Pop Quizzes Aside, Bush Continues Serious Study

Although his staff and advisors bristle that anyone is “teaching” Texas Gov. George W. Bush to be a presidential candidate, this former C student actually got an early start boning up for the biggest test of his life.

The informal beginning of what has turned into a relatively formal training regimen came about 18 months ago, over tea and cookies in former Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s living room on the Stanford University campus.

Since then, he has amassed scores of advisors and convened dozens of meetings--less lectures than sessions of a Lone Star State salon--at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin to help craft policy on the hundreds of issues that face anyone who would be president.

With a foreign policy speech today at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley and an economic policy address later, the education of George Walker Bush will be on display as much as the man himself.

For he has a host of political potholes to fill. He has been dogged by a series of geopolitical gaffes--calling Greeks “Grecians” and failing a journalist’s pop quiz on foreign leaders--by the recent publication of his achingly average Yale grades and by questions about his intellectual fitness for the presidency. Late-night talk shows mock him. Jay Leno: “I guess he came out with a new plan to hire 100,000 new teachers--as tutors for him.”

Yet Bush said Wednesday, while campaigning in Iowa, that he does not feel special pressure with this speech. “The pop quiz doesn’t show where my heart is, doesn’t show where my vision is. This speech will.”

Bush’s advisors are quick to note that he began his run for president with well-informed views on issues from childhood literacy to how taxes affect small business.

But in the last several months, through conversations with hundreds of experts, he has worked to broaden his knowledge of the things that never enter the realm of an American governor: the International Monetary Fund, the intricacies of the federal tax code, how Social Security reform ripples through the budget.

“I think his basic instincts about foreign policy and what needed to be done were there: rebuilding military strength, the importance of free trade, the big countries with uncertain futures,” says Condoleezza Rice, head of his foreign policy team and a former national security advisor. “Our job was to help him fill in the details, to understand the nuance and history . . . and then proceed to think about what political directions you’d take.”

‘Youve Got to Become Larger Than Yourself’

To be fair, note presidential historians, no one who wants to become leader of the free world gets there without a pretty steep learning curve, and the earlier that process begins the better it is for man and country.

“Nobody can really know what it’s like to be president until they’re president,” says Charles O. Jones, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin. “You can’t know it from being governor or senator. It just ain’t the same. One of the most important early tests is the understanding that you’ve got to become larger than yourself through people you know. Successful candidates do what he’s doing, pretty much.”

During the 1998 meeting in Shultz’s living room, Rice and a group of fellows at the conservative Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace met with Bush for almost five hours to chat about “the major policy issues of the day, domestic and international,” said John Cogan, an economics expert who is helping craft the policy behind Bush’s upcoming economics speech.

Bush’s first foreign policy discussions with Rice came four months later on a fishing boat off Kennebunkport, Maine, when the two of them were visiting Bush’s parents; Rice had served as national security advisor for President Bush. The younger Bush “was considering whether he should run,” she said, “and getting a sense of what issues would confront him.”

Bush invited the core group to Austin soon after, including Rice; Shultz; Martin Anderson, a former policy advisor for presidents Reagan and Bush; Michael J. Boskin, economist and former policy advisor in the same administrations; former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“I’m seriously thinking about running for president,” Bush told them. “If I do that, there are lots of things I have to do.”

Anderson, who has worked on 10 presidential efforts and is writing a book about the nature of campaigns, said he can remember thinking, “This is exactly what I was writing in my book: Do this ahead of time . . . .”

Bush’s core group of eight economics advisors has met with him almost monthly this year to guide him through the intricacies of the tax code, among other issues. His foreign policy team met with him at least three times in Austin this year, Rice said, and has held a conference call every few weeks “to make sure we think we’re giving him everything he needs to review the world.” His domestic policy team began meeting in April.

“It’s good to my mind for a candidate to have this kind of shadow government or government in waiting, thinking systematically all these things through, so the message is consistent and the totals in the budget add up,” says Williamson Evers, a Hoover fellow who specializes in education issues and serves on Bush’s domestic policy team.

Bush noted Wednesday that he has frequently talked to his foreign policy advisors about the nuances of world affairs. “There’s a lot of history that goes into foreign policy,” he said. “Some of the people I listen to . . . have lived the history. It’s important to listen to them; it’s important to understand what has gone on in the past.”

Figuring Out His Policy on IMF

In the last several days, Bush’s discussions with advisors, especially Rice, have intensified. The speech--which will highlight the nation’s relationships with Russia and China and define what he calls “America’s new internationalism”--was completed Tuesday night.

Boskin and Rice point to the IMF, the world’s leading international lending agency, as one area where Bush started out unformed. Shultz, one of his closest advisors, believes the fund should be abolished. Other economic and world affairs advisors disagreed.

“So we talked through these things,” Boskin recalls. “And he came to a conclusion . . . . He thinks it needs serious reform with a great deal more transparency and accountability.”

Not everyone prepares for the presidential campaign trail the same way. Although publishing millionaire Steve Forbes reaches out to some advisors, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he also relies on his decades of research and reportage at his eponymous magazine. Sen. John McCain of Arizona says he leans on his Senate staff, his own reading and 17 years in Congress.

Democrats Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore also draw upon their experiences in the Senate or White House, as well as consultations with advisors.

Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas drew up a list of advisors too--but too late, and he never consulted them. Anderson, who advised the 1996 Republican nominee for president, recalls setting up a team of 150 to 160 advisors but not until late in the campaign. “How many times did he meet with those people? Zero. Never.”

Presidential historian Robert Dallek is not convinced that “a lot of book learning” is sufficient presidential preparation, nor does he think that a stable of top-notch advisors is enough, although it does help.

Still, he says, “there are no guarantees” for the voting public. “You need someone with the right instinct and good judgment and common sense and wisdom. And how do you measure that? It’s important to listen to what these men say. That’s the single virtue I can see in these very long campaigns.”

In fact, when responding to questions about the failed pop quiz, Bush said that voters should not question just his foreign policy but all the candidates’. After all, he said, “No one in this race has been president.”

Video of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush’s foreign policy speech at the Reagan library will be available today on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/politics