THE 23 OF 43:

Dubya and Me: Over the course of a quarter-century, a journalist witnessed the transformation of George W. Bush (Walt Harrington, 9/02/11, American Scholar)

"So what is it about history that grabs you?" I ask.

"I'm fascinated by people," Bush says, "and a lot of history is the study of individuals making a difference. ... I haven't really sat and tried to figure out why I was interested. All I can tell you is I have been for a long period of time."

In high school, at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Bush had an American history teacher, Tom Lyons, who brought the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression to life. "He made history so interesting and exciting," recalls Bush, who was no star pupil, either at Andover or at Yale, where he majored in history. One of his favorite professors at Yale, Wolfgang Leonhard, had fled Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, only to see his mother arrested under Stalin. Leonhard defected and ended up teaching the young Bush about the horrors of Soviet-era oppression. Professors such as Leonhard created in Bush, even if he was a C+ student, a lasting impression: "what it was like to live under a society in which a few made the decisions for everybody."

"When I became more sober about life"--and Bush chuckles here--"a philosophy, a kind of clarity began to take hold. ... I think, as I matured, the seeds that had been planted during college began to take hold. In other words, the lessons I'd learned, which fascinated me at the time, actually became part of a philosophical foundation." Bush would eventually come to describe this foundation, starkly and simply, as "the struggle between tyranny and freedom."

"When I got elected governor and president, history gave me a chance to study the decisions of my predecessors," Bush says. As governor, he read The Raven, by Marquis James, a biography of Sam Houston, the father of Texas statehood. "I was fascinated by the story of Houston voting against secession, and reading a description of him basically being driven out of town by angry citizens. ... My only point is that one lesson I learned, if they're throwing garbage on Houston, arguably Texas's most famous politician--Sam Houston Elementary School, where I went to school in Midland, was named for him!--if they're throwing garbage on him, they can throw garbage on me."

Bush remained calm and confident during his tumultuous presidency. Critics saw him as delusional; defenders saw him as self-assured. Bush believes that one of the most important stage requirements of the presidency is indeed never to signal weakness or self-doubt or confusion: "One of the things you learn about great leaders is that they never project the burdens of responsibility on others." He remembers Richard Carwardine's Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (one of 14 Lincoln biographies Bush read while he was president), which recounts the 16th president's perseverance through not only military defeat after defeat, stupefying troop casualties, and public ridicule, but also the death of his son Willie and the debilitating emotional turmoil of his wife.

"You're not the only person that's ever gone through hard things," Bush says of the lessons he has learned from history. "In other words, can you imagine the signal I would have sent had I said, 'Ah, why me? Why am I thrust in the middle of all this stuff?' And they had kids on the front line of combat who were actually having to do all the work."

"You faced some vicious personal attacks," I say.

"I did. But so did Abraham Lincoln." He recalls opening the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. "There's an exhibit, and the voices of opposition to Lincoln were being played. I said, 'Wow!' This guy, America's--remember now, I got Lincoln's portrait on the wall at the White House and I got a bust of Lincoln--and I hear the people calling him a baboon, just vicious."

When Bush read, in Presidential Courage, by Michael Beschloss, that historians were still debating whether George Washington had been a good president, he told Laura that if they were still debating Washington's presidency more than 200 years later, he would not worry what public opinion was saying about him now. "And the other thing for me was that I saw a great man be criticized, as you might recall," he says, referring again to the vitriol aimed at GHWB during the losing reelection campaign of 1992. "On the harshness meter, it seemed unusually harsh to me, as the son. So, therefore, when I became president, the criticism to me was nothing compared to the criticism to him. And so I was able to keep life in perspective two ways: one, through reading of history and how other leaders were treated, but also having witnessed history with my dad."

A book got me back together with President W. after a decade, my own book The Everlasting Stream, a memoir of my many years of rabbit hunting with my Kentucky father-in-law and his good-old-boy buddies. In it, I also mentioned my back-and-forth negotiations with GHWB, and my publisher thought it would be great to have a book cover blurb from the former president, who graciously agreed. When the book appeared in the fall of 2002, I sent GHWB a signed copy, along with a signed copy for W. Soon, I got a handwritten note from President W.

"Old #41 gave me your book (which I will soon read)," the president wrote. He gave his best to my family and ended with, "Come by sometime." Then, I got another handwritten letter from the president dated four days later: "I just finished The Everlasting Stream and liked it a lot. I told Laura, 'The boy can still write.' ... Should you ever come back to see what you are missing, check in at the Post or rub elbows with the powerful, please call Ashley"--and he gave me his White House secretary's direct dial. "I really enjoy my job,  ... " he also wrote. "The only problem with this place is there aren't enough rabbit hunters up here."

