Vice by Lou Dubose

Author:Lou Dubose [Lou Dubose Jake Bernstein]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4090-2353-1
Publisher: Random House

EIGHT

Back to the White House

It starts with a trip to the governor's mansion. Located in downtown Austin, the mansion is a commanding Greek Revival with six imposing Ionic columns across the front. But the grandeur of the building does not reflect the stature of the office. Texans decided early on that they didn't want a powerful governor. They created a weak executive and a strong legislature.

It's December 1998. The occupant of the mansion is a Republican of modest accomplishments, a politician who has learned to work with the Democratic statehouse across the street and won high approval ratings in the process. At the beginning of his second term, the governor is already looking beyond his Lone Star state. He wants the biggest political prize of all. Yet while he has mastered his current elected office, and despite a sterling pedigree, he's not knowledgeable enough to be the president. Thus begins the education of George W. Bush.

Bush had always liked and respected Dick Cheney, a rare departure from his tendency to reject his father's advisers and associates. In 1992, as the senior Bush's presidency degenerated into crisis and recrimination— often played out as leaks in the press—the eldest son put aside a difficult filial relationship to move into the White House and lend a sharp elbow. Bush helped his father oust chief of staff John Sununu, who was replaced by Samuel Skinner. But the former secretary of transportation couldn't make the executive office run. The son and his father's advisers cast about for a competent manager to substitute for Skinner, someone with organizational abilities and loyalty—a quality prized above all others by the younger Bush. Reportedly the man the son favored was Dick Cheney, but the secretary of defense resisted this draft. He wasn't going to give up what he told congressional colleagues was "the best job you could ever have." Instead, the elder Bush turned to the family's trusty handyman, James Baker III—like Cheney, a former chief of staff.

While George W. was in the governor's mansion, Cheney was just a short drive up 1-35, in Dallas, running Halliburton and getting his first taste of the plutocracy. Throughout the mid-1990s, the governor and the CEO would see each other at events, keeping open the lines of communication. When it came time for Bush to receive tutoring to fill the biggest blank spot on his résumé—foreign policy—Cheney was an obvious choice for instructor. Bush had also developed a rapport with Condoleezza Rice, his father's special assistant for national security affairs. As early as the summer of '98, the two met at the family vacation compound in Kenne-bunkport. Rice was then a tenured provost at Stanford, but she wanted out of academia and back into government. The campaign signed her up as foreign policy "coordinator."

In mid-December, Rice took fellow Stanford professor and former secretary of state George Shultz to the mansion for a seminar with the prospective candidate. Cheney also attended that mid-December policy session. He brought along a guest, too: Paul Wolfowitz, who would become a regular tutor at Bush's home school.

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