What It Takes (82 page)

After that ... and after 1960, when things did not quite work out for Dick Nixon ... well, Pres wondered, as every Senator must, how he’d do, how he’d feel, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, the thought occurred ... he’d been around the White House quite a bit, what with the pleasant friendship he’d had with Ike. It did not seem oversized, or strange ... and there was no clear standard-bearer for the Party, not from the mainstream, anyway. Yes, the thought occurred ...

But things did not work out that way. Pres’s own health was shaky, his doctors were quite firm about slowing him down. He would be sixty-seven when he’d have to run for reelection. And even Dottie, he knew—though she’d never say a word—was dreading the effort to come. Well, he had to take stock, and he did. He came to a firm decision: he would retire. He just could not drag Dottie through another campaign. Maybe if his health were better ... maybe, if Kennedy hadn’t beat Nixon by a hundred thousand votes in Connecticut ... maybe, if Abe Ribicolf meant to stay, content, in the Governor’s chair ... maybe, if Pres had begun his own service as a younger man—well, surely ... but no.

And so, with regret (with a stoic sorrow that would only grow, as his health improved), Senator Bush announced he was stepping down. He removed his name from consideration. That was the end of politics for him—an end, he was convinced, that came too soon. And that was 1962.

It was that spring, ’62, when Houston’s Party leaders came to Bush’s house for lunch. Oh, they were in an awful bind.

The GOP was growing in Houston—in fact, it was on the rise all over Texas. (They’d even elected a Senator in ’61, when LBJ had to give up his seat to assume the Vice Presidency. They got that runty professor, John Tower—a couple of Party leaders held him down on a table and shaved off his little Hitler mustache—and sent him out as a single-shot Republican against a field of about seventy Democrats ... and he won!)

But the problem was
how
the Party was growing. The GOP had papered the state with its new slogan, “Conservatives Unite!” Of course, no one dreamed what that might mean. They
had
pried the right wing loose from the Democrats. The Party meetings were bigger than ever, but those new Republican voters—they were extreme, on the fringe, they were ... well, they were
Birchers
!

These ... these
nuts
! They were coming out of the woodwork! (Actually, they came out of a couple of fringy churches in the working-class suburb of Pasadena.) These people talked about blowing up the UN, about armed revolt against the income tax. They had their guns loaded at home, in case commies should appear that night. ... Well, you can imagine how upsetting it was to
decent
Republicans—that is, to the lime-green pants crowd, who’d organized the GOP in Texas about the same time they’d founded their country clubs.

In fact, in the last Party convention, in Houston, right there in Harris County, it was everything decent folk could do just to hold on to the leadership. Jimmy Bertron was their candidate for County Chairman—such a fine young man!—the man who’d shaved John Tower and steered him to the Senate. But the Birchers poured in, they were packing the place! (Bob Crouch, one of the old-line faithful, had to head over to the black side of town, “to round up some Toms” ... at least they’d vote right.)

Well, it was a bitter fight to the end. But when all the ballots were counted, Bertron held on—by sixteen votes! ... Landslide Bertron!

The Party was saved!

But not for long. Now, in ’62, Jimmy Bertron wanted to move to Florida. In fact, he was leaving, and leaving the chair ... the Party was up for grabs again.

That’s why they came to George Bush.

“George, you’ve got to help us! You’ve got to run for chairman!”

Well, wasn’t it great, how it worked out?

Actually, Bush had his hands full—business, and all. Not that he was making a prophet of Fred Chambers, trying to pile it up ... no, he was not that way. That was more his old partner’s style—Hugh Liedtke—now, there was a man who gave new meaning to the verb “amass.”

That’s really why they’d split up—Hugh and George divvied up Zapata in 1958. See, Hugh was all for acquisition, corporate takeovers, buying production. He liked business. But George, he was more for the hunt, the future, the cutting edge, exploration. He liked the
oil game
. In effect, they split the company in half, and Hugh kept Zapata’s land operations, and George took over Zapata Off-Shore, which was a subsidiary they’d created to drill for oil under the ocean bed. That was the future, according to Bush.

(Of course, he was dead wrong. Oh, offshore went fine—grew into a giant industry—that part was true. But the future, turned out, lay with the corporate takeover boys, and with Liedtke, who soon acquired South Penn Oil, and turned that into Pennzoil, and—well, it was just a pity that Uncle Herbie and his money men went with Poppy on that split.)