I know that two invitations from the president should have spurred me to action, but I wasn't planning to be in Washington until the following August. In the meantime, at the University of Illinois, where I had become a journalism professor after leaving The Washington Post in 1996, I was surrounded by students and faculty angry about Bush's impending invasion of Iraq. In my academic cocoon, Bush was called a stupid warmonger trying to avenge his father's failure to oust Saddam Hussein, a stupid warmonger trying to make the world safe for Big Oil, a stupid warmonger trying to prop up his sagging popularity. I told colleagues that I believed Bush--right or wrong--sincerely considered Iraq a deadly threat to the United States, period. My view got me labeled a Bush conservative. Then one morning I got into my academic office building's elevator and saw this scratched into the paint: "Kill Bush."

I had to catch my breath: Was this America?

When New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd invoked my by-then ancient Washington Post Magazine article about GHWB in arguing that W. was little more than "a wealthy white man with the right ancestors," I wrote a column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch responding both to Dowd and to all the vitriol directed toward the president.

"I have told various George W. haters that they had best not underestimate the man," I wrote, "that he's smart, thoughtful in a brawny kind of way and, most of all, a good and decent man. ... What I've never mentioned is that I didn't vote for George W. I disagree with him on the Supreme Court, environment, abortion, the death penalty and affirmative action. So I voted against this good and decent man. It pained me to do it. ... It baffles me that grown people must convince themselves that those with whom they disagree are stupid or malevolent."

I didn't hear from the president, but a few days later, I got a poignant letter from his father. "Tell those kids in your class not to give up on POTUS," he wrote, using the popular acronym for president of the United States. "Tell them life for a president is not easy, yet I have never heard #43 whine about the loneliest job on earth, never seen him pose gazing out into the future to depict how tough his job is. Walt, he does not want war. He does want Iraq to do what it has pledged to do. Have you ever seen a president face so many tough problems all at once? I haven't." The elder Bush was clearly feeling as much pain over the criticism of his son as W. had felt over the criticism of his father.

I figured that after publicly declaring that I had not voted for W., the invitations to the White House would cease. Yet when I was in Washington the following August, in 2003--three months after the "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln--I called Ashley, as directed. To my astonishment, Ashley called back and said the president would love to see me. In the early evening a couple days later, I pulled into the southeast gate to the White House.

"Where should I park?" I asked the officer.

"Anywhere in the lot," he said. "Who are you here to see?"

"President Bush."

"Oh," he sputtered, "then pull up along the circle and park at the White House."

I rolled my little '95 Toyota Camry up to the back door, where mine was the only car. A polite Secret Service agent met me, and up I went again in the White House elevator. When the doors opened, there was President W., wearing, as I recall, a rather garish flower-print shirt and casual cream-colored slacks.

"Walt, how are you?" I remember him asking as he hugged me with one arm.

"I'm well, Mr. President. And you?"

The president had two cigars in the other hand, and he offered me one. "You still smoke cigars?" he asked.

"I thought you had gotten rid of all your bad habits," I said, as we walked through the long, elegant center hall in the second-floor residence.

"I still curse a little bit, too," he said, laughing. "Let's go out on the balcony," meaning the Truman Balcony, which overlooks the South Lawn and the Washington Monument.

The president gestured for me to sit facing the beautiful, sunny vista, and he sat facing me, his back to the yard. We lit up, puffed on our cigars, caught up on family news, talked briefly about my memoir and my column in the Post-Dispatch, which he had read. I could think of only one question to ask him: "What is it like to be president of the United States?"

President Bush leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at me intently. "Are we off the record?"

"Yes."

And he began to talk--and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I've never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as "amazing," "remarkable," "stunning."

President Bush--and he was, no doubt, by then a real president--talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran's nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me. Perhaps a half hour into the conversation, we were joined by Bush's campaign media adviser, Mark McKinnon, whom Bush had nicknamed "M-Kat."

"M-Kat used to be a Democrat, too," Bush quipped, referring to me. "I converted him."

After about an hour, Bush said that Laura was out of town and asked if McKinnon and I would like to join him for dinner. We did, of course, and we moved into the residence dining room, where Bush sat at the head of the table, McKinnon and I on either side, while the president's black cat, Willie, lounged on the far end. Really, he just kept talking. I thought perhaps it was my naiveté that was making the evening seem so remarkable. But when the president was called away from the table for a few minutes, I asked McKinnon if working in the White House was as demanding as Bush had said. He said it was, and then he got a sort of faraway look in his eyes. "But then you have an evening like tonight," I remember him saying. I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn't answer.

"I've never known you to be speechless," she said, genuinely surprised.

I finally said, "It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets."

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