What It Takes (26 page)

“Musta been my night off,” Dole used to say about Watergate, back in ’72. He never did deal with the issue, head-on. Nobody did. And they paid. It drove a President from office. Almost beat Dole, two years later, back in Kansas. The whole Party paid in blood, for eight years. A stain they never could wash off ... still hadn’t recovered, not all the way.

Well, nobody was going to tar Bob Dole with that brush now—no way. Sure, he’d support the President, as much as he could. That was his job, and he’d do it. But Reagan had to get the facts out. And if heads rolled, well, so be it. ... Dole wasn’t going to let them shove the Party down the toilet for another eight years. Not this time. This was his time.

Dole was back in the Town Car within ten minutes. “Get the office,” he snapped. And then, over the car phone, on the way to the airport and the Other Thing, he asked not for his Chief of Staff, not for his National Security man, but for the Press Secretary:

“Agghh, gotta get out a statement,” he said. “They took the money from Iran, for the missiles, gave it to the contras. Gaghhh, you b’lieve it? President’s gonna announce it in an hour. Yeah, it’s kinda bizarre ... I wanta call it ‘a bizarre twist.’ Say the President’s doin’ the right thing, get all the facts out ... support the President ... yeah, point is, it’s all gotta come out.”

“I’m just not gonna say anything now,” Bush snapped. He’d been through this, explained it a million times. Why couldn’t they understand? His own staff, guys who ought to know him ... they were coming at him again on this AEI speech, the American Enterprise Institute, the perfect chance to distance himself from the whole Iranamok mess. In his office in the West Wing, Bush spoke to the speech draft that was fanned out on the desk in front of him. “Look, I’ve spent
six years
being loyal to this President ...” Bush’s voice was high, petulant with his sense of injustice.

“This doesn’t abandon the President,” Fred Khedouri said. Khedouri was writing the speech—or trying, at least. He’d been back and forth with it a half-dozen times. He’d write in a line about the Iran thing—something
innocuous
, just an acknowledgment that something
went wrong
—and Bush would balk, like a horse that saw a snake. To Khedouri, it was so obvious: if the VP stuck his head in the sand, it sent a message that he was complicitous ... or lost in the same fog of know-nothing denial that hung over the rest of the White House. It just wouldn’t play! He tried to keep his voice even: “There ought to be some recognition ...”

The Veep heard the edge under Khedouri’s voice—like Bush was some thickheaded child who had to have it explained. Goddammit, he understood English! He didn’t need a pointy-head like Khedouri to lead him through it. Khedouri was another stranger, one of Fuller’s hires, out of Stockman’s shop. A real brain—drove Bush nuts—all head, like a lot of guys who were too damn smart to have any sense. Annoyance drove Bush into his second language, Texan, the one he’d picked up along with his distaste for the Harvard Yard crowd:

“Look, I’m not gonna paint my tail white and run with the antelopes now.”

Fuller let Khedouri carry the ball on this: it didn’t do any good to back the Veep into a corner. It wasn’t that Fuller thought George Bush could get by without some firm statement on the scandal, but he’d come at the Veep in his own way, easygoing:
Oh, on that speech thing, sir
... Problem was, they were running out of time. When Bush got back from his Thanksgiving trip to Kennebunkport, there were only three days till the speech. And Bush came back more convinced than ever that none of this should have come out:
Why are they releasing a chronology? ... This is a covert operation! ...
Worse still, Bush had turned the whole episode into an issue of loyalty, a matter of the personal code. Ronald Reagan just couldn’t see that he or his boys did anything wrong, and George Bush was not going to be the one to rub Reagan’s face in it.

So he said nothing. He disappeared. If the OVP was a whisper zone before, now it was a crypt. Everybody in the capital had
something
to say—except George Bush, who went to ground like the undead at sunrise. At the PAC, the political guys were catching it on the phones. Republicans were getting nervous.
Doonesbury
was running Bush every day as the invisible man. The well-fed, well-pleased men with pink jowls and red ties were chuckling about him over lunch with their clients at Joe and Mo’s, Duke Zeibert’s. ... “Oh, I know George—nice guy, but Dole could eat him for breakfast ... problem is, heh heh, you’re hungry a half-hour later. ...” He had caught the dread and fatal affliction: he was ridiculous.

He had to say something! In the office, they all told him—or, to be precise, they mostly clucked to one another about his stubborn incomprehension.

