Bush’s Journey: Navy, Politics, and Presidency

“I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make it on my own kinda thing,” said George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), the 41st President of the United States to his biographer.

Perhaps not our most articulate President, but among the most genuine of the modern era. Born possibly with the silver spoon of which former Texas Governor Anne Richards so derisively spoke, George H. W. Bush, the son of a former Wall Street banker and powerful U.S. Senator, Prescott Bush (R-Connecticut), graduated prep school and at age 18 joined the U.S. Navy, by age 19, becoming the Navy’s youngest aviator and aircraft tail-gunner. Shot down over the Pacific in 1944, Bush parachuted out of his flaming aircraft, after also hitting most of his assigned bomber targets. Following a post-war graduation from Yale, Bush moved to Texas to try his hand at the oil business with his young bride Barbara.

While Bush had modest success in the oil business, he would soon begin to cut a path of public service. Bush was elected to Congress, representing suburban Houston, and was later an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate twice. President Richard Nixon appointed Bush as Ambassador to the United Nations, and then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, during the Watergate years. Bush was actually one of the first voices to publicly call for the President to resign in a written letter for the good of the country. Ford later appointed Bush the U.S. Envoy to China (we did not yet have an Ambassador), and then Director of the C.I.A.

When Bush began his campaign for President in 1979, he was joined early by a prominent Georgia Republican, Paul Coverdell and their strong friendship would last for decades.

After winning the White House in 1988, Bush appointed Coverdell his U.S. Peace Corps Director. In 1991, Coverdell left the administration and returned to Georgia to seek the U.S. Senate seat held by incumbent Democrat Wyche Fowler. Coverdell faced four statewide elections that 1992 Presidential Election year, including the state’s first U.S. Senate run-off. On that long runoff election night, three weeks after Bush had lost his own re-election to President-elect Bill Clinton, President Bush was attempting to keep tabs on the race of his pal Coverdell.

But in 1992, Al Gore had not yet invented the internet, and the Associated Press did not track state contest results for national wire distribution. The President’s eldest son, and family campaign manager, George W. Bush, was constantly calling my mobile phone for Election Night updates to relay to his father, who had lost the White House three weeks prior, and his beloved mother Dorothy Walker Bush just a week prior.

With election results swaying back and forth all night, only the north metro Atlanta suburbs remained to be tallied, George Bush asked me via mobile, “What’s still out?”

I told him that most of North Fulton County was still out, (some things never change). Amidst the sound of rustling papers W. said, “You mean places like Roswell, and Alpharetta?” I had forgotten at the time that the President had kicked off his re-election campaign in nearby Woodstock.

Me – “Yes, those are still out.”

W. – “Well…Dad carried Roswell by more than 70 percent, and Alpharetta by nearly 80. I’m going to go ahead and tell him that Paul has won.”

Before I could say, “Wait..” or make it across that ballroom to Coverdell with the phone, the unmistakable voice of Poppy Bush came on to say…”

“Congratulations Senator!“

I apologized and asked the President to repeat himself as I thrust the phone into the hands and ear of our soon to be U.S. Senator-elect Paul Coverdell. The unofficial election results, which would show a state win by just over 25,000 votes, were expected within the hour. two days prior to Thanksgiving.

The slightly premature congratulations boost Coverdell’s ego and often stooped stature visibly by several inches, a smile beamed across his face as he thanked the President for bothering himself with keeping track. Coverdell’s victory would also decide the U.S. Senate Majority.

“You’ll be our 51st Senator Paul…this one is more important than either of us.”

The Bush family’s favored biographer, Jon Meacham, has often referred to 41 as “The Last Gentleman.” I don’t think that is quite accurate as George W. Bush (43), as well as his brother former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and a few others in public life still remain in that arena, but it is a shrinking field, in what was once a much larger league of extra-ordinary gentlemen… Thankfully, the Bush bloodline isn’t quite done serving America yet, and thankfully there are still a few stars America hasn’t met quite yet from that Bush league and elsewhere. God bless you both, Mr. President!