The transition was especially tough on Dad because his departure was premature. The sting of defeat lingered long past Bill Clinton’s inauguration. For the most part, Dad did not let his disappointment show. He had been raised to lose with grace, and he detested self-pity. When Bill and Hillary Clinton arrived at the White House on Inauguration Day, Mother and Dad received them with genuine kindness and warmth. Years later, I asked him how he found the strength to conduct himself that way. “I had no choice,” he said. But the truth of the matter is that he did have a choice. He could have chosen to be bitter or resentful. Instead, as he wrote in a letter that he left for President Clinton on the Oval Office desk, he was rooting hard for his successor.
The adjustment to private life did not come naturally to Dad. My father was sixty-eight years old, with the energy of a man half that age. It seemed that his earlier health issues had abated. He had spent his entire life pushing himself from one mission to the next. For the past four years, he had held the most mentally stimulating, challenging, and exhilarating job in the world. For the past thirty years, he’d poured all his energy into different pursuits. Then, all of a sudden, he had nothing to do. As I would later put it, leaving the presidency feels like going from a hundred miles per hour to about five.
In Houston, Dad would arrive at his new office at seven a.m. and spend most of the day shuffling through mail. He made phone calls to raise money for his presidential library. He hit the paid speaking circuit, a pursuit that he jokingly called “white-collar crime.”
One benefit of involuntary retirement was that Mother and Dad got to take some leisurely trips. Shortly after he left office, they went on a commercial cruise on one of the Love Boat ships. Every time they left their cabin they were mobbed by starstruck shipmates. Dad was particularly amused when he walked out of the sauna naked one day and a man blurted out, “Do you mind if I take a photo?” On the positive side, it was nice to know that he still had a fan base. As a follow-up to that trip a few years later, Dad planned a surprise fiftieth-wedding-anniversary party for Mother at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. As Mother said, “Your father has a way of planning events without seeking my approval.”
Dad also spent some time writing. He decided to coauthor a book about his foreign policy with Brent Scowcroft. The decision to write a joint book was revealing. No President had ever split his byline with an aide. But Dad wanted to share credit with his friend. He also wanted to avoid a memoir that was focused on himself. I suspect that the disappointment about his defeat played a role as well. At that point, he may not have been able to summon up the energy to write a book that had an unhappy political ending. He never did write a presidential memoir.
Although the speeches and writing filled George Bush’s time and bank account, they did little to fill the void of intensity and excitement left by his departure from the presidency. And they didn’t heal the pain left by his defeat. To make matters worse, Dad’s beloved dog Ranger died a few months after he returned home to Houston. Shortly thereafter, Dad and James Baker visited President François Mitterrand in Paris. At the beginning of his presidency, relations between French and American leaders had been frosty. That started to change when Dad invited the French President to Kennebunkport. The personal diplomacy paid off, and the two leaders became close friends. At the dinner in France in 1993, Mitterrand offered a toast to Dad and to their warm relations. When George Bush stood up to return the toast, tears flowed. The moment had reminded him how much he loved the presidency. I think the outpouring of emotion that day—and on other occasions soon after he left the White House—refl
For her part, Mother seemed to handle the challenge more smoothly—and with her usual bluntness. Shortly after the election, she announced to the family, “Well, now that’s behind us. It’s time to move on.” She did. She stayed busy planning the construction of their new house in Houston. She started work on a memoir, which eventually became a bestseller. And she bought a Mercury Sable station wagon and drove herself for the first time since the late 1970s. As Dad joked, the most dangerous place in America was on the roads in their neighborhood.
Mother even did some cooking. I was the recipient of one of her first meals the night before the Houston marathon, which I ran four days after my parents returned from Washington. To carbo-load for the race, I asked Mother to make pasta. She generously agreed. She boiled the water successfully. In went the noodles. Then she tried to put a lid on the boiling pot, which sent the water and spaghetti spraying out. As Dad observed, the dish was pretty good, as long as you like your pasta rare. The next day, my parents came to cheer me on during the marathon. As I ran past them, Dad yelled out, “That’s my boy!” Mother tried a different form of encouragement. “Keep moving, George,” she shouted. “There are some fat people ahead of you.”
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IN THE SUMMER of 1993, I called my parents with some news: “I’m going to run for Governor of Texas.”
Mother’s response was swift. “You can’t win against such a popular opponent,” she blurted.
Dad was quiet. I was not surprised that Dad did not have much to say. Throughout my life, he never tried to steer me in one direction or another. His approach to parenting was to instill values, set an example, and support us in whatever we chose to do.
In spite of his silence on the matter, George Bush had a big influence on my decision to run for Governor. Through his words and his life, he had taught all of his children the value of public service. By helping him over the years, I had learned a lot about campaigns. And by watching his presidency, I had learned that good policy is good politics, not the other way around. I had developed strong convictions about policy changes needed in Texas, especially in the areas of education, tort reform, welfare, and juvenile justice. The only question was whether the timing was right.
Dad’s defeat partially helped answer that question. Had he been reelected in 1992, I would not have run for Governor in 1994. I was running against a popular incumbent, and as the son of the President it would have been distracting to answer questions about whether I agreed with every decision that his administration made.
I knew there was a chance that I would not succeed. As I saw it, I could either run and lose, in which case some people would say, “What a lousy candidate.” Or I could run and win, in which case some people would say, “What a lousy Governor.” But none of that matters if you have the unconditional love of a man you admire. And I admire George H.W. Bush above anyone else.
I wasn’t the only one inspired by George Bush. Around that same time, my brother Jeb announced that he was running for Governor of Florida. Jeb and I both felt—and Dad agreed—that he should not play a public role in our campaigns. It was important that the voters see us for what we were: our own men. Dad never intervened or offered unsolicited advice, but it was clear that he was following our races closely. From time to time I would check in with him, and he would always find a way to compliment a recent campaign performance or cheer me up after a lousy editorial. It struck me that our roles had been reversed. After years of my supporting him in the political arena, he was supporting me.
I think my campaign and Jeb’s campaign in 1994 played an important role in helping Dad adjust to the new chapter of his life. Just as his father had done after he retired from the Senate in 1964, he embraced his new position as a source of encouragement for the next generation. And he found something positive about his defeat in 1992—it had given rise to the political careers of two people whom he had raised and loves.