George H.W. Bush Hits Cheney, Rumsfeld

Former Pres­id­ent George H.W. Bush be­lieves Dick Cheney was al­lowed to amass far too much power in his son’s pres­id­ency and that the former vice pres­id­ent’s  “iron-ass” philo­sophy served George W. Bush poorly.

In a sur­pris­ing cri­tique of the vet­er­an Wash­ing­ton pol who was his sec­ret­ary of De­fense from 1989 to 1993, the eld­er Bush told award-win­ning his­tor­i­an and bio­graph­er Jon Meacham that Cheney en­joyed a dis­pro­por­tion­ate voice in the Bush 43 gov­ern­ment—and faults his own son as an un­in­dicted co-con­spir­at­or in Cheney’s dom­in­ance.

“The big mis­take that was made was let­ting Cheney bring in kind of his own State De­part­ment,” Bush sur­mised. “I think they over­did that. But it’s not Cheney’s fault, it’s the pres­id­ent’s [43] fault”—an ex­tremely rare cri­tique of his son’s eight years as pres­id­ent.

“He had his own em­pire there and marched to his own drum­mer,” Bush said of Cheney. “[But] you can­not do it that way. The pres­id­ent [43] should not have that worry.”

Bush called Cheney “a good man” but said he sensed the ex-veep had be­come a changed per­son after the 9/11 ter­ror at­tacks. ”He just be­came very hard-line and very dif­fer­ent from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” Bush re­called in an in­ter­view with Meacham. “Just iron-ass.”

These re­col­lec­tions are among scores of com­pel­ling and some­times gos­sipy be­hind-the-scenes dis­clos­ures in Meacham’s Des­tiny and Power: The Amer­ic­an Odys­sey of George Her­bert Walk­er Bush, be­ing pub­lished next week by Ran­dom House.

In a cinema-ver­ité candor un­usu­al from former pres­id­ents while they’re still alive, the 91-year-old Bush also has oc­ca­sion­al sharp words for former First Lady Nancy Re­agan, ex-Sec­ret­ary of De­fense Don­ald Rums­feld, the news me­dia, his own Vice Pres­id­ent Dan Quayle, Re­pub­lic­an right-wing ex­trem­ists, and long­time nemes­is H. Ross Perot, whom he dis­misses as “a highly wired-up, strange little ego­ma­ni­ac, nur­tured on con­spir­acy the­or­ies … out­rageously ill-suited to be pres­id­ent of the United States.” Perot was so para­noid, Bush said, “I would vote for Bill Clin­ton in a minute be­fore Ross Perot.”

Un­like her hus­band, Nancy Re­agan is de­scribed as treat­ing the Bushes with “re­strained but real hos­til­ity … par­tic­u­larly to Bar­bara.” The Bushes be­lieved, ac­cord­ing to Meacham, that Nancy was “form­al, dis­tant, even cold” to them both and froze them out of many White House so­cial func­tions.

In a note dic­tated to his di­ary in June 1988, Bush ob­served: “Nancy does not like Bar­bara. She feels that Bar­bara has the very things that she, Nancy, doesn’t have, and that she’ll nev­er be in Bar­bara’s class. I knew there was some ten­sion, but get­ting it con­firmed al­beit second-hand was a little troub­ling. Bar has sensed it for a long time. Bar­bara is so gen­er­ous, so kind, so un­selfish, and frankly I think Nancy Re­agan is jeal­ous of her.”

In an in­ter­view two dec­ades later, Bush re­membered, “Nancy and Bar­bara just did not have a pleas­ant per­son­al re­la­tion­ship.”

He’s also can­did with him­self, ac­know­ledging that reneging on his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge at the 1988 Re­pub­lic­an na­tion­al con­ven­tion was the states­man­like thing to do,  but “it did des­troy me” polit­ic­ally.

Draw­ing on dozens of hours of in­ter­views between 2008 and 2010 with Bush 41, Bar­bara Bush, and fam­ily mem­bers as well as un­res­tric­ted ac­cess to thou­sands of pages of his vice-pres­id­en­tial and pres­id­en­tial di­ar­ies, Meacham has provided telling glimpses in­to the 41st pres­id­ent’s in­ner­most thoughts and re­col­lec­tions. Bush’s con­tem­por­an­eous re­flec­tions are par­tic­u­larly use­ful in flesh­ing out his per­son­al­ity and sense of ser­vice and what he was really think­ing at key his­tor­ic­al mo­ments.

Though the Bushes freely co­oper­ated with the au­thor and opened many doors oth­er­wise un­avail­able to journ­al­ists and his­tor­i­ans, Meacham calls his book “an in­de­pend­ent work.” Nobody had the right of re­view or ap­prov­al, he adds.

