The Evolver
(Page 2 of 4)
For all the Rove/Hughes/Allbaugh Iron Triangle’s shrewdness, the Bush campaign was far from seasoned. Its policy director, Vance McMahan, had not worked a day in politics or government. Hughes herself had no experience in a campaign, Allbaugh none in Texas. And the man on whom George W. would most frequently rely for clarifying issue sticking points—and for delving into his past so as to anticipate questions about his bachelor days and his service in the National Guard—would be a 23-year-old University of Texas graduate named Dan Bartlett who happened to be the only one in the office when the candidate would call at seven in the morning, asking, “It says general crime’s gone up in Brazos County by thirty-six percent, but how do we know that?”
This first Bush Machine was more akin to a children’s crusade, and Richards had ample opportunity to squash it. But the governor preferred her exquisite put-downs to an engaged campaign. For months she paid her opponent no heed while he laid out the four defining issues. (But only those four; George W. had no life experience in matters such as health care, and it did not occur to the Richards camp to expose his ignorance early on.) For the same period, she spent little from her huge, Hollywood-endowed war chest when she could have forced the Bush camp to drain its lesser coffers. And Richards assumed that areas of Texas in which Republicans from time immemorial had been gaily tarred and feathered did not require her attention. She had forgotten one of her favorite aphorisms, that 80 percent of life is just showing up. That formula seldom holds true in politics, but it did in Texas in 1994: George W. showed up, Richards did not, and that made 80 percent of the difference.
From that moment on, he was a star. And he seemed properly fit for stardom the very next day after his election, when he stood in the Austin Hyatt and faced the national media with aplomb and grace. Before being sworn in, he responded to California’s enactment of Proposition 187—denying benefits such as public schooling to illegal aliens—with the stirring promise, “In Texas, we’re gonna educate the children.”
But there was a bit of swagger to that declaration as well, a hint that George W. Bush had arrived somewhat unready for the realities facing a state’s chief executive. And indeed, at an event for Republican governors in Williamsburg, Virginia, shortly after his election, he came off to some as a good-time Charlie rather than someone of gubernatorial stature.
But among George W.’s lifelong attributes was his awareness of his own limits and the willingness to surround himself with able (and loyal!) experts. The very first of these, after winning the election, was his tailor.
He knew that he was an awful dresser—had to know, the many times it had been pointed out to him: first in Midland, where a golf tournament offered a George W. Bush Dress Award to the worst-dressed participant, and later in Dallas, where his Rangers co-owner, Rusty Rose, would mercilessly observe, “Gee, didn’t you wear that shirt yesterday, George?” It never really bothered him much. Comfort was all-important, whereas fashion, pretty much by definition, was the province of those who felt insufficiently comfortable with themselves. Of course, Laura was comfortable and at the same time immaculately turned out. Bless her heart, she had given up the fight on George W.’s wardrobe long ago.
Now, however, he was on a stage where such things mattered. “It’s part of the discipline,” Jim Francis would say. And so one day Francis called tailor Barry Smith, who arrived at George W.’s Dallas home on Northwood just after the 1994 election.
Knowing it was time for a proper schooling, George W. listened. “I know you don’t like clothes—I can tell that,” began Smith. The governor-elect did not take umbrage, so he continued: “But we need to figure out what’s going to work well for you, because you’re entering a public profile. So, three things we need to think about. One, what is what you’re wearing going to look like on camera? Two, what are your best colors? And three, what do you like?”
“Well, obviously, I need dark suits,” George W. said. “I don’t do a lot of patterns.”
“Then let’s stick to basic blues and grays, get you inaugurated, and we’ll go from there.”
They stood in his walk-in closet and appraised his current wardrobe. It was a horror show. The tailor fingered the polyester Haggar slacks with the elastic waistband (the Haggar family were friends of George W.’s) and said, “I don’t think these portray the right kind of image you’re looking for.”
“I like them. I don’t much care for belts.”
“But they don’t take you to the next level. I’m not saying you have to throw them away. Wear them around the house if you want.”
Drawing the line, the governor-elect said, “I don’t like cuffs. They always get caught on something.” Smith assured him that he could do cuffless trousers.
Footwear: boots. A couple of pairs of loafers (which once had tassels, but he had cut them off), several pairs of running shoes, but otherwise, boots. He would be wearing them with his suits. Case closed.
They moved on to his dress shirts, which were all white—or had been at one time. “These have seen better days,” George W. chuckled as he noted the yellow rings under the arms.
They looked at his suits. A couple of them, purchased at a Dallas haberdashery, were quite nice. But George W. didn’t like them. “These jackets, they’re grabbing me,” he said. “So I’m just not gonna wear ’em.”
Smith suggested that they take all of his suits out of the closet. In one pile they would place the suits to be retained. The other pile would be donated to his church. In the end, the church made out like a bandit. Two suits were culled from the junk—uncomfortable ones, but they cost so damned much it seemed a pity to just toss them out.
It was done. Having already achieved success, George W. Bush would now begin dressing for it. And fevered from the breakthrough, he went a little crazy that afternoon, also ordering from Smith several pairs of socks, belts, ties, shirts, sport coats, and even a couple of basic lace-up cap-toe shoes.
But he kept some of the Haggar slacks with elastic waistbands. So comfortable!
He would succeed as governor because he wanted to get big things done and refused to allow the legislative process to water down his big things into little things. He would succeed because he would capitalize on Ann Richards’s alienation of her own tribe and befriend several Democratic legislators, inviting them to cookouts at the Governor’s Mansion and UT basketball games. He would succeed because he thought to bring in conservative big thinkers like James Q. Wilson and Michael Horowitz to push him and his staff with heady queries: What changes behavior? What is the government’s role in bringing hope to its citizens? How do we break the cycle of despair?
And so, in that historic first legislative session of 1995, Bush, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, and Speaker Pete Laney succeeded in passing the full monty: tougher juvenile justice laws, greater accountability in education, tighter restrictions on welfare, and civil suit reform. True, the first three initiatives had been moving through the legislative pipeline prior to Bush’s arrival, but the fact remained that George W. Bush campaigned to accomplish four things, and he had made good on his promise. Rove divined in this a strong whiff of national electability.
Bush imposed on the governor’s office a style of management that was not quite strict and not quite casual. By 7:45 in the morning he was in his office, signing letters, working his way down the call list. His subordinates knew to be in earlier (and never to be late) but also knew that the governor’s door was open; they didn’t have to grovel for face time.
They knew as well that the governor preferred his meetings short. “Give them an hour, they’ll take an hour,” he would say. “Give ’em ten minutes, they’ll focus better.” They knew that it was best not to bring him the heavier policy stuff right after lunchtime, when he would have just returned from a jog under the boiling sun. They knew that he could be quite impatient and peevish but that unpleasantness did not fester in him. “Well, don’t you think you ought to know that sort of thing from now on?” he would say to the blunderer in question. And after eliciting the correct reply, the governor would move on.
Though he was now quite the public figure, it was hardly a confining thing. He could shop for his own running shoes and jog his six miles on the hike-and-bike trail. As with everywhere else he went, George W. transformed the governor’s office into his own personal frat house, bestowing nicknames like Prophet (Hughes) and Pinkie (Allbaugh) and Turd Blossom (Rove) and Hawk (legislative director Albert Hawkins).
Still, was the job big enough?
Could he be of greater consequence?
