He built to his conclusion: “I will keep America moving forward, always forward—for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of light. That is my mission. And I will complete it.”

The crowd exploded. Laura, Barbara, Jenna, and I poured onto the stage with the rest of our family to join Mother and Dad for the balloon drop (no fear of a condom drop this time). George Bush was beaming. I can’t remember another speech that so perfectly captured a moment. Dad had moved seamlessly from Ronald Reagan’s Vice President to a candidate in his own right. Like many others who care deeply for George Bush, I was exuberant that night.

Years later, as I worked on my 2000 convention acceptance speech with my speechwriter Mike Gerson, I thought back to Dad’s speech in 1988. One of the lessons was that a candidate must not only deliver memorable lines but also lay out a vision that the American people want to follow. That was what George Bush did in 1988. After that final night of the convention, I was convinced that many Americans could picture President George H.W. Bush.

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DAD’S PERFORMANCE at the convention was flawless, with one exception: the announcement of his running mate.

Dad began the vice presidential search shortly after he secured the nomination. Unlike many presidential nominees, he was not looking for someone who could fill a hole in his résumé—the way that he had for Ronald Reagan eight years earlier and Dick Cheney, with his national security experience, did for me twelve years later. In addition to picking someone who was prepared to assume the presidency, Dad wanted to bridge a generational gap. Although he was an energetic sixty-four-year-old, he was also part of the World War II generation, which had held the presidency since John F. Kennedy’s election almost three decades earlier. Dad sensed that the baby boom generation was ready for its turn on the national stage. He liked the idea of picking a running mate who could appeal to younger voters and help pave the way for a new generation of Republican leaders. There was a historical precedent that influenced Dad: In 1952, the sixty-one-year-old Dwight Eisenhower—a President whom Dad greatly admired—picked a thirty-nine-year-old Senator, Richard Nixon, to be his running mate.

Dad selected forty-one-year-old Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana to be his running mate. He had gotten to know Quayle during their years together in Washington, where Quayle had served since winning election to the House at age twenty-nine. Four years later, he had defeated three-term Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, and he had won reelection to a second Senate term handily. He had impressed his colleagues enough to earn seats on the powerful Budget and Armed Services Committees, where he gained expertise in arms control and strongly opposed Democratic efforts to cut defense spending. Dad believed that his experience had prepared him to do the job. And he knew he would be an energetic campaigner for the ticket.

Dad kept his choice secret—from the press, from his aides, and even from Mother and me. The campaign’s plan was to build drama and announce the vice presidential pick on Wednesday of convention week, the day before Dad’s acceptance speech. By Tuesday morning, however, the speculation about the VP selection had reached a fever pitch. Stories about Dad’s decision process overwhelmed all else at the convention. Reporters constantly hounded Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, two names on the so-called short list. Dad felt bad that he had put Dole and Kemp in an uncomfortable position. So he decided to change the plan and announce his choice of Quayle on Tuesday afternoon, a day ahead of schedule.

Dad asked me to be in the room with him when he called Dan to make the offer. We were aboard the riverboat Natchez, which was about to ferry a large group of family, campaign aides, and supporters from Algiers Point across the Mississippi River to a dockside arrival rally in Spanish Plaza. Dad and Quayle spoke briefly, Quayle accepted the offer, and Dad handed the phone to Jim Baker. There was not much time for chitchat. Baker crisply told Quayle to get to the docks for the rally, where Dad would call him onto the stage for the announcement. The Senator would then get into a Secret Service limousine and be driven to meet his speechwriters, so that he could start work on an acceptance speech that he would deliver to a national audience.

The riverboat crossed the Mississippi, and Dad was ready to make the announcement at the rally. There was one problem. Quayle was nowhere to be found. He and his wife, Marilyn, were still making their way to the docks. Eventually the Senator was spotted, and Dad shocked the crowd by introducing Quayle as his running mate. I thought about what must have been going through Dan Quayle’s mind as he bounded up onto the platform. He was a year younger than me, and just a few hours earlier he’d had no idea that he was about to step onto the center of the national stage.

The spotlight quickly turned harsh. Reporters raised questions about Quayle’s service in the National Guard during Vietnam. The campaign had vetted the nominee and concluded that there was no cause for concern. In retrospect, because Dad had kept the choice secret, neither Quayle nor campaign staffers had time to prepare for the barrage of detailed questions being fired at them.

In the hothouse atmosphere of the convention, the press frenzy about Quayle’s background escalated into a crisis. The coverage got so rough that some supporters called for Dad to dump Quayle and pick a new running mate. George Bush didn’t consider the idea. He knew it would be a disaster to concede that his first major decision as the party’s nominee had been a mistake. He was right. The crisis passed after Dan Quayle’s solid performance in his speech and Dad’s stellar acceptance speech on the final night. The convention gave the Bush-Quayle ticket one of the biggest bounces in American political history. They came out with a small lead. And I came away with a valuable insight. When I had to announce my own vice presidential selection, I did so in advance of the convention.

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AT THE CONVENTION, George Bush had defined himself. Down the stretch, he defined Michael Dukakis. The Massachusetts Governor had left the door open by declaring in his convention speech, “This election isn’t about ideology, it’s about competence.” It was laughable that Dukakis would claim to be more competent than George Bush, who had held more important government jobs than any presidential candidate in recent memory. On top of that, two decades in national politics had convinced Dad that voters base their decisions on values as much as any other factor. And he knew that the values of Michael Dukakis would not sit well with many Americans.

Throughout the fall, Dad labeled Dukakis a “Massachusetts liberal” and quoted his opponent’s declaration that he was “a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” He reminded the country that Dukakis had opposed prayer in public schools and vetoed a bill that would have required Massachusetts schools to begin each morning with the Pledge of Allegiance. “We are one nation under God,” Dad would say in his stump speech, “and we ought not be inhibited from saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the schools.” We knew the line of attack was working when Dukakis started saying the pledge at his campaign events.

The issue of crime produced another contrast. Governor Dukakis had supported gun control, a stance that concerned many Americans who believed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for hunting, sports, and personal protection. He opposed the death penalty, a position that put him at odds with a majority of the population. And in the most notorious decision of his gubernatorial career, Dukakis had supported a program that granted weekend furloughs to Massachusetts prisoners, including violent offenders.