Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter forty

The evening after Stanford’s event in my honor, my father and I had dinner. He was a little pensive but jokingly said that maybe I’d have more time for dinner now that I was no longer going to be provost. Hearing that, I made a silent vow to see him more.

“So, what are you going to do for an encore?” he asked.

I explained that I liked management and the private sector and thought that I might try to combine the two.

“Aren’t you going to help George W. Bush on foreign policy?” Daddy asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “But that won’t be full-time.”

“Sure,” Daddy said incredulously—and presciently.

My association with Governor Bush had begun in earnest in August 1998 when George H. W. Bush called to invite me to spend a little time with his son Governor George W. Bush, just so we could get to know each other better and talk a little about foreign policy.

When the then–Texas governor told me that he’d likely make a run for the White House, his presidential bid struck me as having long odds for success. The Clinton years had been morally tarnished but peaceful and relatively prosperous. The governor was untested and would likely face a real pro in Vice President Al Gore. I was too polite to say these things, but I sure thought them.

George W. Bush was still a few months from being reelected as Texas governor in a landslide victory, carrying 68 percent of the vote. He told me that he was confident of reelection and that if he won impressively (which he fully expected), he’d likely run for the Presidency. He wanted to start thinking about what to do in foreign policy if he got elected. Throughout the weekend, while fishing (he fished, I sat in the boat and watched) or exercising side by side in the small family gym on the compound, we talked about Russia, China, and Latin America. I soon realized that he knew our southern neighbors, particularly Mexico, far better than I did.

But we also talked about other things. He was interested in my upbringing in segregated Birmingham. I was attracted to his passion for improving education for disadvantaged youth.

We emailed back and forth several times during the fall, and a couple of days after the election, I received a note from him. From that time on, we began to follow international events together. In March 1999 I received a call asking if I’d come down to Austin to talk to the governor about the upcoming campaign. When my picture appeared on the front page of the New York Times as a member of the exploratory committee dedicated to electing George W. Bush President of the United States, my father was the first person I called.

The campaign itself proved professionally fulfilling, but early on I realized that it would require my full-time focus. Foreign policy would be the governor’s Achilles’ heel against more seasoned candidates in the primaries and, eventually, in the general election. I knew that George Bush would look to me to help answer the inevitable questions about his readiness to assume the mantle of commander in chief.

I was having fun. Anyone who’s interested in politics should do a campaign from the ground floor at least once. I loved the pace and the sense of being a part of an adventure.

Then, in February 2000, Daddy suffered cardiac arrest. I was in a meeting when my assistant burst in and said that something had happened to Daddy. I rushed out and sped to his house. It looked like a scene from a TV medical drama. Daddy was on the floor and they were shocking his heart. I heard the medic say, “I have a weak pulse.” We all rushed to the hospital and waited. It hadn’t been a heart attack, but his heart had stopped long enough to deprive his brain of oxygen, and he was now in a coma. No one could say what the prognosis was.

Daddy continued in a coma for about a week and then he began to stir. But he’d sustained significant brain damage. A few times we were asked those awful questions about whether to continue life-sustaining support. Here I have to say that I was weaker than my stepmother, who was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to keep my father alive. I just wasn’t so sure and prayed every day and night for guidance about what to do.

Then one day I was in his room and the basketball game was on television. I thought I could see him tracking the game with his eyes. Not long after, Daddy began to improve, and eventually he was transferred to a nursing home for long-term care.

Soon after, I resumed my campaign activities. I called several times a day to check on Daddy, and friends took daily shifts to sit with my father. The nursing home had wonderful, caring attendants, but such facilities are woefully understaffed, so I never trusted the quality of care enough to leave him alone, even for a minute.

Sometimes Clara or my aunt Gee, my mother’s sister who’d come out to help us, would put Daddy on the phone. He seemed to know that he was talking to me. I tried never to be away from home for too long, returning to help oversee his multiple therapies and feeding tubes or struggle with Medicare and insurance. And I would endure those terrible episodes when he would yell out for what seemed like hours. This was, according to the doctors, a good sign that his brain was repairing itself. To me it sounded as if my father was being flung into the depths of hell.

By the summer, Daddy’s condition had improved somewhat more and we moved him home, with the help of wonderful caretakers. Daddy seemed to understand what was being said to him, but his responses were often off track. Yet at least he was home, where we could sing together and share the occasional flashes of lucidity that would come. Sometimes he’d amaze us all. On Thanksgiving as we gathered around his bed, my uncle Alto said, “Who is going to give the blessing?” Without missing a beat, Daddy reached somewhere deep into the recesses of his memory and prayed.

