I first met George W. Bush in 1976 at a very extravagant and fairly wild wedding in the Mississippi Delta. He was eight years out of Yale then and working in the oil business in Midland, Texas. His father was serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and so the Bush name was not yet a huge deal -- but when coupled with young George's bad-boy good looks, the total package was enough to send the many eligible twentysomethings into a collective swoon. In addition to his official groomsman getup of cream linen trousers, navy blazer, and flowered cotton tie, I recall that he wore Gucci loafers and was smoking an expensive cigar. He was cocky, charming, and he was clearly enjoying himself.
This was, Bush says now, his rambunctious period, when he was "drinking and carousing and fumbling around." A little more than twenty years later, he has stopped drinking, stopped smoking, married a librarian, had twin girls, and joined the Methodist church. He also has run a majorleague baseball team that wins, become the governor of Texas in a race he was supposed to lose, and delivered one of the few good speeches at last summer's Republican convention, which he co-chaired.
The one-time carouser is now obsessed with the issue of personal responsibility and by the cultural decay he says was brought on in part by the "if it feels good, do it" standard of his generation. And he has sought to translate those concerns into public policy. In his two years as governor, Bush and the Texas legislature have toughened up the juvenile justice system, with punishment the focus instead of rehabilitation. (Four thousand new juvenile beds have been added to the system.) They have given local school districts much more authority to mind their own affairs and have also beefed up the way the state measures results, which should strengthen accountability. And they have imposed new requirements of welfare recipients -- children must be immunized and pregnant women must identify the father for benefits to flow.
Given his patrician background and youthful rowdiness, Bush's priorities could, after all, have been as unambitious as his next drink of whiskey, his next hunting trip, or his next pair of Guccis. When the Yale football team " won the Ivy League championship against Princeton," recalls Donald Ensenat, his roommate in New Haven, "we tore down the goal post, and he was arrested." His father had just been elected to Congress, but that did not prevent George W. (who is not actually George II, but was erroneously known as "Junior" in the Bush White House) from behaving like a preppie scoundrel.
All of which is to say that there is something admirable when someone like George W. Bush actually grows up, if only because so many men like him never really do. And he is now being rewarded for assuming the mantle of responsibility by the Great Mentioner, who keeps placing him in the forefront of those who might battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Sam Donaldson put Bush's name at the top of his list a couple of weeks ago on Larry King Live, site of more than one campaign kickoff, but Donaldson is by no means the only one. Fund-raisers, strategists, party insiders -- all the Republicans who stand to gain either power or employment from a presidential run -- have been watching him since the moment he took the oath of office in Austin in January 1995.
Bush insists that the only business before him is the business of running Texas, and says he is "troubled by people who get too far of ahead of themselves in life." It is true that he was elected to public office for the first time a little more than two years at the age of 48.
He does willingly concede that "I am an obvious choice because I'm the governor of the second biggest state with a great political name." That very name may have something to do with his startlingly high ranking in the Republican preference polls (he routinely comes in fourth behind Jack Kemp, Colin Powell, and Dan Quayle, outdoing Steve Forbes and Lamar Alexander, among others). But it is worth remembering that his brother Jeb has the same last name -- and Jeb lost the 1994 governor's race in Florida he was supposed to win.
Actually, George W. may have enjoyed a perverse benefit from sharing his Christian name and surname with his father in his 1994 campaign. Throughout, his opponent, Gov. Ann Richards, never missed an opportunity to call him a " shrub" or a "jerk"; the woman who once famously accused his father of being " born with a silver foot in his mouth" portrayed her rival as a knownothing spoiled rich kid. So when George W. actually showed up walking and talking at the same time -- and doing it, as it happened, very well -- it never failed to stun the crowds.
"In the beginning I remember being struck by the fact that he'd go into an audience -- and I could tell they were skeptical, that they were stuck on the whole 'son-of' thing. And midway through, he'd win them over," says Don Sipple, the Republican media adviser who did Bush's ads. "When you can beat expectations, that's very important. It became the metaphor for the campaign."
Bush would like it to be the metaphor for his first term in Austin as well. His strategy so far has been to stay focused, do virtually no national media, damn sure don't talk about a presidential race or even a second term, and produce a solid record to show off in the end. As a candidate, Bush laid out " a few simple but profound tasks" and never quit hammering away at them. He talked about four specific things -- juvenile justice reform, welfare reform, school reform, and tort reform -- and after he was elected he shepherded all four through the legislature.
That displays a rare ability to stay "on message" for as long as it takes. He stays on message with journalists too. It has been said that to interview Elizabeth Dole is to interrupt her, and Bush is even harder to steer off course (though he is far more spontaneous in his delivery).
