Bush Finesses Texas 2-Step of Privilege, Personality

George W. Bush’s stump speech is all tax cuts and Texas twang, all entrepreneurial zeal and assurances that his ZIP code is Austin, not Washington.

So you’d never guess that his father, the former president, is distant kin to the queen of England. That his mother, Barbara Pierce Bush, shares bloodlines with President Franklin Pierce, the 14th man to run this country. That his grandfather Prescott Bush was a senator from Connecticut.

That many of his business deals and political endeavors have been heavily backed by family members and family friends. That the trajectory of his own life--from prep school to piloting, from the oil-rich Permian Basin to politics--closely follows his famous father’s, albeit down a notch or so.

What the Texas governor stresses as he crisscrosses America appealing to voters is a string of accomplishments--education reform, tort reform and welfare reform in the Austin statehouse, drilling for oil on the Midland prairie, building a baseball stadium as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers.

Bush packages himself as the one true outsider in the contentious race for the Oval Office, and he rarely talks about his famous family. His parents campaign separately on his behalf, but he has only appeared with them together once. He occasionally mentions the difficulties of being a Bush, but rarely the benefits. Both have shaped him.

“It’s hard to simplify what it means to be George W. Bush in terms of how other people perceive me,” Bush said. “As I remind people who say, ‘Well, if you were George Smith, you wouldn’t be standing here as president,’ I say, ‘No, nor if I’d been George Bush who’d gotten whipped for governor or made a fool out of myself once I’d taken office.’ ”

1st Governor to Win Back-to-Back in Texas

George W. Bush, 53, wasn’t whipped when he ran for Texas governor. In 1994, he beat out popular incumbent Ann Richards--who once chided his father for being “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” And he was resoundingly reelected in 1998, the first governor to win back-to-back four-year terms in the history of the Lone Star State, in part by bringing record numbers of women, Latinos and African Americans into the Republican fold.

And far from making a fool of himself in Austin, he proudly points to tax cuts, school accountability measures, increased adoption rates and parental notification of minor girls’ abortions as a few of the legacies he will leave behind if he makes it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in January.

But he’s not there yet, and the fight is getting tougher. The Republican establishment, which tossed him early endorsements and record campaign contributions in part because of his pedigree and his popularity, is worried. Did they tip their hand too soon? Are they betting big on an unknown quantity?

Thrust forward as front-runner once the Republican race began, Bush has been forced to learn as he goes. With little national political experience--ample charm but less acumen--his candidacy is a work in progress. He started out in political center field, lost the New Hampshire primary, tilted right, won in South Carolina and now must work his way back to winning moderation.

As governor, “for the most part, he’s shown adeptness, good political pitch,” says Bruce Buchanan, who specializes in presidential politics at the University of Texas. “But all the problems of his candidacy come from the fact that he was thrust forward because he’s the scion of a famous family.”

An Exercise in Love and Distance

When George W. Bush talks about George H.W. Bush on the campaign trail it is an exercise in love and distance: I inherited half his friends and all of his enemies. . . . I got my dad’s eyes and my mother’s mouth. . . . He went to Greenwich Country Day; I went to San Jacinto Junior High.

Actually, George W. only attended Midland’s San Jacinto for a year before his parents sent him to the Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., the prep school his father had attended. Then it was on to Yale University, where his scholar father had captained the baseball team and he himself pulled down gentleman’s Cs.

“I don’t think he said, ‘I’m going [to] duplicate it, go to Andover, go to Yale, get engaged when I’m 20, move to Midland.’ But when you look back on it, the parallels are remarkable,” said boyhood friend Doug Hannah. “They say an awful lot of things skip generations. His father was a better baseball player, a better student, a better pilot, probably made more money.”

If George W. didn’t stand out on Yale’s academic rolls, he certainly stood out at the fraternity house, where perhaps his greatest political skill--one of the biggest differences between himself and his father--was early and publicly on display.

Bush is the current master of the cross-room eye lock, the ability to connect with a stranger and make him a friend. He can shake a thousand hands and look like he likes it--probably because he does. Everyone gets a nickname in George W.’s universe--Panchito, Buddy, Dulce, Dude--but the glad-handing candidate doesn’t forget the real one. Pundits may disparage his grasp of foreign policy; no one can question his affinity for people.

Clay Johnson, chief of staff in the governor’s office and former Yale roommate, loves to tell this story about fraternity initiation: Fifty pledges were jammed in a room at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house in 1965, listening to the standard rant. You’re the sorriest bunch of pledges. You’re a bunch of losers but we’ve got to take a few of you. Then came the test: Name all the other pledges in the room. The first guy named eight. The next guy, four. The next, 10. All were harassed.

“Then they called on George,” Johnson recounted. “He got up and named all 50. There was a hush.”

The moral of this story is not that Bush has the world’s best memory, Johnson said, but that he has “that much genuine interest in people. . . . I’ve seen him work these crowds on TV. He’s not going through the motions. He’s genuinely communicating.”

