There are times in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd, that people, perfect strangers, come up to him and say the harshest things — words intended to comfort but words that wind up only causing pain.
“I love you, sir, but your son’s way off base here,” they might say, according to Ron Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Bush, who has witnessed any number of such encounters. They are, he says, just one way the presidency of the son has taken a toll on the father.
These are distressing days for the Bush family patriarch, only the second former president in American history, after John Adams, to see his son take the White House. At 83, he finds it tough to watch his son get criticised from the sidelines.
The official line from the White House is that 41, as he is known in Bush circles, gives advice to 43 only when asked. But interviews with a broad range of people close to both presidents suggest the former president is not nearly so distant as the White House would have people believe. They talk almost every morning by phone.
He has privately expressed irritation with some of his son’s aides. At times, he has urged White House officials to seek outside advice, and he has passed on his own foreign policy wisdom to the president, even as he makes a point of saying his son’s administration is not his.
He views himself, in the words of Doro Bush Koch, his daughter, as “a loving father, first and foremost”, but as he himself suggested to a group of insurance agents at a recent dinner in Minneapolis, loving fathers find it tough to stay away.
Their relationship is undoubtedly the most scrutinised father-son bond in Washington, especially given the well-publicised foreign policy rifts between their two camps.
The rivalry theory flared up again last year, at the christening of the navy’s newest Nimitz aircraft carrier, the George H W Bush. The president joked that given the ship’s qualities — “she is unrelenting, she is unshakeable, she is unyielding” — it should have been named for his mother. The line brought a laugh, but some close to the elder Bush winced at what seemed a subtle dig.
When phone calls come in from Houston (home of the elder Bush), White House aides make themselves scarce. Nearly 15 years have passed since the first President Bush left the White House, and though he remains vigorous he has also slowed down. Ms Koch says her father is growing more emotional as he ages — “he has a tender heart that is getting tenderer” — which makes criticism of his eldest son that much harder to take.
NYT