At first glance, George Bush the Elder is the epitome of the carefree retiree, happily “out of the loop,” alarming his loved ones by skydiving on his 75th birthday. But those who know the Old Man know the goofy-stuntman act isn’t all there is to the former president. In ways public and private, he is an active hand on deck of his son’s presidential campaign: less than a captain, to be sure, but far more than a dotty kibitzer. His fund-raising network primed the campaign’s powerful money pump. He peppers headquarters in Austin with e-mail (the Bush family has its own–private–domain name and server). He expects to be fed a constant diet of juicy campaign-trail gossip. He and his son talk often, especially when questions are raised about W’s past. “I know exactly what he’s doing,” Bush the Elder said on Fox TV last week. He meant it literally. “I’m there with him. I can feel it.”
Now the former president is about to assume a higher profile–both for his own purposes and for his son’s. A memoir of sorts, in the form of a lifetime of his letters, will hit the bookstores next month (review). There will be no book tour, per se, but Bush will be visible on TV, with appearances scheduled so far for the “Today” show and “20/20.” In November Bush will take what amounts to a victory lap through Europe, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall as an official guest of the German and Czech governments. Sandwiched in between are speaking trips elsewhere in Europe and in China and Japan. “It’s his busiest year since he left the White House,” said a longtime aide.
That’s fine as far as his son’s campaign is concerned. The Clinton scandals boosted Bush the Elder’s stock. Voters today tend to forget his lack of street cred–his apparent failure to comprehend the gritty realities of everyday life–and fondly recall his personal probity and decency. According to a recent poll in New Hampshire, one fourth of the voters who support W give one simple reason: they know and like his dad and family. “It’s powerful,” said Tom Rath, an attorney in the state and a leader of Lamar Alexander’s now defunct campaign. “People say the acorn doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”
The regard–or nostalgia–for Bush in GOP circles has helped his son’s campaign virtually strangle rival fund-raising. In 1996, for example, Mel Sembler of Florida was a top Alexander fund-raiser. But President Bush had appointed the shopping-center magnate as ambassador to Australia, and when Alexander came knocking this time, the answer was a polite “Go away.” On trips to California last year, McCain found that the Bush troops had preceded him, and locked up the donors. “Everywhere I went they’d already been,” McCain told NEWSWEEK. “And the word was: sorry, I’ve already given to Bush.”
Bush the Elder issued no edicts, but it was clear from the start that there would be a two-step loyalty test for family supporters: they not only had to give to the son, they had to not give to his competitors. Under federal law, donors can give $2,000 each to several candidates. In past years, givers covered their bets that way. But as McCain, Quayle, Alexander and Elizabeth Dole have found out, it’s not working that way this time. “People aren’t covering their bets,” said Rath, who joined the Bush entourage after Alexander quit. “They’re betting it all on W because they think he’s a winner.” A strategist for another campaign was less charitable. “The Bush family,” he said, “has done everything they could to shut off the oxygen supply to everyone else–and it’s worked.”
With the money chase won, perhaps Dad’s most significant role now is as a steadying influence–and source of behind-the-scenes information and savvy. When new questions were raised recently about whether Bush’s family had used connections to get W into the Air National Guard, the candidate ducked away from noisy crowds on the campaign trail to call his dad. After checking with his father, W was ready to give his careful answer: “No George Bush” had made any effort to get him the guard slot. The former president, who says he still “feels like a spring colt,” is even venturing forth in public on behalf of his son. On TV last week, he didn’t wait for a question about W’s mammoth war chest to jump on the offensive. W is “playing by the rules and raising a lot of money under those rules,” said the elder Bush. “I think that’s a marvelous thing, not something to be criticized.” So George Herbert Walker Bush now can add another title to his long and impressive resume: Spindoctor Dad.
