Born to Run
What’s in a name? How about the Republican nomination for governor. Now the highly confident, but untested George W. Bush has to convince voters that he’s more than just a chip off the old block.
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As Bush began delivering his first campaign speeches in November, he told audiences that he was not running because he was the son of George and Barbara Bush; he was running because he was concerned for the future of his own children. It was a great line. The only problem was that his brother Jeb was also using it in his own Florida gubernatorial campaign. George W. Bush was proving himself to be a terrific campaigner, but a critical listener couldn’t help but wonder if, deep down, Bush was truly prepared for this race.
It’s a morning meeting of criminal justice officials in the northeast Texas town of Sherman, and Bush has arrived to pass on his vision of Texas: a state where everyone is, to use one of his favorite words, “accountable.” A state where people alone are responsible for making their lives better. A state with a drastically reduced welfare program, in which benefits are cut off after two years and the recipients forced to go to work. There will be no guilt-ridden Yalies in Bush’s Texas. No William Sloane Coffins. The kind of government Bush says he prefers is one that creates “negative reinforcement” to make people change their behavior. “A governor can’t pass a law to make you love,” he says. “But he can pass a law to protect the innocent, law-abiding citizens from thugs.”
To that end, he is sharing with these Sherman officials his seventeen-point plan to stop juvenile crime, which includes sending especially violent juvenile criminals, even those as young as fourteen, to adult prisons (though segregated from the adult population) for mandatory sentences. “It’s always been normal, when a child turns into a criminal, to say that it’s our fault-society’s fault,” Bush says. “Well, under George W. Bush, it’s your fault. You’re going to get locked up, because we aren’t going to have any more guilt-ridden thought that says that we are somehow responsible.”
A juvenile probation officer challenges him. “We don’t need more juvenile detention facilities,” she says. “We need more rehabilitation for these kids to help them change.”
“Wait a minute,” says Bush, his temper rising—he does not respond well to criticism—”In order to win the war, we’ve got to make these criminals realize we mean punishment. They’ll start changing once they realize they’re going to get punished every time they screw up.”
While Governor Richards, the twelve-stepper, proposes that juveniles undergo more counseling, including heavy counseling for drug addiction, which she calls the major root of crime, Bush wants quick results. He doesn’t think much about the roots of crime. He also doesn’t put much stock in open-ended rehabilitation programs. At Richards’ urging, the Legislature initiated a policy establishing drug treatment in prison-a program that criminal justice experts almost unanimously agree is long overdue in Texas-but Bush will have none of it. He proposes to take $25 million from drug treatment programs in the adult prison system to build more local detention centers for juveniles. “The first priority is building more prisons and getting these criminals off the streets,” he says.
Bush’s approach to crime is indicative of his strengths and weaknesses as a politician. On the stump, his lock-’em-up attitude has great appeal to voters, but it’s naive for him to think the high recidivism rates for criminals will ever drop significantly unless there are strong rehabilitation programs for prisoners used to a life of crime.
As a political newcomer who has spent little time studying government policy, Bush is having to learn as he runs. During a tour of a boot camp in Austin one afternoon, a boot camp official was giving an in-depth report on the variety of vocational classes offered to the young inmates. “Hey,” interrupted a curious Bush, firing a question out of left field, “what happens when one of these fellows decides he wants to punch you?”
Depending on your point of view, it is either refreshing or a little unnerving that a man who might be governor in November is still working out his ideas about what a governor should do. In a meeting earlier this year, he told his group of education advisers (which included former GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Luce and state Senate Education Committee chairman Bill Ratliff) that he wanted to hear some proposals that would completely undermine the top-heavy Texas Education Agency that controls local school districts. The advisers met among themselves a few times, then came back to Bush. After a one-hour meeting, Bush pulled the trigger and chose the most radical option presented to him: a “home rule” plan that would allow a locality’s voters to declare the locality completely independent from the TEA and set up its own school system, using whatever teaching methods and curricula it chooses. (Districts would have to remain under state school-financing provisions and continue to have to meet certain state-set guidelines for educational achievement.)
Bush envisions schools being run by local school boards that care about education, but it’s at least equally likely that the home-rule plan could lead to endless debate among newly autonomous local school boards over whether to include sex education and school prayer in the classroom. Bush doesn’t seem to have thought much about this. He says he threw out the idea, in part, to get voters to begin thinking more deeply about various ways to reinvigorate public education. In a frank confession, he also tells me he went public with such a plan early in the campaign “because I knew I needed to show myself to be something other than what people project me to be, which is a nice and decent person but maybe not too substantive, maybe a guy who just floated through Yale as opposed to being a leading-edge intellectual.” He adds, “I wanted people to know I cared about ideas and that I was willing to think differently.”
Bush does not deny that there are still gaps in his policies. He talks about increasing the share of state spending for education—thereby shrinking the inequitable funding through local property taxes—but he cannot exactly say where that funding will come from. (The cost of raising the state’s share of education spending from the current 45 percent to, say, 50 percent, would send state spending soaring from $7 billion a year to $8 billion a year.) He says he wants to use his personal persuasive skills as governor to encourage localities to build “tough love” academies for unruly school kids and start mentoring programs for disadvantaged youngsters—but he doesn’t say exactly how he can talk financially overburdened city councils into spending more of their own money without receiving assistance from the state. He vows to overturn a federal court’s infamous Ruiz ruling that has made the cost of operating prisons excessively high—but he doesn’t know yet what his arguments in court would be.
Voters already seem to know he is weak on specifics. At a chamber of commerce luncheon in the little town of Mont Belvieu, south of Houston, an older woman hammered away at Bush with questions about funding for the extra prisons he wants to build. “Well, there’s someone who’s against me,” he told me afterward. Then the woman walked up and asked if she could get Bush’s autograph and take his picture.
For a moment, Bush seemed puzzled, but he understood when the woman said,”I love your father.”
On March 2, Texas Indepenence Day, the former president made a rare appearance for his son. He and Barbara were featured guests at a private $1,000-a-person fundraising dinner at Dallas’ Loews Anatole Hotel. It was a glorious evening to be a Republican from Texas. Around the tables, the crowd was giddy from U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s recent acquittal. They talked about how strong she and Bush would look at the top of the Republican ticket in November. The ballroom was filled with polished, professional-looking women in their thirties and forties, exactly the kind of supporters Bush needs to beat Richards.
To thunderous applause, George and Barbara Bush came out behind glittery pink and blue curtains. Then, to even louder applause, out came their son and Laura. For a long moment, Big George and Little George looked at one another. Both were trying to control their emotions. It was “the passing of the torch,” George W. would later say. “For the first time in our family, Dad knew he was not going to be the center of attention. He knew it was another generation’s time.” Finally, the old man shook hands with his son and led Barbara, who had tears in her eyes, to their seats.
After an introduction by Nolan Ryan, George W. Bush stepped to the podium. He looked across the audience toward the center table. It was the first time his father and mother had ever heard him speak publicly. “Mr. President,” said Bush. Pause. “Mom.” The crowd roared. He was off and running, telling jokes about having his father’s eyes …”and my mother’s mouth.” Roar.
It was exactly the kind of speech his father never would have given-affable and irreverent, casual and down to earth. Smoothly, George W. segued into his theme: “This race is really not about me. It is about the desire of everyone in this room to see to it our children can live in prosperity. I’m just the messenger.”
But George W. wanted to make sure this audience knew this race was really all about him. When he got to the line in his prepared text that read, “As sure as I’m standing here, I know we’re going to win,” he said instead, “As sure as I’m standing here, I know I’m going to win.” Even at that moment, he was still fighting to be his own man, someone other than his father’s son.
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