The story of Bush-Reagan
George H.W. won over Reagan with loyalty
At a time when George H.W. Bush is rightly being celebrated for his statesmanship and decency, it is easy to forget that he was also a savvy long-game politician who became vice president despite Ronald Reagan’s reservations about him as a running mate.
His doggedness was evident in 1980, when the Republican establishment tried to prevent Reagan from becoming the party’s presidential nominee. All of Reagan’s rivals dropped out after Reagan victories in the primaries — except for Mr. Bush. Instead, he competed in 33 primaries with Reagan, losing 29.
By May 1980, some of Reagan’s operatives clamored for Mr. Bush to quit. Mr. Bush refused, believing that if he stayed in the race until the Republican National Convention in July, he would become Reagan’s only option as a running mate. Mr. Bush believed Reagan would need a moderate to balance the GOP ticket.
This was an accurate assessment; Reagan never seriously considered conservative alternatives. But he didn’t want Mr. Bush, who had backed down at a TV debate in Nashua, N.H., where Reagan refused to be silenced by a moderator who threatened to turn off his microphone. “I am paying for this microphone,” Reagan said, capturing the headlines and with them the New Hampshire primary.
The Nashua debate was a big story, but there also was Mr. Bush’s complaint in the Texas primary about his being smeared by leaflets circulated by Reagan supporters. Mr. Reagan heatedly denied responsibility. A TV station showed a clip of Reagan’s denial to Mr. Bush and, to the astonishment of Reagan and his wife, Nancy, Mr. Bush absolved Reagan of blame and said the leaflets were “no big deal.”
“If it’s no big deal, why does he keep talking about it?” Nancy Reagan said. Ronald Reagan later told an aide that Mr. Bush lacked “spunk.”
Mr. Bush went on to the convention in Detroit and sat tight. Meanwhile, in his search for a balanced ticket, Reagan pursued the will-of-the-wisp of putting former president Gerald Ford on the ticket. Amid questions about whether a “co-presidency” would work, the boomlet for Ford collapsed. At the 11th hour, Reagan pragmatically asked Mr. Bush to be his running mate.
Being Reagan’s No. 2 kept Mr. Bush on his toes. His first assignment was a fence-building mission to the People’s Republic of China, where Mr. Bush was on the defensive trying to explain contradictory statements Reagan had made about Taiwan.
Once Reagan was elected, Mr. Bush struggled to achieve a constructive working relationship with the president. It wasn’t easy. Six weeks into the presidency, Mr. Bush confided to me that, try as his might, he couldn’t understand Reagan.
That uncertainty faded on March 30, 1981,when Reagan was shot and nearly killed by a would-be assassin outside the Washington, D.C., Hilton.
Traveling in Texas, Mr. Bush flew back to Washington. He wisely declined to take a helicopter from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House lawn, believing that this would seem an alarming comment on Reagan’s condition. Instead, he was driven to the White House.
During Reagan’s recovery, Mr. Bush dutifully beat the drums for Reagan’s tax-reduction bill, which passed Congress that summer with help in the House from Texas Democrats.
In the 1980 presidential campaign, Mr. Bush had denounced Reagan’s view that supply-side tax cuts would increase government revenue as “voodoo economics.” As vice president, Mr. Bush favored tax cuts, and virtually the entire GOP lined up behind the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which was premised on supply-side doctrine.
When the 1981 tax cuts proved to be an overreach, Reagan subsequently proposed and Congress ultimately raised taxes. As Mr. Bush would later learn, conservatives were far more forgiving of their idol Reagan for raising taxes than they would ever be of him.
Reagan, however, was completely won over by Mr. Bush’s steadfast loyalty through Iran-contra and other tribulations of his presidency.
When Howard Baker asked Reagan to stay neutral in the 1988 presidential primary campaign, Reagan promised that he would, and did. But he confided to his diary that his personal choice was Mr. Bush, a patient and dogged politician.