He will autograph campaign signs and newspapers and bare arms and jackets, shake hands, kiss cheeks, hug babies, pose for pictures. Confronted with complicated constituents, Bush is increasingly ready with a quick rejoinder. “My husband and my father-in-law are not for you,” said one voter on the campaign trail. “They just think you’re a spoiled kid. . . . But I’m for you, and I love you.” How could a candidate possibly respond? Bush: “Well, go convince them.”

Robert Mosbacher, secretary of Commerce in the senior Bush administration, says the father has long been hampered by a New England reticence, while the son spent formative years in Texas, where “he learned to be open and let it all flow.”

“If his father had showed the same charisma all the time publicly that he does privately,” Mosbacher says, he would have been reelected.

It’s Not Easy Being Bush

George W.’s run for Congress in 1978 was a textbook case of how complicated it is to be a Bush. On the one hand there’s the money, more than most political neophytes at that time dreamed of raising: $406,000.

His father, who was eyeing a White House bid, held fund-raisers for George W. in Washington, Houston, Dallas and Midland, Texas. Federal Election Commission documents show a contributor list that reads like a who’s who of American business and politics of the era:

Former President Gerald R. Ford; former Secretary of State George P. Shultz; John D. Macomber, president of the chemical giant Celanese Co.; William C. Ford, vice chairman of the Ford Motor Co.; Jean MacArthur, widow of Gen. Douglas MacArthur; Donald M. Rumsfeld, former secretary of Defense; Bowie Kuhn, former baseball commissioner.

On the other hand, there’s the legacy. Ronald Reagan, who planned to run for president in 1980 and viewed the elder Bush as competition, backed George W.’s rival in the Republican primary. Bush won anyway.

In the general election, he was not so lucky. Bush, who was born in New Haven, Conn., while his father finished Yale, lost the open House seat to Democrat Kent Hance. A native of Lubbock and a graduate of Texas Tech, Hance spent most of the race accusing Bush--whose father had served as a Texas congressman and chairman of the Republican National Committee--of “riding his daddy’s coattails” and trying to “buy the election,” according to newspaper reports at the time.

Richards took the same tack in 1994, with far less success. She called George W. “Shrub,” she called him “Junior,” she called him “Prince George,” she called him clueless. He kept his cool, he stayed on message--tort reform, welfare reform, crime and education--and went on to win the election. Since then he has earned high marks for working with Democrats and Republicans alike.

Asked at a news conference in January about the impact of his parents on his political life, Bush talked about that first run for governor.

“In the 1994 campaign, I can remember people saying, ‘He can’t possibly be a governor. After all, he’s never done anything. . . . All he is is his daddy’s boy,’ ” Bush said. “And that was the campaign. I understand that. That’s OK. And guess what? I campaigned on something I believed in, just like I’m doing here in New Hampshire.”

The upside of being George W. Bush is profound.

On a personal level, the candidate speaks often and warmly of the greatest gift his parents gave him, the unconditional love that allowed him to spend his life taking risks--like going into the oil business, running for Congress and governor and president, fulfilling a dream of working in baseball by putting together an investment team to buy the Texas Rangers.

On a financial level, however, it also pays to be a Bush. The Campaign Study Group, a nonpartisan research firm based in Springfield, Va., analyzed campaign contributions to George W.’s current White House effort and his father’s 1992 presidential run.

More than 4,000 donors who gave money to support President Bush’s failed reelection bid also donated to his son’s current electoral effort, according to the analysis, which was done for The Times. The father received $3.8 million from the 4,201 joint donors, while the son received nearly $4.1 million--almost 6% of his war chest to date.

Family ties also helped out in his business career. After finishing Harvard Business School, Bush headed south to his boyhood home of Midland, in Texas’ resource-rich Permian Basin, to make his way in the oil business like his father had done nearly 30 years before.

“The energy industry was vibrant, growing, exciting,” said Don Evans, now Bush’s campaign finance chairman, who also moved to Midland in 1975. “Commodity prices were up, and there was a lot of capital coming in the industry. . . . It was the place for us to go.”

George W. named his first oil company Arbusto, Spanish for “bush.” Seed money, upward of $4 million, was largely raised between 1979 and 1982 with the help of his uncle, financier Jonathan Bush.

The Arbusto investor list is filled with family and famous friends. His grandmother, Dorothy W. Bush, chipped in $25,000. Corporate luminaries like George L. Ball, chief executive of Prudential-Bache Securities, invested $100,000.

Macomber and William H. Draper III, who invested more than $125,000, were later named presidents of the U.S. Export-Import Bank during the Reagan and Bush administrations.

“Obviously, George and his family ran in circles not everybody runs in [and] that allowed him to know people that it was reasonable to try to raise money from,” said K. Michael Conaway, now a Midland CPA, who served on Arbusto’s board. “If Mike Conaway tried to go see these folks, it was unlikely he could have gotten the door open. . . . [But] no one invested with George to curry favor with his dad.”