“How about, ‘Sure, we made mistakes, but
they were mistakes of compassion ... pursuit of the long-term interests of
...”

“No, he won’t do it. Teeter tried that.”

“How ’bout: ‘
Everybody
makes mistakes ... but the long record will show’ ...”

“No way. He’s not gonna say the President did anything wrong.”

“Yeah, but where was
he
? He’s got to say something.”

But Bush wouldn’t budge. He didn’t mind taking his share of the hit, if they’d give him a share of the credit for the good stuff. ... But he wasn’t going to cut and run now, no matter how many brainy-boy staff got into his knickers. They hadn’t been around the track like he had. Reagan would be back, in the polls, they’d come around. Something would happen—always did. Good things happened to good people. Now was the time to have some faith. ... For Christ’s sake, how about some faith in
him
? That was the hardest part, when he looked up at the latest guy in front of his desk, lecturing him on the speech. His own guys! He saw the doubt in their eyes: they looked at him like he couldn’t understand, or like he must be protecting himself, like he was part of the problem. They didn’t understand loyalty, either. Well, they’d better start. ... No, that wasn’t fair. It was hard for them, too. They’d hitched their wagons to his, to his future, his campaign, and now it looked like the wheels had fallen off before they’d even started. Jeez, next month they were supposed to change the PAC to a real campaign committee. ...

Bush had a dinner scheduled, the night before the big speech, with Sadruddin Khan, the Aga Khan’s brother, a friend of his, just a lovely guy, played some tennis, spoke like an Englishman ... hell, he almost was an Englishman, a Prince of the Earth in general, smooth, shiny like a brushed otter. What a credit to the Third World! ... But Sadruddin had to cancel, and the VP already had the big table at the Alibi Club, one of the old family haunts. So Bush decided to keep the table: he’d invite the senior staff—bring the wives, make it a family thing—he’d get them together in a difficult time, get the team together ...

And there, in the old townhouse on I Street, behind the unmarked door you wouldn’t even notice unless you knew, unless you’d always known; there, in the old club with its brown, musty air and its walls festooned with tatty memento; there, where the caricature of Prescott Bush held pride of place, the drawing of Pres, singing, with the dome of the Capitol behind him and the notes of “The Whiffenpoof Song” floating around his head, there George Bush tried to tell them why he took that stuff out of the speech. It wasn’t that direct, really, not a planned set of remarks: he just started to talk. And for twenty minutes, without a text, without raising his voice, or chopping the air, or lapsing into any of those gestures he employed to give force to his words when he talked to strangers. Bush made the most eloquent speech:

Loyalty, he said, was something he grew up with. It wasn’t a sin. And he didn’t claim it was always an asset. It was just part of him. Sometimes, it didn’t work to one’s benefit. There was a time in his life, when he was Republican Chairman under Nixon, when he stayed loyal to the end. Nixon had assured him—personally—that he was not involved in Watergate. And Bush got burned. But he knew that was not going to happen now. Ronald Reagan was a good man. He wasn’t going to go through the case with them. But they could take it from him, as they went through this tough time, and turned to the new campaign: he knew they were going to come out all right. And he’d do the best he could—for all of them—loyally. He couldn’t really be any other way.

Afterward, the room at the club was quiet. What more was there to say? People started to drift away. They’d all have early meetings the next day ... Bush was about to go, too, when Khedouri made a last quiet stab, with Bar. It was risky. She might have taken his head off—she could do it, too—for trying to get to George Bush through her. She hated that. But she listened that night, as Khedouri told her: Bush had to say
something
in the speech; it wasn’t against the President; no one wanted to hurt the President; this was a way to help Ronald Reagan, to find a way out, to acknowledge that things ... well, to put it behind them. ...

Bar didn’t say anything. She’d never share her opinions. And no one would ever know what she said, or did not say, that night in the Residence. All they knew was that George Bush had Ed Meese in the office, early the next day, and then the two of them went to the President, and when they came back, Bush had the words:
Mistakes were made
... that’s what he’d say. No human beings mentioned in the sentence—nothing more. He’d talked to the President.
Mistakes were made
. He wrote it into the speech himself. The press copies were already Xeroxed without mention of mistakes—no matter. That would only make it better. People would notice:
he would diverge from text
. It was great! Fitzwater got on the phone to the big-foot reporters, to the networks, the columnists. They might want to make sure they were there today: Bush had something to say!

