Dubya and Me →
Walt Harrington's reflections on how George W. Bush grew over the years that Harrington knew him. As many people have pointed out, President Bush was far smarter than people thought. (That doesn't mean that he was always right, just that he wasn't an idiot.)
And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”
President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.
As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.
On the other hand, I still dislike President Bush's assumption that everyone else should bow and scrape before powerful men.
As it turned out, I did see George W. soon again after the encounter on his father’s Cigarette boat. After my story ran in The Washington Post Magazine, the vice president invited my family over to lunch and horseshoes at his official residence, on the grounds of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The vice president had actually called twice to invite us over, but on both occasions, our schedules hadn’t meshed. After the second invite, George W. called my house.
“Walt, my dad is vice president of the United States,” I remember him saying with a touch of irritation. “When he calls and invites you to lunch, you come to lunch.”
This entry was tagged. George Bush History