Bush describes himself as a hard-working and “relatively conservative” oilman who drilled lower-risk wells than most and did well by his investors until the oil and gas industry tanked in the mid-1980s.

“People aren’t going to invest money with somebody unless they trust the person’s judgment and integrity,” Bush said. “I was very conscious of my dad’s reputation, and obviously, when he was vice president, about people trying to get to me to get to him. . . . I didn’t go out marketing his name.”

Bush eventually renamed his company Bush Exploration and later merged with a firm called Spectrum 7. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the firm lost money from 1979 to 1982 and that investors who put in nearly $4.7 million got back just $1.5 million.

Published reports contend that Bush Exploration was salvaged by Cincinnati oilmen Bill DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. Bush today says otherwise, that his company was on firm financial footing and that the merger was a strategic one. Either way, George W. drilled his fair share of dry holes. As Conaway rues to this day, the company “never hit . . . the Big Kahuna.”

In 1986, the price of oil dropped from $18 to $10 a barrel overnight, and the bottom fell out of the Texas economy. Faced with having to lay off all of his employees as Spectrum 7 bled money, Bush moved quickly to find a buyer and eventually merged with Dallas-based Harken Energy. Bush got a seat on the board, $300,000 in Harken stock and a consulting contract.

Harken was a company that liked having big names on its board, and Richards during the 1994 Texas governor’s race questioned whether Harken traded on Bush’s name and contacts. But Conaway disputes that.

“They got the assets,” Conaway said. “Would they have done the deal had it been Joe Doaks? Who could say? To say the only reason Harken bought Spectrum 7 [was] because of George doesn’t examine all the facts.”

A Harken official did not return telephone calls.

Proud of Texas Rangers Project

The Harken merger in 1986 eventually gave Bush the money to close the deal that was closest to his heart: putting together an investor team to buy the Texas Rangers, which allowed him to move decisively out of his father’s shadow. Reflecting on his life with the Rangers, he later told Time magazine, “Now I can say, ‘I’ve done something--here it is.’ ” When he sold his share of the Rangers--recouping around $15 million on an initial investment of $606,000--Bush was financially set for life, and for a presidential bid.

But 1986 was a watershed year for more than just business reasons. It was the year Bush turned 40, gave up drinking and became what he describes as a born-again Christian. While much has been made of that change in path, Bush bristles at all of the fuss.

Didn’t he have a life before 40? Didn’t he fly jets with the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, didn’t he marry Laura Welch, become the father of twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, teach Sunday School, coach Little League, head up the local United Way?

“People say it’s a huge year of change,” Bush said. “I did quit drinking. I’ve been asked 100 times, ‘Do you think you’re an alcoholic?’ No, I don’t think I was, necessarily. The best way to kind of describe it [is] alcohol began to compete with my affections.”

(Bush admits in broad terms that in the past “I was young and irresponsible, and I behaved young and irresponsibly.” But he refuses to answer questions about rumors of early drug use, arguing that young people might think it’s acceptable to do “bad things” if a governor did.)

At the same time he realized he was being forced to choose between alcohol and family life, he was undergoing a second change: accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Bush describes his religious growth as a gradual shift, “a reconfirmation of Christ in my life.”

It was a change that segued well with another shift. In 1987, Bush moved his family to Washington so he could help his father become president of the United States. One of his jobs was liaison with the American evangelical movement, the other was self-described “loyalty enforcer.”

George W. and Laura Bush still remember how heart-rending it is to watch a loved one run for office. Laura recalls 1992 as the year she and George W. turned off the television set because of how her father-in-law, then running for reelection, “was characterized in a way that he wasn’t . . . and how hard that was for us.”

At one point during his father’s bid for the Oval Office, Bush said he was so nervous about a debate that he went to a Woody Allen movie with his younger brother, Marvin, rather than watching the forum on TV.

One of Marvin’s friends was watching the debate at home, and Marvin kept calling him. The report was always the same, Bush recounted: “The old man’s doing great.”

“Finally we hustled to get home before the debate was over,” Bush said. “And then we called up and said, ‘You did great, dad. Congratulations.’ My point is that it’s nerve-racking for a loved one and it’s not nearly as nerve-racking for me.

“I’m sure my mother and dad are agonizing over what’s happening” in the 2000 campaign, he said. “I’m in a position where I’m going to work my heart out. I know that I’ve given it my best shot. We’ll just see what the people decide.”

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Profile:

George W. Bush

* Born: July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., first son of George and Barbara Bush

* Residence: Austin, Texas

* Education: Bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University, 1968. MBA, Harvard University, 1975.

* Career highlights: Businessman in various industries, primarily oil, 1968 to 1989. Managing partner of Texas Rangers baseball team, 1989 to 1994. Texas governor, 1995 to present.

* Family: Married 22 years to former Laura Welch. Twin daughters.