And they were all there, in the gallery upstairs, and CNN showed it
live
... while Fitzwater spun the story like a mad hula-hoopster: George Bush addressed the nation on the issue that mattered. George Bush said the words everyone had been waiting to hear. George Bush stepped out front and told it like it was!

That night, at a State Department banquet, Bush tried to shrug off congratulations. “Great speech today ... absolutely great.” They were literally patting him on his shoulders, his back.

“He’s had wonn-derful reviews, calls from all over the country,” Bar confided in the receiving line. Bush’s face twisted into his aw-shucks grin: “At least I didn’t get thrown out,” he said.

The world was off his shoulders. He looked terrific. Everybody said so. How did Bar keep him looking so good?

Bar said sweetly: “I beat him ...”

Hoo hooo! Isn’t that Bar a
stitch
?

And the next day, and the next, more wonn-derful reviews. And Larry Speakes said the President
agreed
with every word. And Lee Atwater told the networks that Republicans across the country were cheering. “The Vahz Pres’ent,” Lee growled, “hit uh gusher!”

The Era of Good Feeling lasted ten days, until Don Gregg, the Veep’s National Security man, gave his first interview to
The New York Times
. Yes, he’d found out about the contra resupply back in August, Gregg acknowledged. His friend and fellow spook, Felix Rodriguez, had come to Washington specially to tell him how screwed up it was. Then the next day, UPI came out with unnamed White House sources, alleging that Bush’s office knew the contra gambit every step of the way. Ollie North kept them posted religiously.

What did George Bush know?

By mid-December, that was the only question anybody wanted to ask him. Now Bush had to issue his
own
chronology, make public a series of contacts between his staff, Ollie North, and the contras.

“Let the chips fall where they may,” he’d said in his big AEI speech. Who could have known they’d fall on him?

And now, every day, Fitzwater had to march into the big office, and screw some statement out of Bush. Bush would say to his desk or his pen:

“I’ve answered that a million times.”

Or, “That’s just not true ... I had nothing to do with that.”

Or, “Salvador ... Felix Rodriguez is a
hero
down there, to the people of Salvador.”

And Fitzwater would persist, gingerly: “So I can say, ‘Vice President Bush
never met with Felix Rodriguez
’ ...” And Bush would stare at his twisting pen, silent, while Marlin had to finish the quote. “... ‘
except, uh, to discuss El Salvador
’? ...”

And when, at last, Bush would glance up with that blank-wall look, even Fitzwater had to wonder what the hell was behind that stare. Was there something he was unable to say? Was he culpable of knowing? Or just heartsick?

At the moment, Bush was only waiting to see if Marlin was done. Was it over? When would this be over? ... He’d said more than he wanted already. More than he ever should have. And what did it get him? ... When Fitzwater didn’t say any more, Bush replied, tersely:

“Okay. Say that.”

Dole was never
off
TV. The election recaps rolled right into Iran-contra, and every time you flicked on the tube, or glanced at a paper, there was Dole. Dole by satellite, Dole on Koppel, Dole on
Face the Nation
... Top story: “Dole says ...” “Good evening, on Capitol Hill today, the Senate Majority Leader ...” Dole, Dole, Dole. No guest was supposed to be on Brinkley’s Sunday chat-fest more than twice a year—they changed that policy for Dole. What else could they do? The guy made news.

Dole knew what those Sunday shows needed as well as the panelists, the host, the producers. He knew he didn’t have to show up at ten, like the bookers insisted. He’d roll in at quarter-after, twenty-after, and head straight for the makeup room. He knew the girls by name, always had a greeting to settle them down, make ’em forget he was late. “Agghhh, kinda
hot
... Sam must be askin’ all the questions. Hegh hegh hegh.” Someone would bring him a half-cup of coffee from the table set with brunch. Dole never hung around to eat. On the set, no matter what went out on the air, it was always jokes and gossip during commercials: just a few Washington white men, sitting around like it was lunch at Joe and Mo’s ... what the hell, they were all well known, in the know. Brinkley and Dole were neighbors in Florida, where Elizabeth owned a condo. Brinkley was a friend, or close enough. ... And Dole always brought a nugget of news he could drop into the chat, somewhere, enough to make the Monday
Post
print the sentence: “Dole made his proposal (charge, comment, remark) in an interview on the ABC television program
This Week with David Brinkley
. ...” That, and maybe one catchy sound-bite to run on CNN all day, then on the Monday
Today
show.