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THE ASSIGNMENT in New York gave Dad a chance to see his parents more often. In September 1972, his father, Prescott, went to see his doctor for a persistent cough. After a few tests, he was admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering, the hospital where Robin had died in 1953. Unfortunately, his prognosis was bleak. He had advanced lung cancer. He passed away a month later at age seventy-seven.

My grandmother wanted the funeral to be an uplifting celebration of Prescott Bush’s life. She wrote all the eulogies and had the church choir sing “Gampy’s” favorite hymns. She asked my brothers, male cousins, and me to serve as pallbearers. After the service, Dad, his brothers, and his sister stood on the steps of the church, shaking hands and thanking every guest for coming to pay their respects. It was hard for Dad to say good-bye to the man who had served as his mentor and example. He would carry the lessons of Prescott Bush with him for the rest of his life.

Before long, Dad found a silver lining in his father’s death. Prescott Bush, who always insisted on integrity in government, did not have to witness what happened in the nation’s capital over the next two years.

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AS AMBASSADOR to the UN, my father played no role in the 1972 presidential campaign, in which President Nixon won reelection over the Democratic candidate, Senator George McGovern. The campaign effectively ended before it began when it was revealed that McGovern’s first selection as a running mate, Senator Tom Eagleton, had undergone electric shock therapy for mental health problems. Nixon went on to a landslide victory, but his reelection came with short coattails. While the President carried every state except Massachusetts (he also lost the District of Columbia), Republicans lost two seats in the Senate and gained only twelve in the House.

A couple of weeks after the election, the President asked my father to meet him at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland named for President Eisenhower’s grandson, who was also President Nixon’s son-in-law (he married President Nixon’s younger daughter, Julie). The President told Dad that he wanted him to leave the UN and replace Senator Bob Dole of Kansas as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. From Nixon’s perspective, the choice made a lot of sense. Dad had experience running a party organization in Texas, and he was a fresh face with the energy and credibility to promote the Nixon agenda and strengthen the party. From Dad’s perspective, the job was at best a step sideways. He worried that some might think he had failed as a diplomat. He had also been around the Nixon White House enough to know that he didn’t like some of their tactics. He had no interest in smearing decent people on the other side of the political aisle.

Nevertheless, if leading the Republican Party was how he could best serve the country, he felt obliged to say yes.

A few days later, Bob Dole came to see him in New York. He told Dad that he was there to feel out his interest in succeeding him at the RNC. Dad felt bad for Dole; no one had told him that he had already been replaced. My father gently broke the news to the embarrassed Senator. The situation revealed that the White House was either overly secretive or dysfunctional.

In early 1973, Mother and Dad cleared out of Apartment 42A at the Waldorf Towers and headed back to the nation’s capital. Dad figured that the job would be relatively routine. He assumed that he would spend most of his time fund-raising, recruiting candidates, and meeting with party officials, many of whom he already knew. He did not expect that nineteen months later, he would be sitting in the East Room of the White House, listening to Richard Nixon become the first and only President in American history to resign.

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IN THE SUMMER of 1972, five men were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC. The burglars were affiliated with the Committee to Re-Elect the President—

known as CREEP. The White House denied any connection to the burglary, and the allegations had little impact on the 1972 election. By early 1973, shortly after Dad took over as RNC Chairman, there were indications that some people close to President Nixon had played a role in a cover-up.

President Nixon assured the country that he knew nothing about Watergate. For more than a year, Dad defended the President. George Bush, who always believed the best of people, trusted the President when he gave his word. As details about Watergate continued to drip out, Dad grew increasingly concerned. The Senate opened an investigation. Senior White House aides resigned. A special prosecutor was appointed. Then it came out that the President had secretly taped his conversations in the Oval Office. He refused to turn over the tapes, as the special prosecutor had demanded. When the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General refused to execute Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor, the President dismissed the special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General—a move that became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually, the White House released a limited number of transcripts of the Oval Office conversations. But there were key gaps, including an infamous eighteen and a half minutes that had been “accidentally erased.”

I watched the scandal unfold from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was attending Harvard Business School. The campus environment was hostile to Republicans, especially Richard Nixon. I kept my head down, studied hard, and generally did not discuss politics. One exception came when I visited Dad’s only sister, my energetic and spirited aunt Nancy, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. We would play nine holes at her favorite golf course and commiserate about the putrid swamp that George Bush had waded into.

The more I learned about Watergate, the more disgusted I became. I was shocked that the President had surrounded himself with people who had acted like the law didn’t apply to them. And I was angry about the dilemma they had created for my father. On one hand, he was trying to defend a President to whom he felt loyal. On the other hand, he had to protect the party against Democratic efforts to anchor every Republican to the sinking ship that was the Nixon White House.

In late July 1974, as the Watergate scandal was reaching its crescendo, Dad wrote a long letter to my brothers and me. To that point, he had not shared his thoughts about how agonizing the experience had been. Always an optimist, he opened the letter by reflecting on all the things he had to be thankful for, including our close family and the opportunity to serve the country he loved. He praised President Nixon’s positive features. Then he reflected on Nixon’s flaws: his insecurity, his poor judgment, his disrespect for Congress, and, above all, the harsh and amoral way in which he spoke about his supposed friends on the White House tapes.

One of those supposed friends was George Bush. Nixon had called Dad a “worrywart” and complained that he hadn’t used the RNC aggressively enough to defend him. The President’s suggestion that Dad was weak hurt him. For many excruciating months, he had spoken up for Richard Nixon. “It stings but it doesn’t bleed,” he wrote in his letter to us. He closed with the lessons he hoped we would learn from the Watergate debacle:

Listen to your conscience. Don’t be afraid not to join the mob—if you feel inside it’s wrong. Don’t confuse being “soft” with seeing the other guy’s point of view…. Avoid self-righteously turning on a friend, but have your friendship mean enough that you would be willing to share with your friend your judgment. Don’t assign away your judgment to achieve power.