Where Is the Real George Bush?

By Robert Ajemian

All the factors and issues involved in deciding a presidential election notwithstanding, voters ultimately tend to select the individual whose character and ideals they think are most suited to the challenges of the job. This is the first in a series of occasional TIME profiles that will attempt to give a sense of the personal characteristics and individual outlooks of the major potential 1988 contenders.

November was drawing to a close, and though the Iran arms scandal was an accelerating political danger, the President, even in private conversation, still refused to concede error. George Bush confided to a friend that he was troubled by Ronald Reagan's position. "He won't even listen to the word mistake," related Bush. The President, he told the friend, had to make some kind of move. It was a rare lapse for the fastidious Vice President: even with close friends, he maintains a total blackout about his dealings with Reagan.

Bush's discipline in that regard has been astonishing. At White House meetings, he stays mostly silent. One man who has attended hundreds of small sessions with Bush says he has no idea what the Vice President really thinks. When the aides who prepare him for his weekly one-on-one luncheon with the President grow curious about the fate of their ideas and ask about Reagan's reactions, the Vice President clams up. He is determined that no one discern differences between himself and the President.

Such unquenchable loyalty fits Bush's upright nature. Yet he has so drastically subordinated himself, become such a burbling presidential cheerleader, that his own political identity is almost unrecognizable. Often he seems politically frightened, a finicky, pandering man with no mind of his own. But there is far more to Bush. He is, in private, vastly self-assured, opinionated, almost bullheaded in his views. What happens to all this confidence when George Bush is called upon to be his own man? Does he have the personal force and imagination for real leadership, or is he just a sycophantic smoothie hanging on by his fingernails?

Family members recall that in his youth, success was always paramount with George. In 1943, at 18, he became the youngest pilot in the Navy. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Longtime friends believe that Bush, one of four sons, was determined to please his imposing father, Prescott Bush, a Wall Street banker who later became a U.S. Senator from Connecticut. However it happened, the son has ever since been in physical overdrive.

Bush is a man of action rather than reflection. He prefers talking out problems to reading written staff summaries. Doubts about a particular decision set off a flurry of activity, as though sheer motion will somehow make them go away. Campaigning, he moves along an airport rope line, a metallic smile flashing on and off his face, racing almost manically through the process. It is no surprise that the Vice President greatly prefers power- boats to sail. Power, he says, saves time.

Ideas and ideologies do not move Bush. People and their problems do. Domestic issues, in particular, stir him little. One man interviewed by Bush in 1980 for a senior post on his presidential campaign staff asked the candidate what two or three issues mattered most to him. Bush paused, then answered in his own way: he would put the best people in charge and create a superb Government. Colleagues say that while Bush understands thoroughly the complexities of issues, he does not easily fit them into larger themes.

This has led to the charge that he lacks vision. It rankles him. Recently he asked a friend to help him identify some cutting issues for next year's campaign. Instead, the friend suggested that Bush go alone to Camp David for a few days to figure out where he wanted to take the country. "Oh," said Bush in clear exasperation, "the vision thing." The friend's advice did not impress him.

Bush's greatest strength as a national candidate is his broad and energetically cultivated understanding of global politics. When he visits world leaders, he is no longer the loyally mum Vice President; he speaks out, and with assurance. Today Bush is far less conciliatory about the Soviets than when he served in the early 1970s as United Nations Ambassador and envoy to China; a subsequent stint as director of the CIA acutely altered his views of the Kremlin's objectives around the world. Bush the moderate became more hawkish. Now he speaks out sharply in behalf of the Nicaraguan contras and is not reluctant to employ weapons and money elsewhere to expand democracy. Meanwhile he pushes, even in the worst of times, for continued dialogue with Moscow. In doing so, he plays an important role in keeping the President's more aggressive tendencies in check.

An unfailingly courteous man, Bush sometimes seems to spring from another era. When he meets people, he pulls his feet together and deferentially drops his head. Even the flustered moral indignation he displays under attack has an old-world quality. He is not self-pitying, and the business of getting even -- a favorite pastime of other politicians -- does not interest him. "There isn't a bitter bone in the guy's body," says an old congressional friend.

Away from the office, he pours his energy into diverse interests: fishing, tennis, listening to country-music favorites like Dolly Parton and Crystal Gayle, replanting his blueberry bushes. At Kennebunkport, Me., where the Bushes own a sprawling seafront house, the Vice President spends hours at the wheel of his 28-ft. boat, Fidelity, skipping across choppy water at 50 m.p.h., dodging lobster pots in his path. He stays close to his five children and ten grandchildren and relies heavily on his wife Barbara, a vibrant, strong-minded woman who is far less forgiving of criticism than is her husband.