"The legacy I'd like to leave when it's all done," he says, "is: 'Here's a guy who came, he set clear and understandable goals, and he remained absolutely focused.'" Bush chose to "do a few things and do them well" during his first year in office "because I understand full well that government can't deliver everything to everybody."
After getting his "few simple" tasks passed in 1995, Bush sought to elaborate and expand on them in 1996. (The Texas legislature meets every other year.) He has proposed an initiative that would allow cops to "stop and frisk" juvenile offenders as a condition of their probation or parole. He is working on a plan to integrate religious and charitable organizations into the welfare system, which would allow them, along with the state, to deliver services to recipients. He also wants to make the welfare system more efficient by moving the "easiest" people off the rolls first and then spending the savings on difficult cases (like girls who had children so early in life that they never went beyond elementary school).
His education goal is to have every child reading by the third grade. " Heard that one before?" Bush asks. Indeed I have; Bill Clinton appropriated the idea during his campaign train trip last summer at a library where a child read him The Little Engine That Could. Bush was, he says, "a little surprised" at Clinton's policy plagiarism, though he quickly adds that he was "glad President Clinton opted to give that in one speech. I would hope that he will do what I do, which is give it in every speech."
Bush has an interesting take on the man who brought down his father. "One of the roles of leaders is to create a highly hopeful environment as opposed to a cynical environment," Bush says, "and if you promise all things to all people and deliver a few things to some people, you will have a cynical population on your hands. And a cynical population is a population that is incapable of solving problems." Pause. "Bill Clinton is the perfect president for the entitlement society because he is willing to promise things he can't deliver."
He goes in for another dig: "In order to be a good governor you have to solve problems in the framework of a set philosophy that does not vary. And that's another of my objections to our current president. He makes decisions based not upon philosophy but upon politics, which sends confusing signals. It must be difficult to be on his staff."
All Bush's accomplishments and plans so far fit into his core theme: "Laws must insist that people be held accountable for their behavior. . . . If you break the law, you will spend time marching in the heat. If you don't pay court-ordered child support, the state suspends licenses -- fishing licenses, legal licenses, medical licenses. Local people will be responsible for seeing that their children get a quality education -- no more excuses, no more blaming it on the TEA" (that's the Texas Education Association, the teachers' union that is a favorite conservative target).
Emphasis is placed on the individual. Children in the same grade are now allowed -- encouraged, even -- to read at different rates so that the better readers aren't held back. Bush wants to create "one-stop service centers" for welfare recipients so that "the individual who needs help is no longer the passive recipient of a handout but the proactive holder of a voucher that empowers that individual to choose from a range of services."
His critics charge that Bush has dedicated himself to uncontroversial issues -- that when it comes to literacy and juvenile crime, he is only following an already established consensus rather than forging a new one. But that unfairly discounts Bush's ability to turn issues into concrete proposals and get them passed into law.
Austin political consultant Bill Miller, who works for both Republicans and Democrats, predicts the Bush model of a short and to-the-point agenda will become a blueprint for governors nationwide if he proves as successful in the new legislative session as he was two years ago. So far, he has worked the legislature like a seasoned pro, staying out of the spotlight and making allies of the Democrats who run the committees.
With an approval rating of 68 percent, Bush has a lot of political capital to play with right now. And he has just put forward a proposal so ambitious it seems intended to answer those who accuse him of an excess of caution. Bush wants the legislature to approve a massive restructuring of the Texas tax system, whose centerpiece is a $ 3 billion reduction in property taxes. That tax cut would be offset in part with a half-a-cent increase in the state's high (6.25 percent) sales tax and new levies on businesses (especially on doctors, lawyers and others who belong to professional partnerships).
The tax plan is Bush's major legislative effort this year, and it is a gamble. "He's got to manage this thing properly so he looks like a tax cutter and not a tax raiser," says one strategist close to Bush. "He's got to be artful about it, that's for sure." He's already met with each legislator individually to rally support.
"What's at stake here," says a Republican political consultant in Austin, " is nothing less than Bush's credentials for the presidency. If he pulls this off, he's got a great issue to go around the country with and say, 'Hi, I'm the Governor of Texas who fixed this big, decades-old problem.' But if he lays this out and it doesn't happen, he's got a real problem on his hands."
Maybe, but even if the tax plan crashes and burns, he's still got one quality other Republican governors who are being talked up for the presidency seem to lack. That quality, which I saw him unleash on the guests at that wedding more than twenty years ago, is pizzazz.
In this, he resembles no one so much as Clinton. Last year, while reporting on the presidential election, I talked to disabled vets, lifelong Republicans, and Democrats who were mad about the welfare bill. They all hated something substantial in the president's character or record, yet they all gave the same answer when I asked why they were voting for Clinton anyway: "He's a people person."
