Crisis has a way of revealing character. The President—and the country—had just seen that Vice President George Bush was a man they could trust.

—

AS THE PRESIDENT’S confidence in his VP grew, so did Dad’s role in the administra

tion. President Reagan asked him to spearhead a number of important policy initiatives. He headed up the administration’s task force on federal deregulation. As a former businessman, he understood the burdens inflicted by red tape, and his group made recommendations to cut or revise hundreds of needless or wasteful regulations. Dad also led a task force aimed at reducing drug trafficking in South Florida, which was a major problem in the early 1980s. The administration pursued a strategy to interdict drug supplies coming from South America up the East Coast.

Another of Dad’s responsibi

lities was representing the President and the country abroad. In all, he visited more than sixty countries in eight years. Those diplomatic missions came naturally given his experience in China and at the United Nations. He built trust with leaders in crucial parts of the world like the Middle East and Asia. He developed a good relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain. He traveled to Central America, where his presence helped demonstrate America’s commitment to democratic governments facing threats from communism. He went to Africa to help oversee the delivery of food and medicine to drought victims and refugees. And he spent time behind the Iron Curtain in Europe, where he met with key figures like Lech Wałesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland.

One of his most difficult trips was to Lebanon in 1983. Dad flew to Beirut three days after Hezbollah terrorists bombed the U.S. Marine barracks and killed 241 Americans. He did his best to console the families who had lost loved ones in the attack. As a safety precaution against further attacks by Hezbollah or other terrorists, President Reagan decided to pull American troops out of Lebanon. Unfortunately, al Qaeda interpreted America’s withdrawal as a sign of weakness. Osama bin Laden later cited the U.S. pullout from Lebanon as evidence that America was a “paper tiger” that “after a few blows ran in defeat.”

Dad comforted Americans after tragedy several more times. In 1985, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome. They diverted the plane to Lebanon, where they murdered an American Navy diver on board and held the other passengers

—including several Americans— hostage. When the hostages were released, President Reagan dispatched Dad to meet them in Germany before they returned home. In 1986, after the space shuttle Challenger exploded, President Reagan sent Dad to Florida to console the family members of the astronauts on board. To this day, he stays in touch with June Scobee Rodgers, the widow of Challenger commander Dick Scobee. Dad’s kindness, decency, and ability to connect with people made him an ideal choice.

In retrospect, Dad’s most important trips as Vice President were the ones he took to the Soviet Union. In the span of three years, three Soviet leaders died: Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko. President Reagan asked Dad to attend each of their funerals, leading Jim Baker to describe Dad’s vice presidential role as “You die, I fly.”

The trips gave Dad insight into the Soviet system. He was impressed by the power on display at the funerals: the precise military marches, the casket drawn by a Soviet tank. To most of the world, the Soviet Union looked like an unstoppable empire. But underneath the facade of strength, Dad sensed that the foundation of the Soviet Union was crumbling. The aging and dying leaders symbolized the declining appeal of the communist system. As he told his congregation at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church after his trip to Brezhnev’s funeral in 1982, “Something was missing. There was no mention of God. There was no hope, no joy, no life ever after…. So discouraging in a sense, so hopeless, so lonely in a way.”

My father’s most significant trip to Moscow came for Chernenko’s funeral in 1985. After the now-familiar solemn ceremony in Red Square, Dad met the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. It didn’t take him long to recognize that Gorbachev was different. A generation younger than his predecessors, Gorbachev had a warm, charismatic personality and spoke without notes. Instead of repeating the usual platitudes, he seemed genuinely interested in improving his country’s relationship with the United States.

George Bush has always been a good listener and a good reader of people. When he heard Gorbachev say that he wanted to “start anew,” he believed that there was a real opportunity for U.S.–Soviet relations to enter a new phase. Dad reported back that he felt the President could forge a unique working relationship with Gorbachev. Reagan and Gorbachev met later that year at a summit in Geneva. The following year, they held a historic summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Those meetings were the beginning of one of the most important diplomatic relationships of the twentieth century—one that both Ronald Reagan and Dad would nurture skillfully until the peaceful end of the Cold War.

—

MY FATHER ENJOYED his time as Vice President. Unlike some of his vice presidential predecessors, Dad never felt excluded or, as they say in Washington, out of the loop. Dad admired the difficult decisions that President Reagan made. Over time, Dad and President Reagan developed more than just a solid working relationship; they became good friends.

One reason that my father and President Reagan got along so well was that they shared a sense of humor. In a memo to the President recapping a trip to Finland, Dad described a visit to a Finnish sauna. “I felt a little self-conscious at first sitting around stark naked with four Finnish guys I’d never laid eyes on before,” he wrote. “We all did the whole treatment including jumping in the ice cold ocean. We saw less of each other after the jumping in that ice cold water.” President Reagan loved to share stories and jokes in return. When Dad asked the President how his meeting had gone with Bishop Desmond Tutu, the President responded, “So-so.”

When White House doctors diagnosed President Reagan with intestinal polyps in 1985, he checked into Bethesda Naval Hospital for surgery. Before he went under, he delegated presidential power to the Vice President, becoming the first President to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. (I later did the same thing when I had minor procedures during my presidency.) Dad served as Acting President for almost eight hours. He was in Maine at the time and deliberately kept a low profile. He did play a game of tennis. According to one of his friends with him that day, he stumbled while trying to run down a lob shot, hit his head on the tennis court, and briefly blacked out. Fortunately, he regained his faculties quickly, and nobody had to notify Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House and the next in the line of presidential succession.

After the President returned to the White House residence, Dad went to visit and wish him a speedy recovery. He found President Reagan lying on a couch in a red robe with a flower in his mouth, as if he had been prepared for a funeral. As Dad tried to process the scene, the President jumped up off the couch, and they both roared with laughter.

Mother enjoyed the vice presidential years too. She used her platform as Second Lady to promote important causes, especially literacy and volunteerism. Unfortunately, she did not have as close a relationship with Nancy Reagan as Dad did with the President. Mrs. Reagan was cordial, but she did not go out of her way to make Mother feel welcome. I was surprised when Mother told me shortly after Dad was elected President that in her eight years as the wife of the Vice President she had never toured the White House residence. When I became President, Laura and I made it a point to invite Dick Cheney, Lynne Cheney, and their family to the residence and to include them in White House events.