He never fully recovered, but he fought to live. Several times he was near death and refused to go. As I watched this giant of a man who’d loved me more than anything in the world approach the end, it was hard to find much good in life. It seemed so unfair that I could no longer share stories of the campaign with my father. Here I was at the height of my professional career, and my father couldn’t enjoy it with me. Not surprisingly, my absences from home became a source of guilt for me, and the campaign, which had been such a thrill, became something of a slog. But I kept going and told myself that Daddy undoubtedly approved of my decision to keep my commitment to the campaign.

I flew down to Austin the afternoon of the election. By the time I arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel, the news stations were chalking up state after state in the Gore column. By the time I made it downstairs to watch with a few Bush friends and family, everything was going against us: Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida were all gone. I sat there with Doro Bush Koch, the governor’s sister, and watched in dismay. “Let’s change places,” I said to Doro, employing a superstition from my days as a sports fan. If your team is not winning while you’re sitting on the right side of the sofa, move to the left. Yes, I know it doesn’t matter, but it can’t hurt.

We did change places. Then, almost magically, NBC News reported that we had won Georgia. Next came reports that the news stations were going to reverse their call on Florida. Hours later the TV screen suddenly showed “George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.” It was quite a moment. I wanted to call my father but decided not to, fearing that he would be too disoriented to share the moment with me.

I jumped into a minivan with other Bush supporters for the trip to the capitol for the victory speech. It was freezing cold in Austin, and we stood on the square, rocking to music and hugging each other. But something was wrong. Al Gore hadn’t conceded. I could also see the big screen displaying CNN’s election coverage. The margin of victory in Florida was shrinking very fast, and there would likely be a recount.

“You know what this is like?” I said to a friend. “It’s like eating a really spicy meal before bed and having a bad dream. You think to yourself, ‘Must have been what I ate last night. Boy, I’m glad to wake up from that one!’” But of course it wasn’t a dream.

Governor Bush called the morning after the election to say that he wanted me to be national security advisor but that we’d obviously have to wait a bit on any announcement. It was surreal, but we went through the motions of planning a foreign policy transition that might never happen. One particularly bad idea was to have a photo op of the governor and me sitting in front of a fireplace discussing foreign policy. It looked like a faux Oval Office shot and was properly ridiculed. I decided to go home to California.

The return to California gave me a chance to spend quality time with my father. I watched the ups and downs in Florida, my mood swinging with every court decision. Sometimes Daddy seemed to be tracking, becoming agitated and shedding tears when the news was bad.

I left on December 8 to attend a meeting of the foreign policy team in Washington. We were planning for the transition in case there was one. After the session, fellow campaign worker Steve Hadley and I were sitting in the conference room of his law office when we got word that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a manual recount. As we headed over to a restaurant for dinner, I said, “Steve, I would have loved to serve with you. You would have been a great deputy national security advisor.”

I flew home to California the next day believing that it was over. When I got off the plane and into the car, my driver gave me an update. The Supreme Court had by a 5–4 decision issued a stay, halting the manual recounts and setting a hearing for the matter on Monday, December 11. This meant that the judges in the majority were likely to rule in favor of Bush on the merits of the case, certifying Bush as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes. George W. Bush would indeed become the 43rd President of the United States.

Three days before Christmas I stopped in to see Daddy on my way to dinner, and he seemed in pretty good spirits. I called a few hours later, and Daddy got on the phone. “I’m going home,” he said.

“Daddy, you are at home,” I answered.

“No, it’s time for me to go home.”

I knew in my heart what he meant, and it terrified me. My father, a Presbyterian minister and a man of great faith, believed that at the end of our earthly existence, God calls us home to eternal life.

I rushed to his house. He seemed fine, and I left to drive the ten minutes to my house. As I walked in the door, Clara was calling. Daddy had stopped breathing. We rushed to the hospital. This time the physical and mental damage were irreparable. On Christmas Eve, after slipping into a coma, my father died.

I’d told Daddy just after the election that George Bush wanted me to go to Washington and become national security advisor. He cried at the news, but I couldn’t tell whether they were tears of joy for my achievement or tears of despair because he knew that we would be separated. With his death he resolved my dilemma. Was it coincidence? I’ve always prayed that it was, because I can’t bear to think that John Wesley Rice Jr. deliberately did this one last thing to make sure I fulfilled my dreams. Honestly, it would have been just like him.