Thoroughly unpretentious, Bush is touchy about even the symbols of elitism. His reaction to being called preppie was to stop wearing button-down shirts and striped ties. No matter how Bush modifies the costume, his Eastern roots show clearly. He has a duke's air of natural infallibility. Hence, while paid political operators are viewed strictly as hired help, volunteers win Bush's high admiration.

Colleagues at the Republican National Committee remember that Chairman Bush usually made decisions only after carefully totting up the pluses and minuses. His view of the vice presidency is comparably cautious. In an Administration whose President is guided to an almost unprecedented degree by staff consensus, Bush -- its most experienced member -- has pulled back from the vital give-and-take of policy preparation. His chief mechanism for influencing policy is a private relationship with Reagan. At the White House, associates remember the Vice President's clear discomfort with proposals aimed at rolling back civil rights legislation. After numerous meetings in the Oval Office, a few aides cornered Bush and urged him to confront Reagan. The Vice President was reluctant. Reagan, he said, had already made up his mind. In their sessions alone, Bush takes pains not to make Reagan uncomfortable. The President grumbles about overzealous advisers but never about Bush. The Vice President does not push.

The explanation for Bush's approach is simple. He aches to be President, and to win that prize must endure certain deferential, hand-dirtying things. Thus he had to neutralize conservatives, who for years have scorned him. His courtship of Religious Leader Jerry Falwell last year reeked of ambition. Bush addressed Falwell's followers and heaped extravagant praise on the preacher. A month earlier he accepted an invitation to speak at a dinner honoring New Hampshire's right-wing publisher, the late William Loeb. For years Loeb had abused Bush in print, labeling him an incompetent hypocrite and, even worse, a wimp. So ingratiating were the Vice President's remarks about Loeb that some of Bush's family members argued with one another about his showing up.

Bush has long been a dangerously awkward speaker. He often sets off in one direction at the beginning of a sentence and wanders off in another before it ends. Metaphors do not track. Phrases with a tinny ring -- "I really went ape" or "I was in deep doo-doo" -- pour out of him involuntarily. Excitable on his feet, a man who lunges for political bait, the Vice President is a high risk in debates.

Late last year, as he carefully navigated through the Iran uproar, the Vice President showed an uncharacteristic little blip of daring. His four-week silence after the scandal surfaced had drawn considerable sneering. Even Nancy Reagan privately began running him down. She told friends that Bush's lack of public support for her husband was inexcusable, a remarkable reaction considering the Vice President's long compliant service. Bush and his wife have tirelessly courted the Reagans, routinely dispatching approving notes after public appearances by the President or his wife. Reagan himself held no such dark feelings about Bush and told him so.

Frustrated by Reagan's immobility, the Vice President finally delivered a speech declaring bluntly what the battered President would not: the Administration had made serious mistakes. Afterward, congratulations poured in from Bush supporters around the country. At Hobe Sound, Fla., the Vice President's mother and sister had watched in approval. This time, they agreed, George did not sound like a cheerleader.

Now, with a new year under way and the trials of 1988 looming, Bush sat in his White House office, legs stretched out in front of him, sipping a cup of Chinese tea. At 62, the Vice President is remarkably fit. His ruddy face is unlined, his hair only slightly gray. Dark blue eyes focused intently through his rimless aviator glasses. Bush was unruffled as he listened to questions / about his political nerve. "I know inside," he said, quietly tapping his chest, "I've got a lot of fiber here." He conceded he had been somewhat excessive in wooing conservatives but felt comfortable with it. There was, after all, a fundamental conservative underpinning to his philosophy, he said.

He was indeed engaged in the formation of policy, Bush pointed out. Cabinet officers regularly called him with proposals for Reagan. He heard often from old colleagues on the Hill. "I've helped on a lot of issues," he emphasized, his hands extended forward as if holding an invisible melon. "I've made this thing work."

There was plenty of time, Bush observed, to define himself better. Sometime this year he would make clear where he thought the country needed to head. Bush stopped for a moment and gazed across the long rectangular office. "It's going to hurt me some down the road," he said. No matter what the pressure, the Vice President declared, he would not identify any issues on which he differed with Reagan. "I'm not going to separate myself from the President," Bush said.

He will in the end fall back on his enormous energy and zeal. Motion, if nothing else, always makes Bush feel more like his own man. He has for six years buried any differences with Reagan. Establishing the independence and vitality of his own ideas will be a painful task. For behind all the motion there is a shallowness to Bush. He will have to do more than serve up the safe and the obvious. The real dilemma of his vice-presidential silence is that George Bush still must prove he has something to say.