President Breaks Bread: Friends, Foes Respond as Bush Extends Hand

The leader of the free world had been in office only two days when he personally rang up his press secretary to seek some crucial input. Perhaps a communications strategy for his first 100 days? Maybe some help ironing out his upcoming address to Congress?

Well, no. Not exactly.

President George Herbert Walker Bush needed assistance with something far more immediate: a guest list for a White House party top-heavy with men.

The President said, “ ‘I’m putting together this group for dinner,’ ” Marlin Fitzwater recalls. “He asked, ‘Do you know four single women?’ ”

The First Lady has nicknamed the President “Perle Mesta Bush” and the staff seems to have endless tales about his social tinkering. He juggles guests lists, suggests menus and movies, and is known to spring, say, 35 guests on his wife on a day’s notice.

One day in February, Barbara Bush arrived home from Denver to a White House party he had organized himself.

The jokes have already started. “All you have to do is walk by the White House, and he’ll invite you in for dinner,” one lobbyist-guest says.

“All that’s left to be invited are the Senate pages,” a longtime acquaintance says. “Everybody’s been there.”

Bush has apparently decided it’s going to be social at the top, and has thrown himself into night life at the White House with a fervor that Washington has not seen in recent memory.

There is nothing unprecedented about White House entertaining--but few can recall a time when the occupants opened up the traditionally sacred upstairs residential quarters so frequently and to so many. In recent months, the Bushes have had at least 20 dinners and “movie nights,” brimming with senators and singers, reporters and supporters--not to mention dozens more with friends and family that they’ve chosen to keep totally private.

Guests insist that virtually no business is done at dinner, yet adversaries and allies agree that something important is accomplished: Host Bush sends everyone home charmed by the sudden and intimate contact with the First Family.

“Because of our situation--I was a social aide and Lynda lived there--we have been invited to the residence before,” says Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.), who is married to the daughter of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson. “But this was different--like having dinner with old friends. No aides around, nothing pretentious. It was a perfect night. Quite frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Press Secretary Fitzwater assures that for Bush, this burst of entertaining is “nothing new--small groups have always been a good forum for the President.” And to be sure, Bush has always understood this about himself, and delighted in the opportunities cozy gatherings provide.

Since his days in Congress, he’s managed to meld the trappings of his office with homespun hospitality to disarm potential foes.

Pete Roussel, an aide from Bush’s United Nations days, recalls an instance when Bush and the Soviet delegate exchanged nasty words at a Security Council meeting. He saw Bush whisper something to the Soviet afterward, “and darned if the guy wasn’t at George Bush’s house for dinner that night,” Roussel says. “I’ll never know how he got him there.”

Rungs Are Jammed

Roussel, of course, does not wonder how the President persuades people to come to the White House. The rungs of the social ladder are jammed with those dying to share a bag of popcorn with George or catch Barbara’s tour of the bedroom.

But some have wondered why the Bushes expend so much energy entertaining when the other demands of office are so great.

Friends say Bush has always feared that public life encourages isolation. When he moved from Texas to Washington, he took a liking to the man driving the moving van and invited him to stay for dinner. Aides recall George Bush, the congressman of 20 years ago, calling them at home on Sunday mornings to come over for breakfast to talk about what was happening.

During a recent interview, Barbara Bush also spoke of the danger of isolation, saying, “It’s why you have a lot of people in . . . to sort of stay current. I don’t know if people tell you the truth, but at least it gives you an opportunity to see people.”

And then joking about her husband’s involvement with entertaining, she said, “He barks out orders like . . . The best was the day he woke up and said, ‘You know, we’re just not seeing people at all. We’ve just got to do something.’ I think we had 20 that night and 40 the next!”

But if President Bush worries about the restrictions of the job, George Bush, the well-bred note writer and professional politician, also knows that his new setting is a good place to say thank you.

Predictably, one of his earliest guests was Robert Guiney, president of the Boston police union, which endorsed Bush over Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. By telephone from Boston, Guiney swears, “I’ll never forget it as long as I live”--which certainly covers the 1992 campaign. “I’m 49 years old, and going to the White House was one of the highlights of my life.

“The President was wearing our policeman’s badge when my wife and I got upstairs,” he said. “He thanked me again for the endorsement and said he hoped it wouldn’t have political ramifications for us in Boston. I told him it didn’t matter because we did what was right. The rest of the evening was very casual, with a lot of talk about families.”

Not to be ignored, certainly, is the pure, unadulterated opportunity for politicking in his own living room--L.B.J. style. What the pundits are now writing--but what is not news to Bush--is that he’s not particularly effective on television. Rather, he does his best communicating when he can shore up personal relationships one-on-one.

Intimate Gatherings

Fitzwater insists that the entertaining is not part of a “grand strategy.” But he allows that the President “does connect” in more intimate settings because “his humor is the kind which bounces off people; he needs other people to react. He recognizes the irony of events and teases people, and this is best expressed in small groups.”

