God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State (15 page)

Bush-speak, as it became known, was taken to a new level by the son, who sometimes seemed to be totally unaware of the words marching out of his mouth. “More and more of our imports come from overseas,” he observed. On education: “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning?’ ” On the eve of the election, he remarked, “They misunderestimated me.”

W. actually made fun of his predilection for nonsensical utterance. “Now, most people would say, in speaking of the economy, we ought to make the pie bigger,” he confessed at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington soon after he took office. “I, however, am on record saying, ‘We ought to make the pie higher.’ It was a very complicated economic point I was trying to make.” He was so easy to like in the early days.

Bush was a good governor, not corrupt, a centrist by Texas standards. He had even tried to raise taxes on business in order to meet the growing social needs of the state. That was heresy in the Republican Party and went nowhere, but at least he acknowledged the disparities that made Texas so coldhearted to its less fortunate citizens. He might have waited through another election cycle before he ran, to gain more experience, but he told his friends he felt like a cork in a river, and he simply surrendered to the flow. Part of his drive seemed to be a deep dislike of the eventual Democratic candidate, Al Gore—“the kind of guy you always wanted to punch out in high school,” Bush told me at a Christmas gathering in 1998, before running off to church. “I’ll pray for you,” he said, as he playfully grabbed me by the neck. “I’ll pray for myself, too.”

Everything nearly came to an ignominious end for Bush in November 1999, as the presidential race was under way. The governor was jogging around Lady Bird Lake, trailed by his bodyguard, Roscoe Hughey, a state trooper, on a bicycle. Suddenly, a waste-disposal truck, which was carrying a trailer full of construction debris, careened out of control. Bush saw the trailer just as it began to tip over. He instinctively dove under a bridge culvert, getting scraped and bruised, as the trailer dumped debris on top of his bodyguard.

I later asked Bush about the incident, wondering if he’d done something to piss off the garbage workers. He laughed, but it really was a close call. “Roscoe’s eyes were rolling back in his head,” he told me. “I said, ‘Roscoe, what’s my name? What’s my name?’ Fortunately, he got it right the first time.”

In the 2000 primaries, W. lost to John McCain in New Hampshire by 17 points, nearly torpedoing his campaign. Twelve years before, in the same Republican primaries, George H.W. had carried the entire East Coast. “My father is not a Texan,” the governor explained. He said that, immediately after New Hampshire, he had been talking to his chief strategist, Karl Rove, about how to recover, and then, when Rove left, Laura said that she had two points she wanted to make. “One, Texans don’t win in the East.” The second point was about McCain. “You let him talk down to you.” Bush seemed amazed by her insight. “This was a librarian from Midland, Texas, telling me this!”

On Election Day, I watched returns with friends in Dallas. During cocktails, Florida was declared for Democratic nominee Al Gore, and we went to dinner, certain that the election was over. By the time I got to my hotel room, Florida had flipped to Bush. I awakened at five in the morning and turned on the TV. Gore was now winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote, with Florida and Oregon still outstanding. This was only a couple of hours after the networks had declared Florida for Bush, and Gore had called him to concede, then called back twenty minutes later to withdraw his concession.

Bush began that morning with 246 electoral votes compared to 259 for Gore. Florida’s 25 electoral votes would decide the issue. Bush was 1,784 votes ahead in the state, out of 5.8 million that had been cast. Rich Oppel, the editor of the
Austin American-Statesman,
told me he had stopped the presses twice during the night, before finally going with the headline “History on Hold.”

The night after the election, I was the master of ceremonies at the Texas Book Festival gala, and there was a reception at the Governor’s Mansion. Laura greeted us at the door and seemed relieved to have the opportunity to just chat about our children. Condoleezza Rice, the future national security adviser and secretary of state, was there, and I took the opportunity to ask if she thought the election stalemate posed a security problem. “Not at this point,” she said. “Right now, I think most other countries are just looking at us with amusement.” Dick Cheney, who was then still scouting potential vice presidents (other than himself), sat alone in an anteroom, gripping a drink and looking bewildered. Rick Perry, the recently elected lieutenant governor, stood in the foyer, obviously wondering which new office he was going to hold.