Anyway, it was the offshore business that carried Bush to Houston—and it wasn’t any life of leisure. By 1962, Bush had four rigs to drill on the seabed; each cost several million dollars, and each had to keep working. He had more than two hundred people on his payroll, maybe ten times as many shareholders to consider. He had farm-outs of ocean-floor leases from the majors, he had contracts to drill, schedules to keep; he had business possibilities everywhere in the world there was oil under water. He had insurance, he had accountants, he had lawyers, bankers—he had debt. He had storms at sea that threatened his equipment ... he had five kids who had to get educations ... he had an ulcer.

So he looked at those Houston Republicans who came to lunch, at those desperate souls who wanted him for County Chairman, and he said:

“Well, Jeez, sure! I mean, if you want ...”

Well, after that, the pace of the Party picked up—everyone could feel it. The big difference was, the chairman
worked
: out every night, somewhere in the county, trying to find Republican election judges, or trying to find black precinct captains. No Republican chairman had ever been
seen
in the black precincts. They were thirty-to-one for the Democrats. But Bush wouldn’t give up. He’d stand on some broken-down front porch, talking up the
two-party system
, how that was
good
and
right for the country
... until people inside either signed up or told him to get lost. Come Election Day, a lot of those captains would just take the money, stick it in their pockets ... but George had them on the lists that he updated each week.

Most nights, he’d stop at headquarters, and the place seemed to swell with enthusiasm. Sometimes, Barbara would come, too—she’d stuff envelopes with the lady volunteers—but more often, it was only George. Aleene Smith, Party secretary, would have everything ready on his desk. George would read and sign the letters, sign the checks, write his memos, and clear the desk before he went home.

HQ was a dump on Audley Street, but Bush soon moved it to better quarters, a nice old house on Waugh Drive, near Allen Parkway. (Of course, people said he picked the place because it was on his way home from his office atop the Houston Club—but that’s just how people are.) The house was perfect—volunteers had tables in the living room, the committee could meet on the side porch, or in the dining room. George put his office upstairs, in the front bedroom, and he fixed it up fine. He got the money from the first Neighbor to Neighbor Fund Drive—the kind of thing he used to do for the Midland Red Cross, a civic exercise. He got some local business friends to donate computer time, and he made lists of all the Republicans in the county. Then the precinct chairmen got the lists, just like they would for an election—but this time, for quarters and dollar bills. They raised more than ninety thousand dollars, probably double what the Party ever had. Then he used some of that money to support the campaign of Bill Elliot, who became the first City Councilman ever elected by the GOP—and that put more fire into the troops.

The troops were mostly women in those days, battle-hardened matrons who’d kept the flame when the whole county convention wouldn’t fill a good-sized coffee shop, who’d fought like cheetahs for the last few years to keep the Bircher goofballs out of the office. Of course, the ladies loved George, adored him. He was so young, for one thing—just thirty-eight—and eager, enthusiastic ... and so handsome, the way he’d stand up, tall and slender in front of the room, and talk about what the Party
meant
, with his high voice coming from up behind his nose, with that foreign eastern accent. Well, it was like Cary Grant, or David Niven, come to work at the office. And that was just the start: then they found out how kind he was, how interested in them, grateful for their work, eager to include them, to be their friend ... he was so
decent
!

Too decent for politics.

They all agreed about that.

They had to protect him.

Poor George didn’t even know who was a nut, and who was out to get him. He was so nice to those Birchers ... really, sometimes, you wanted to shake him by the neck!

He couldn’t see, the nuts
hated him
. They could
smell
Yale on him. Of course, it didn’t help, the first time Jimmy Bertron introduced him to the executive committee: “Good friend of mine,” Jimmy said. “George Bush ... only thing wrong with him, he beats me at tennis.”

Yuk. Yuk.

You could have heard a pin drop. Gene Crossman, one of the good ol’ slimeball right-wingers, said: “Thass it, dammit. I’m not votin’ for ’nother country-club asshole. Y’kin jus’ fergit it.”