Don Sipple saw this in Bush, so his ad strategy in 1994 was simple: He simply put the candidate in front of a camera and let him connect. If the eight percentage point gap between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton was all about " caring" and the ability to convey it, Sipple says, "then George Bush has the potential to narrow that gap."
Bush says one of his primary roles as governor "is to use the bully pulpit," and he's a natural. He speaks of "a renewal of spirit in this country." He tries to explain how America has gotten itself trapped in a "culture of victimhood" and what can be done to change it, beginning with the laws he implemented regarding juvenile justice and welfare. "During the fifty years of my life I've seen the culture change," he says. "Therefore I know it can change again."
Though his themes and even his words are familiar from other Republican politicians, Bush brings rare passion to them. When he says "I'm an optimistic man," people believe it. And when he argues that "all of us instinctively know" that it is easier to pass along the tried-and-true values of "'work hard, don't lie, cheat, or steal, you're responsible for your behavior' in a two-parent family," you don't think you're listening to warmed- over Dan Quayle. Nor does he sound like Pat Robertson when he says, "The ultimate success of a cultural shift is going to be a return to spirituality, because the truth of the matter is that Judeo-Christian values -- a sense of responsibility, loving your neighbor, a sense of right and wrong, of decency and indecency -- become a real part of life when people turn toward something higher than themselves."
Vision thing, anyone?
When I begin a question by pointing out that he is "different in style . . . ," Bush finishes the sentence for me: ". . . than my Dad, yeah." He has "two flippant answers to that," he says, "but I think there's some truth to them. One is he was educated at Greenwich Country Day and I was educated at San Jacinto Junior High in Midland, Texas. I am a Texan and a westerner and a southerner. The other thing is I would jest in the campaign that I've got my daddy's eyes and my mother's mouth. She's straightforward and she's got a wicked sense of humor and there's an irreverence to her. I think I've got a healthy skepticism toward certain things, and yet I've got an idealistic streak as well."
He does lose some of his eloquence when the subject turns to abortion. During the 1994 campaign, he refused to take an explicit stand on the matter, focusing instead on his support for mandatory waiting periods and parental consent. "I framed it the right way to frame it," he says now, "which is to challenge people to join me in reducing the number of abortions in this country."
He is much clearer about immigration, another socalled hot-button issue. Bush says that while "we have to do a better job of enforcing our border," he will tolerate no "immigrant-bashing." He vocally opposes California's Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants, and lobbied against a Texas version of it.
"The desire to provide will never be squelched," he says. "I understand why these people are here." And he points out that "there are a lot of jobs people in Texas won't do -- laying tar in August or chopping cedars. People argue that if we don't educate [immigrants] they'll go home, and that's not true. If we educate them, at least they can become more productive members of society. This is good public policy. I would be willing to defend this position as the best position not only for Texas, but for the nation."
According to a friend, young George's "deputy mom" was an immigrant housekeeper, and the issue "is almost Biblical with him," Sipple says. "He believes that the sins of the father shall not be visited on the sons."
Another friend says it was precisely the experience of watching his own father lose in 1992 that will propel him into a presidential race. "If you had lived through what he lived through," the friend says, "you would want it too."
Those who want him to want it make a strong case for his virtues as a candidate, beginning with his extraordinary discipline. When he gave up booze ten years ago, he says, "I just quit. I had had enough. And it's the best thing I've done in terms of seeking a meaningful life." The fact that he used to act up would give him a redemptive story to tell in a convention address, but he refuses to engage in talk about his future. He won't even announce until the legislative session is over this summer whether he will seek reelection as governor.
Most people who know him think he will run again, if for no other reason than the challenge. "Texans have a habit of voting out their governors," says a Texas political analyst. No governor of Texas has been elected to a second four-year term (four-year terms were instituted in 1972). "It [would not be] inconsequential to break the jinx."
Bush is very clear on what office he will never consider: "I'd rather do something else than be a U.S. senator," he says. "Having had the taste of being a CEO [of the Texas Rangers baseball team], of setting the tone, I'm not a good committee member. Let me put it to you that way. I respect the Senate, it just doesn't fit in my nature. I'm more entrepreneurial."
Austin is a small political town, and on the way in from the airport I ask the cabdriver what he thinks of his governor. "He's all right. He keeps a low profile. He wants to be president, but not yet. And he wants to be president - - he don't want to be vice president." How do you know all this? I ask him. " I drive a cab."
When I see Bush, I tell him the word around town is he wouldn't want to be vice president -- and that, after all, his entrepreneurial nature would preclude it. He laughs, but then he fixes me with the very same blue-eye lock Bill Clinton uses to melt voters who want to resist him.
"I imagine I could adjust," he says.
Julia Reed is a regular contributor to Vogue.