of his hand, and knew that the electoral votes of the southern states were the key to the ball game as presently constituted. Nixon had railed against two Congressmen, Pete McCloskey of California and John Ashbrook of Ohio, who had challenged him from the left and right when he sought re-election in 1972. "Those guys were two gnats on my ass," complained Nixon. [fn 30] Bush has obviously attributed great importance to Nixon's advice that all primary competition be banned during the quest for a second term. Nixon's advice underlines the real problems posed for Bush by a candidacy like that of television commentator Pat Buchanan.
In 1988 as well, Nixon was brought in to be the spiritus rector of the Bush campaign. During March of 1988, when it was clear that Bush was going to win the nomination, Nixon "slipped into town" to join George Bush, Bar, and Lee Atwater for dinner at the Naval Observatory. This time it was Bush who received a one hour lecture from Tricky Dick on the need to cater to the Republican right wing, the imperative of a tough line on crime in the streets and the Soviets (again to propitiate the rightists), to construct an independent identity only after the convention, and to urge Reagan to campaign actively. And of course, where Nixon shows up, Kissinger cannot be far away. [fn 31]
1988 saw another large-scale mobilization of the intelligence community in support of Bush's presidential ambitions. The late Miles Copeland, a high-level former CIA official who operated out of London during the 1980's, contributed a piece frankly titled "Old Spooks for Bush" to the March 18, 1988 issue of National Review. (Since the magazine's editor, William Buckley, was a notorious Skull and Bones cultist, the allusion to "spooks" assumed the character of an insider pun.) Copeland based his endorsement of Bush on the candidate's anti-Soviet firmness, a viewpoint that seems odd in retrospect. Copeland suggested that Bush would go back to the procedures of staff work that had been standard under Eisenhower: "Ronald Reagan is apparently oblivious of this simple 'Standard Operation procedure,' but we know from experience that Bush isn't. This is why my old friends and I are in George Bush's corner in the presidential race: we see him not only as one who has the wisdom, discretion, and ability to grasp the facts of our situation on the international gameboard, but as one who will appoint as his key advisors real experts in the relevant fields -- unlike the inexperienced men with whom President Reagan has surrounded himself. [...] It happens that we are in a state of national crisis, but, due to the Soviets' success at dezinformatzia and to our peculiar susceptibilities, it isn't recognizable. We see Bush as the candidate who, speaking with a voice of authority, can make it recognizable." This statement is doubly interesting because it is a clear precursor of the mood of bureaucratic triumphalism that marked the early weeks of the Bush Administration, when the new team launched what was billed as a "policy review" on Soviet relations to get back to hard bargaining after the departure of the slobbering sentimentalist Reagan.
Bush and Atwater feared all their competition. They feared former Gov. Pierre DuPont of Delaware because of his appeal to liberal and blueblood Republicans who might otherwise automatically gravitate to Bush. They feared New York Congressman Jack Kemp because of his appeal to the GOP right wing, to the blue-collar Reagan Democrats, and his disturbing habit of talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative and many other issues. They feared that Senator Bob Dole of Kansas with his "root canal economics," right-wing populism, and his solid backing from the international grain cartel might appear more credible to the Wall Street bankers than Bush as an enforcer of austerity and sacrifices. But at the same time, they knew that Bush had more money to spend and incomparably more state by state organization than any of his GOP rivals, to say nothing of the fabled Brown Brothers, Harriman media edge. Bush also ruled the Republican National Committee with Stalin-like ferocity, denying these assets to all of his rivals. This allowed Bush to wheel towards the right in 1986-87 to placate some of his critics there, and then move back towards the center by the time of the primaries. Indeed, Bush's many layers of money and political apparatchiki made it possible for him to absorb even stunning defeats like the outcome of the Iowa caucuses without folding. Victory, thought Bush, would belong to the big battalions.
But all the money and the organization could not mask the fact that Bush was fundamentally a weak candidate. This began to become obvious to Atwater and his team of perception mongers as the Iowa caucuses began to shape up. These were the caucuses that Bush had so niftily won in 1980, imparting to him the fickle charisma of the Big Mo. By 1988, Bush's Iowa effort had become complicated by reality, in the form of a farm crisis that was driving thousands of farmers into bankruptcy every week. Farm voters were now enraged against the avuncular thespian Ronald Reagan and were looking for a way to send a message to the pointy-headed set in Washington DC. Governor Branstad of Iowa complained as early as February, 1986: "I don't think his advisors are even keeping [Bush] informed on the extent of the farm crisis. We've got a crisis in agriculture and no one is in charge." Bush's Iowa campaign was dripping with lucre, but this now brought forth resentment among the grim and grey-faced rural voters.