The governor finally arrived, agitated and exhausted. He had a bandage on his right temple where a boil had been lanced that afternoon. His nerves were showing, a side of him I had never seen. I asked him if he actually got elected, how he would govern with such a divided mandate. He said he would have to have Democrats in his cabinet (the only one, Norman Mineta, became secretary of transportation). As for the Florida recount then under way, “The sons of bitches are trying to steal the election. If they try it, there are a lot of other states we could contest.” He added: “We could explode the entire electoral process if we wanted to. But we’re not going to let that happen to this country.” As for a possible reconciliation with Gore: “I don’t want to talk to the man. He’s no gentleman. He took back his word. He called me in the middle of the night to concede, then he calls me back ten, twenty minutes later to unconcede.” He stared at the floor, eyes wide in disbelief.

The next day, I was on a panel at the festival, and afterward, as I was walking out of the capitol to the book-signing tent, I came upon several hundred Gore supporters facing off with an equivalent number of Bush supporters only a few feet away, separated by several dozen state troopers. Both sides were waving signs and shouting slogans. It was very ritualized. “Bush has won, the people have spoken!” one side chanted, and the other responded, “Recount the vote!” There was a kabuki quality to the demonstration, at once theatrical and safe, representing the sharp division of the country but also its democratic restraints. Somehow it made me feel especially patriotic. I remarked to one of the troopers, “Isn’t this great?” He grinned and said, “It’s just wonderful.”

Gore demanded a recount in precincts where he had done well. An immediate recount of all the ballots cast in the state via voting machines lowered Bush’s lead to 327, with absentee ballots yet to be tabulated and a mass of ballots that were difficult to decipher. For thirty-six days the country was hypnotized by the intense partisan struggle under way in Florida, having to do with “undercounts,” “butterfly” ballots, and “hanging,” “pregnant,” or “dimpled” chads—the bits of paper that hadn’t been cleanly punched out. Nearly 3 percent of Florida voters—174,000 of them—had bungled their vote. At one point, Bush’s lead dropped to 286 votes. Cheney had a heart attack.

Under the Constitution, the issue had to be resolved before December 12, when the electors would meet, or the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court met to hear arguments by both sides, and at 10:00 p.m., in a 5−4 decision, the Court brought the recount to an end. Bush would be the nation’s forty-third president.

Many Democrats still believe that the Court overturned the will of the people, arguing that Gore won the popular vote nationally, and might have won Florida if the recount he had sought had been allowed to proceed. Later, a consortium of newspapers did recount all the ballots. Paradoxically, under the restrictions that Gore had requested, Bush would have won by an even wider margin, and if the recount had followed the procedure demanded by Bush’s team, Gore would have won. If every vote in Florida had been counted, Gore would have won under some scenarios (all dimpled or hanging chads were accepted) and Bush under others (a vote counted only when cleanly punched, or when the chad was detached on at least two corners). The ambiguity was maddening. We entertained friends from Massachusetts who were horrified that we would even speak to the Bushes after what they had done. “Rather, you should spit on their shoes and say, ‘Sir, how dare you!’ ” the red-faced husband said. I admitted that we actually liked the family. “Surely not the mother!” he cried.

The mood at the annual Christmas party at the mansion was completely different from that of the party only a month before, during the book festival. I had a chat with Bush, who had met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore earlier that day. He said he had told Clinton that Gore made a mistake by not enlisting the president more in the campaign. “Yeah, we’re still trying to figure Al out,” Clinton said. Bush thought there wasn’t much allegiance or affection between the two men. Clinton, he said, “didn’t seem to mind my being president.” As for his meeting with Gore, he acknowledged it was brief. “Yeah, sixteen minutes,” he said. “What could you say? The man’s not much of a conversationalist.”

Bush was cheerful and relaxed, bouncing on his toes. A mutual friend of ours, Grant Thomas, who had been at Harvard the same time as Bush, walked in, and the president-elect grabbed him by the back of his neck and cried, “Grant! Can you believe this? I’m the president of the whole fucking United States!”