Strategy or not, breaking bread with Bush appears already to have made an impact in some political circles. Not only has he entertained old Democratic pals like Robert Strauss and Rep. G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), but he’s gone after the younger types, too.

“Down deep, Democrats want to help the President, and if you end up liking the guy, you want to help even more,” says Democrat Rep. Marty Russo of Illinois, another early guest. “George Bush is offering members of Congress an opportunity to know and like him, and it’s going be effective in the long run for him.”

Robb agrees. “There is no question in my mind that he is building up a tremendous reservoir of good will. I reserve the right to disagree with the President. But I will tell you that because he is cultivating people personally--when there are close calls, and the pros and cons are 50-50--I think members will try to resolve them in President’s favor. He’ll get the benefit of the doubt.”

Says Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), invited for an intimate dinner of 14: “Ronald Reagan never had congressmen to his home.”

One somewhat controversial aspect of the President’s socializing has been his relentless courting of journalists. Some observers believe it further blurs the sometimes invisible Washington line between journalists and sources. The Bushes have had beat reporters and columnists at just about every dinner in the residence--a dramatic change from a year ago, when few were invited to Vice President Bush’s home.

“Not for a minute did I consider turning down the invitation,” says Kathy Lewis of the Houston Post. “I know the President is interested in cultivating better relations with reporters. But I gained from it, too. I sat next to (Sen.) Bob Dole and got to talk to him about the Hill for two hours.”

WUSA-TV (Channel 9) anchor Maureen Bunyan, one of the four women Fitzwater rounded up for the Bush party in January, also says she felt as if she was working, noting she asked both the President and the press secretary for interviews.

Christopher Matthews, a liberal-leaning columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, was allowed to bring his parents.

“At one point I was standing there on the Truman Balcony with (House Majority Leader) Tom Foley, and I look through the window into a bedroom and I see three people talking,” Matthews recalls. “And all of sudden, I realize it’s my parents and the President of the United States! It was an amazing sight.

“I gave him about of week of deference (in print). But personally, I think I’ll always respond to him as the man who had my parents to dinner.”

Being invited to the White House has also become something of a badge of prestige. One prominent conservative columnist recently was overheard boasting that he had been to the White House for dinner twice--despite the nasty words he has often had for the President. A senior White House aide, when asked to confirm, first burst out laughing and then insisted the columnist has never set foot in the Bush White House.

Those who have really been invited say the invitation usually comes by phone--and on very short notice. “I was called the same day,” says Sen. William Cohen (R-Me.). “So I checked my schedule and saw that I had microwave pizza on for that night. I accepted.”

An evening at the White House usually starts with the host and hostess greeting their guests at the top of the grand staircase. If they have house guests--and once it was country singer Crystal Gayle--they, too, will greet the company.

“Movie nights” generally include a very short cocktail hour (usually one drink), a buffet dinner and the requisite tour of the house. And if little business is discussed, what then is? Interestingly, most of the guests contacted seem to suffer amnesia when asked to relay their conversations with the President.

“Oh, I don’t know, we talked a little about the makeup of the House; but mostly it was casual--sports,” Russo says.

During his dinner, Cohen recited a poem he had written several years ago. “It was very appropriate,” he says, “and I think well received.”

The tour--given with a complete history and a viewing of a signed draft of the Gettysburg Address--also soaks up a lot of conversing time.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been to dinner twice--and took the tour twice. “The President pulled me aside and took great pride in showing me that his personal radio was indeed set on a country-Western station,” McConnell relates.

To the surprise of many, the tour also includes a walk through the First Couple’s bedroom. The wife of one politician says she refused to go in.

“It’s sooo personal,” she says. “I mean people ran over to check out what books they were reading. The whole thing struck me as so middle-class in a way. You know, ‘Come over and see how well we’re doing, see what we’ve done with our lives.’ It seemed almost like reverse voyeurism on their part.”

Guests remember that the buffets include some kind of chicken dish or Tex-Mex food. Then you get to sit wherever you want to eat.

“You’re very conscious of putting your plate on some table where something very important was signed, as you concentrate on not spilling your wine,” writer Christopher Buckley says. “It’s not the kind of place you want to leave a three-foot-long coffee stain on the carpet.”

After dinner, guests are ushered into the movie room. Included in the flicks shown so far: “Working Girl,” “Chances Are” and “Major League.”

“As you go in, there are little bags of popcorn waiting for you,” Buckley says.

The seated dinners are slightly more formal, with four tables for eight or 10 set up in the dining room. On a few occasions, a military orchestra played afterward.

What no one seems to know is whether the President of the United States--when he’s done with the guest list and the menu--arranges the seating, too.

“Look, you’ve got to look at him as just a regular husband wanting to get together with some friends,” Fitzwater explains. “I might call a friend to come over for a VCR movie and ice cream on Saturday night--and that’s what he does. It’s just the White House, so it may be a more sophisticated version of calling up your neighbor.

“Normal husbands get involved in socializing--call their wives and say, ‘We haven’t seen so-and-so. Let’s call them.’ Really, he’s just a normal husband.”