Clearly, Meacham ad­mires his sub­ject; the tone is re­spect­ful but not rev­er­en­tial. In fact, Meacham cri­ti­cizes the eld­er Bush at sev­er­al points in the nar­rat­ive. He doc­u­ments that des­pite his in­sist­ence he wasn’t “in the loop,” Bush in­deed knew all about the Re­agan ad­min­is­tra­tion’s arms-for-host­ages deal with Ir­an and calls Bush’s truth-shad­ing “un­worthy of his es­sen­tial char­ac­ter.” He also writes that Bush was “an in­con­sist­ent lead­er of pop­u­lar opin­ion and a poor man­ager of his own polit­ic­al cap­it­al.” In the 1984 Re­agan reelec­tion, “Bush’s per­form­ance on the cam­paign trail … was un­even at best, miser­able at worst.”

Bush’s sharp com­ment­ary on the role of Dick Cheney in his son’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, however, is cer­tain to start tongues cluck­ing all along the Wash­ing­ton power cir­cuit. It has been a closely held secret in Bush fam­ily circles for years that the eld­er Bush be­lieves Cheney had giv­en Bush 43 bad ad­vice, par­tic­u­larly with re­spect to the Middle East and Ir­aq—an as­ser­tion Cheney vig­or­ously dis­putes.

Also at fault, Bush be­lieves, was Cheney’s ul­tra-hawk­ish, “hard-char­ging” staff and his wife, Lynne, and daugh­ter Liz, who pushed the con­ser­vat­ive vice pres­id­ent even fur­ther to the right.

“I’ve con­cluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the em­in­ence grise here—iron-ass, tough as nails, driv­ing. But I don’t know,” Bush said in an in­ter­view.

Re­gard­less, “Bush 41 be­lieved that Cheney and a ‘hard-char­ging’ staff had fueled a glob­al im­pres­sion of Amer­ic­an in­flex­ib­il­ity—an im­pres­sion that the dip­lo­mat­ic­ally-in­clined eld­er Bush thought had made the 43rd pres­id­ent ap­pear less reas­on­able than he in fact was,” Meacham noted. “As the eld­er Bush saw it, the ‘iron-ass,’ or un­com­prom­ising views of Cheney and Rums­feld had failed to serve his son well.”

When the au­thor showed him a tran­script of 41’s re­marks, Cheney said, “No ques­tion I was much harder-line after 9/11 than I was be­fore.” He po­litely re­jec­ted the no­tion that his wife and daugh­ter bear any re­spons­ib­il­ity for his mus­cu­lar views—and countered that he was what some al­lies and de­tract­ors alike be­lieve was the most power­ful vice pres­id­ent in his­tory be­cause that was ex­actly what George W. Bush de­sired.

“He wanted me to play a sig­ni­fic­ant role, and he was true to his word,” Cheney said of 43. “And I did set up a strong or­gan­iz­a­tion to fo­cus on what it was that he wanted me to fo­cus on, which was all the na­tion­al se­cur­ity stuff.”

A spokes­per­son for Cheney did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment from the former vice pres­id­ent.

Cheney’s long­time ment­or, Don Rums­feld, takes some shots as well. The eld­er Bush and Rums­feld were rivals for dec­ades, view­ing each oth­er with sus­pi­cion; 41 still be­lieves Rums­feld con­spired to bounce him from Ger­ald Ford’s 1976 short list as run­ning mate after Rums­feld and Cheney suc­cess­fully urged Ford to dump Vice Pres­id­ent Nel­son Rock­e­feller.

Bush shed no tears after Rums­feld was sacked by George W. Bush and re­placed at the Pentagon by Robert Gates. “I think he served [43] badly,” 41 said in an in­ter­view. “I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the pres­id­ent, hav­ing his iron-ass view of everything. I’ve nev­er been that close to him any­way. There’s a lack of hu­mil­ity, a lack of see­ing what the oth­er guy thinks. He’s more kick-ass and take names, take num­bers. I think he paid a price for that. … Rums­feld was an ar­rog­ant fel­low and self-as­sured, swag­ger.”

Former Vice Pres­id­ent Dan Quayle also takes a few zingers from the man who made him a heart­beat away from the Oval Of­fice. While stoutly de­fend­ing his se­lec­tion of Quayle, Bush com­plained that “I’m thor­oughly an­noyed” when Quayle “has to go out and shore up the right-wing” after Bush’s meet­ing in Malta with So­viet lead­er Mikhail Gorbachev. “Dan makes a mis­take,” Bush wrote.

His be­ne­fact­or mused in the sum­mer of 1991 that while he be­lieved Quayle would be an able run­ning mate in 1992, “I worry though that he might not be quite ready to be pres­id­ent.” He also wor­ried that his veep has “got a lot of right-wing re­flexes” and “he does not pro­ject pres­id­en­tial tim­ber, and right now, he’s be­ing com­pared un­fa­vor­ably to the plastic Al Gore.”

Among oth­er play­ers in the book, Don­ald Trump rates a cameo ap­pear­ance. In early 1988, 41 re­por­ted to his di­ary that Don­ald Trump told Bush polit­ic­al guru Lee At­water that he [Trump] would be in­ter­ested in be­ing 41’s run­ning mate. The then-vice pres­id­ent de­scribed the no­tion as “strange and un­be­liev­able.”

De­Frank, who has covered George H.W. Bush since Novem­ber 1974, was asked by the au­thor to read the manuscript be­fore pub­lic­a­tion.