Of course, George Bush never put too much stock in conventional wisdom. He believed that his diplomatic jobs had prepared him well for further public service. And he turned out to be right. Not only is my father the only President to have held all four of those jobs, he is the only President to have held any of those four jobs. In hindsight, the experience and judgment he gained along the way equipped him to become one of the best-prepared Presidents of the modern era.

RUNNER-UP

OVER HIS CAREER IN BUSINESS and government, George Bush had navigated his way through many unfamiliar situations. In the spring of 1977, shortly after he left the CIA at the end of the Ford administra

tion, my parents encountered a new challenge: They were home alone.

Mother and Dad had returned to Houston shortly after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. They bought a house, their twenty-fifth different address in thirty-two years of marriage. All their children had grown and were living on their own. My parents used their newfound time to reconnect with their many Texas friends and dote on their first grandchild, George Prescott Bush, son of my brother Jeb and his wife, Columba. They enjoyed the respite from the political arena. Mother called it “a second honeymoon.” But Dad could not take it easy for long. He missed the action. And he believed he had more to contribute. As he wrote to his friend Gerry Bemiss, “I don’t want to slip into that 3 or 4 martini late late dinner rich social thing. There is still too much to learn.”

My father wasn’t the only one in the family with a drive to contribute. In our old hometown of Midland, I was preparing to enter the political arena that he had just left—and that he was about to reenter, in a big way.

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A DECADE ON a government salary, combined with the expenses of educating five children, had taken its toll on my parents’ finances. In 1977, my father’s uncle Herbie—a founding owner of the New York Mets who helped inspire my dream to own a baseball team—died at age seventy-two. His wife, Mary, decided to put Walker’s Point up for sale. The big house had been damaged by a storm the previous winter, and she didn’t want the expense of maintaining it. She had received a generous offer from a buyer outside the family. Fortunately, she gave my father the option to match the price. He had loved Walker’s Point his whole life, and he hated the thought of losing the family’s traditional gathering place—his “anchor to windward.” At the time, he didn’t have the cash to buy the property. He asked his aunt if she would give him a little more time to get the money together. She agreed, and he purchased the property in 1981.

My father didn’t like the idea of cashing in on his government service, but he had always been interested in the business world. Joining a few corporate boards of directors gave him a way to stay engaged and make some money. He accepted seats on the boards of Eli Lilly, Texasgulf Oil, and First International Bancshares in Dallas. He also received an offer to get back into the oil business from H. Ross Perot, a Dallas businessman who had founded a successful technology company. Dad thanked Ross but declined the offer. He explained that he didn’t want to take on any long-term business commitments. That was not the last George Bush would hear from Ross Perot.

While Dad enjoyed his corporate roles, politics and public service remained his passions. Some of his Texas friends urged him to run for Governor in 1978. But his interests were elsewhere. He had served in the Cabinets of two Presidents, and he knew how to handle the pressures of politics and policy. As much as Mother loved their quiet life together, she knew that their second honeymoon would be brief. Dad wanted to serve, and he wanted to serve on the big stage. Soon they began to travel the country, sounding out the prospects of a presidential campaign.

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AFTER GRADUATING from Harvard Business School in 1975, I returned to Midland, Texas. Like my dad a generation earlier, I was attracted to Midland by the entreprene

urial climate and the excitement of an oil boom. My debut in the oil business came as a land man. My duties were to hustle around checking court records and trading minerals and royalties. Occasionally I took a small interest in a deal. I had some marginal success, and my cost of living was low.

On July 6, 1977, my thirty-first birthday, Midland’s longtime Congressman, George Mahon, announced that he would retire after forty-four years in the U.S. House of Representa

tives. The prospect of running for Mr. Mahon’s seat intrigued me. I liked politics, and I’d gained valuable experience working on Dad’s campaigns in 1964 and 1970, as well as on Senate races in Florida (for Edward Gurney, who won) and Alabama (for Red Blount, who lost). I felt strongly about the issues. I believed that the country was headed in the wrong direction under Jimmy Carter, especially on energy regulation and tax policy. The political bug was biting hard.

Dad was surprised when I told him that I was considering running for Congress. He suggested I visit his friend former Governor Allan Shivers to ask his advice on the race. Shivers was a political icon. For decades, he held the record for the longest continuous service as Governor of Texas (until my successor, Governor Rick Perry, surpassed him). When I told Governor Shivers that I was considering running in the Nineteenth Congressional District, he looked me straight in the eye and told me that I couldn’t win. The seat had been held by a conservative rural Democrat for the past forty-four years, and the district was drawn perfectly for a conservative rural Democratic state senator, Kent Hance.

I thanked the Governor for seeing me and left somewhat perplexed. Had Dad known what Shivers would say? If so, why had he sent me? It was not Dad’s style to try to dictate the course of my life. On a decision of this magnitude, he wanted me to make up my own mind. In hindsight, I suspect that the Shivers referral was his way of warning me that the race would be difficult and that I should prepare for disappoint

ment.

I entered the race anyway. I was independent-minded enough—or, some might say, stubborn enough—to give it a shot. As expected, once I told him that I had decided to run, my father was behind me 100 percent.

My congressional campaign was a small operation. Most of those involved were friends, family, or volunteers. My brother Neil was the campaign manager. My treasurer was Joe O’Neill, a childhood friend who had graduated from Notre Dame and the University of Michigan’s business school, served in the Army Special Forces, and returned to Midland to work in the oil business. One night in the summer of 1977, Joe and his wife, Jan, invited me to a barbecue in their backyard. They told me there was someone that they wanted me to meet: Jan’s good friend from Midland, Laura Welch.

I was struck by Laura’s beauty. She had gorgeous blue eyes and a bright smile, which she flashed frequently in response to my jokes. As we chatted, we learned how much we had in common. She had grown up in Midland at the same time that I had, and we had overlapped for one year at San Jacinto Junior High. It turned out that we had even lived in the same apartment complex in Houston after college (she graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and then earned a master’s in library science from the University of Texas). She was smart and dignified and had a calm, natural manner. It wasn’t exactly the same as when George Bush met Barbara Pierce at that Christmas dance back in 1941. Nobody danced a waltz in Joe and Jan’s backyard; our second date was at a putt-putt golf course. Like my parents, however, we fell in love quickly. We were both over thirty and ready to settle down. We got married a few months later.