In mid-October, 1987, five of the six declared Republican candidates attended a traditional Iowa GOP rally in Ames, just north of Des Moines, on the campus of Iowa State University. Televangelist Pat Robertson surprised all the others by mobilizing 1,300 enthusiastic supporters for the Saturday event. The culmination of this rally was a presidential straw poll, which Robertson won with 1,293 votes to 958 for Dole. Bush trailed badly with 864. This was the occasion for Bush's incredible explanation of what had happened: "A lot of people that support me, they were off at the air show, they were at their daughters' coming out parties, or teeing up at the golf course for that all-important last round." [fn 32] Many Iowans, including Republicans, had to ask what a debutante cotillion was, and began to meditate on the fact that they were not socially acceptable. But most concluded that George Bush was the imperial candidate from another planet, bereft of the foggiest notion of their lives and their everyday problems.
During the buildup to the Iowa caucus, Bush continued to dodge questions on Iran-contra. The famous "tension city" encounter with Dan Rather took place during this time. Lee Atwater considered that performance Bush's defining event for the campaign, a display which made him look like John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Gary Cooper, especially in the south, where people like a pol who "can kick somebody's ass" and where that would make a big difference on Super Tuesday.
But Bush's handlers were nevertheless shocked when Dole won the Iowa caucuses with 37% of the vote, followed by Robertson with 25%. Bush managed only a poor show, with 19%, a massive collapse in comparison with 1980, when he had been far less known to the public.
Bush had known that defeat was looming in Iowa, and he had scuttled out of the state and gone to New Hampshire before the results were known. Bush was nevertheless stunned by his ignominious third-place finish, and he consulted with Nick Brady, Lee Atwater, chief of staff Craig Fuller and pollster Bob Teeter. Atwater had boasted that he had built a "fire wall" in the southern Super Tuesday states that would prevent any rival from seizing the nomination out of Bush's grasp, but the Bush image-mongers were well aware that a loss in New Hampshire might well prove a fatal blow to their entire effort, the advantages of money, networks, and organization notwithstanding. Atwater accordingly ordered a huge media buy of 1,800 gross rating points, enough to ensure that the theoretical New Hampshire television viewer would be exposed to a Bush attack ad 18 times over the final three days before the election. The ad singled out Bob Dole, judged by the Bushmen as their most daunting New Hampshire challenger, and savaged him for "straddling" the question of whether or not new taxes out to be imposed. The ad proclaimed that Bush "won't raise taxes," period. Bush was glorified as opposing an oil import tax, and for having supported Reagan's INF treaty on nuclear forces in Europe from the very beginning. It was during this desperate week in New Hampshire that Bush became indissolubly wedded to his lying and demagogic "no new taxes" pledge, which he repudiated with considerable fanfare during the spring of 1990.
The Bush campaign brought in former Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams, test pilot Chuck Yeager, and finally even old Barry Goldwater to help humanize George's appearance on the hustings. George worked a long day, putting in five or six radio interviews before 7:30 AM, proceeding to a staged telegenic campaign event for the local evening news and then campaigning intensively at locations suggested to him by New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, his principal supporter in the state.
When Bush had arrived in Manchester the night of the disastrous Iowa result, Sununu had promised a nine point victory for Bush in his state. Oddly enough, that turned out to be exactly right. The final result was 38% for Bush, 29% for Dole, 13% for Kemp, 10% for DuPont, and 9% for Robertson. Was Sununu a clairvoyant? Perhaps he was, but those familiar with the inner workings of the New Hampshire quadrennials are aware of a very formidable ballot-box stuffing potential assembled there by the blueblood political establishment. Lyndon LaRouche pointed to pervasive vote fraud in the 1988 New Hampshire primaries, and Pat Robertson, as we shall see, also raised this possibility. The Sununu machine delivered exactly as promised, securing the governor the post of White House chief of staff. Sununu soon became so self-importantly inebriated with the trappings of the imperial presidency as reflected in his travel habits that it was suggested that the state motto appearing on New Hampshire license plates be changed from "Live Free or Die" to "Fly Free or Die." In any case, for Bush the heartfelt "Thank You, New Hampshire" he intoned after his surprising victory signaled that his machine had weathered its worst crisis.