But George had the idea they should all get along. He thought he could talk to the Birchers, make them
like
him ... once they got to know him. They were probably good folks, underneath. He was always saying stuff like, “We all have the same
basic
goals ...” He couldn’t seem to get what was basic to the Birchers: being rid of
him
and everyone like him ... like
Eisenhower
,
Rockefeller
... like all those rich, pointy-head, one-worlder, fellow-traveler, eastern-Harvard-Yale-country-club-Council-on-Foreign-Relations
commie dupes
!

No, George tried to talk to them, reason with them, involve them. He
wanted
them to come, participate, join the committees. He wanted to know them, to see their lives, to let them see his. He had them over to his house, for meetings, for breakfasts with him and Bar. He had
everybody
over to his house on Briar Drive. He wanted to share, see, him and Bar—they made everybody feel so
comfortable
there. It was a fine, big house in the Tanglewood section, but nothing austere about it: everything was comfy, the sofas, the chairs. You’d come in, sit down, and George would serve drinks, padding around with no shoes, in a sport shirt. The dog would come around—that dog who’d get crippled, psychosomatically paralyzed, any time George and Bar went away. That was always a joke with the Bushes. And the kids would be running around, in and out of doors that led from the family room to the backyard. They were all still in school—Doro was only three or four years old—but they were good kids, who’d always say hello to grown-ups. On the wall, there was the portrait of Robin, the little girl who died. You felt a part of it all, even when you just came for a meeting. Of course, that’s how George wanted you to feel.

Wanted
everyone
to feel: sure, some of those folks had extreme ideas. But Bush was not one to judge a man on account of his
ideas
... no. So, first thing, he put out a half-page memo, telling
everybody:
no more name-calling. “We’re all Republicans, and we’re not going to divide ourselves, calling anyone ‘crazies,’ or ‘nuts’ ...” He didn’t want to
hear
the word “nut.” (So what they did, they started calling everybody “Kernel” ... Kernel Smith, or Kernel Crouch, or Kernel Nancy Palm, better known as Kernel Napalm ... it was Bob Crouch who started it—had to have
some
word for “nut.”)

Then—this was ’63—Bush decided the Birchers had to have jobs, they had to be
involved
, he was going to give them
precincts
!

“George, you don’t know these people,” Sarah Gee, one of the stalwart ladies, tried to tell him. “They mean to kill you!”

“Aw, Sarah,” he’d say. “There’s some good in everybody. You just gotta find it.”

The first was a gal named Randy Brown. George made them vote to give her a precinct. Sarah was livid. All the ladies were furious. Randy didn’t even hide her contempt! What got into Bush? Couldn’t he see? ... He made them vote her in, and they were coming out of the dining room, after the vote, and he was coming downstairs from his office, at that moment. There he was, beaming like a kid, as he said, “Congratulations!” ... Randy stared up at him, not a hint of a smile, and said: “George, you’ll rue the day you made ’em put me on.”

No, he couldn’t see. Or didn’t choose to. For one thing, he was too excited. There were too many good things happening. Good things for the Party. Good things for him. All those new friends! Nice things people said ... they were talking to him about the U.S. Senate!

Sure, it’d be tough, but he had a shot ... if he could unite the Party, draw some conservative Democrats ... he’d unite them all around his person. They had to like
him
... he knew they would. Goldwater would unite the Party—just the kind of Republican the Texas GOP could get behind. Hell, just the man for Bush to get behind! He was so un-eastern, un-monied, un-moderate. Bush was big for Goldwater in ’64—whole hog for Barry!—no one was going to out-conservative George Bush.

Tell the truth, Bush’s program wasn’t in conflict with Goldwater’s ... as Bush didn’t have a program. Sure, he was conservative—a businessman who had to meet a payroll—but that’s about as far as it went, on policy. One of the first times he ever made a speech—some little town just south of Houston—one good ol’ boy stood up in the crowd and asked Bush for his position on the Liberty Amendments. Well, Bush didn’t have a clue about the Liberty Amendments. (They were a series of Bircher Constitutional changes to get America out of the UN, repeal the income tax, abolish the Federal Reserve, a few other things like that.) Poor Bush was helpless. He turned to Barbara, the eastern matron, busy at her needlepoint on stage ... no help there. So Bush said he hadn’t had time, yet, to
study
those important amendments ... but he certainly would.