Our family celebrated Christmas that year at the Vice President’s residence, the last one that we spent at that wonderful house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory. Dad was just weeks away from becoming President, yet he showed no signs of stress. The only drama that I remember surrounded a horseshoe match pitting Dad and me against a Naval aide and the Sports Illustrated writer George Plimpton. Plimpton jumped out to an early lead, but Dad threw a ringer to complete a comeback win. “Nerts!” Plimpton exclaimed. He went on to write a fine article about the experience that captured Dad’s energy, humor, and enthusiasm for life. It is one of my favorite profiles of George Bush.

—

ON THE SUNNY morning of January 20, 1989, our family took our places on the inaugural platform. Billy Graham delivered the invocation, and Alvy Powell of the U.S. Army Chorus sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A few minutes after noon, Dad walked to the podium for the swearing-in. Mother held the Bible that George Washington had used to take the oath of office two hundred years earlier in 1789. Chief Justice William Rehnquist asked Dad to raise his right hand and repeat the oath. As I watched my father, I felt a wave of immeasurable pride, along with a touch of apprehension about what might lie ahead.

Perhaps the most excited relative on the platform that day was eighty-seven-year-old Dorothy Walker Bush. My grandmother’s health was so fragile that she had to fly to Washington on a plane staffed by health professionals. Nothing would stop her from witnessing this moment. Her only regret was that my grandfather, who would have been so proud of his son, could not be there to share in the joy. Dad asked her about the many inaugurations she had attended over the past fifty years. “Of course this is the best,” she said, “because I’m sitting here holding the hand of my son, the President of the United States.” That was about as close to bragging as Dorothy Walker Bush ever got.

The country had come a long way since Ronald Reagan stood at the inaugural platform eight years earlier. In 1981, President Reagan had begun his address by describing the “longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history.” Thanks in large part to the Reagan administra

tion’s policies, Dad took office with the economy growing at 3.8 percent and unemployment at 5.3 percent. Nevertheless, the stock market had crashed in October 1987, and some industries were struggling. On the world stage, President Reagan and Gorbachev had taken steps to ease the tension of the Cold War. They had signed the INF Treaty, and the Soviet Union was withdrawing from Afghanistan. Yet the Soviets still dominated Eastern Europe, still meddled in Latin America, and still posed an existential threat because of their nuclear arsenal. And other international problems loomed, from the terrorists who had bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a month earlier to instability in the Middle East.

As he began the biggest challenge of his career, George Bush’s first action was to express gratitude. He thanked President Reagan for his service to the country. Then he led the nation in prayer: “Heavenly Father, we bow our heads and thank You for Your love.” He concluded, “There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us remember, Lord. Amen.”

“I come before you and assume the Presidency at a moment rich with promise,” he continued. “We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it better.” He expressed his optimism about the future: “For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn. For in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.”

Then he turned to his goals at home. “My friends,” he said, “we are not the sum of our possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.” He continued, uniting his foreign and domestic goals, “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle,” he said. “We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”

After the speech, Mother and Dad escorted the Reagans to their final departure aboard the presidential helicopter. Then they attended a luncheon on Capitol Hill and made their way down the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue. That night they attended twelve inaugural balls before returning, dead tired, to the White House. Fortunately, the residence is spacious enough that they did not hear the joyous shrieks of their ten grandchildren, all of whom they had invited to spend the night. The next morning, Dad was up early, ready to get to work as the forty-first President of the United States.

—

GEORGE BUSH TOOK naturally to the presidency, especially the foreign policy aspects of the job. His first major diplomatic decision was to attend the funeral of Japanese Emperor Hirohito. His choice drew fire from some of his fellow World War II veterans, who remembered the atrocities committed under Hirohito. My father understood their reaction; after all, he had fought the same enemy. But Dad believed that a nation, like a person, can change. And Japan had changed in a fundamental way. After the war, Hirohito had helped oversee Japan’s transition to democracy. By 1989, Japan was one of America’s closest allies, and Dad wanted to honor the relationship between the two democracies. Japan’s leaders were grateful for his gesture of respect. And during my presidency a dozen years later, one of my closest friends on the world stage was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Unfortunately for Dad, most of the media attention during his Japan trip had little to do with foreign policy. Reporters had their eyes on the United States Senate, where John Tower, the nominee for Defense Secretary, was locked in a tough confirmation battle. Tower had made some enemies on the other side of the aisle, and they came out during the hearings. The raucous debates were full of innuendo about Tower’s personal life. George Bush was rightly upset that his friend was being treated so unfairly, and he tried to stand up for his nominee. In spite of Dad’s strong defense of Tower, however, the Senate voted down a Cabinet nomination for the first time in thirty years. In a decision that would affect us both for years to come, the House Minority Whip, a Congressman from Wyoming, was nominated to take Tower’s place. The Senate promptly confirmed Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

The next stop on Dad’s Asia trip was China. As one of the nation’s most experienced and knowledgeable China experts, he knew all the relevant players in Beijing. My parents received a warm welcome from Chairman Deng Xiaoping and Premier Li Peng, who gave them a set of bicycles—a reminder of their favorite activity during their time in the Liaison Office fifteen years earlier. On a Sunday morning, my parents attended services at the church where they used to worship and where my sister Doro had been baptized in 1975. As Dad later reflected, the church service reminded them of how much they had enjoyed their time in China—or as he called it, their “home away from home.”

Not all aspects of the China visit went so smoothly. A barbecue that my parents hosted for Chinese officials produced an unexpected crisis. Ambassador Winston Lord invited a long list of guests from Chinese society, including the human rights activist Fang Lizhi. Dad later learned that Chinese security had prevented Fang from attending the event. The next day, the incident dominated the headlines. As with the Tower nomination, the news of the day overpowered the intended message of the visits.