It was 1968, and George H.W. Bush had set his oldest son up for a date with Tricia Nixon, the daughter of President Richard Nixon.
As former president George W. Bush now recalls in his new book, the date — at a dinner to honor an astronaut in Washington — did not go well.
“Being a swashbuckling pilot, I had taken to drink,” Bush recalls in the book, released Tuesday. “I reached for some butter, knocked over a glass, and watched in horror as the stain of red wine crept across the table. Then I fired up a cigarette, prompting a polite suggestion from Tricia that I not smoke.”
“The date came to an end when she asked me to take her back to the White House immediately after dinner,” Bush wrote. “When I returned to the party, my father was standing around chatting with a few friends.”
One friend of his father whispered a question to him: “Get any?”
“Not even close,” Bush replied with a grin.
“More than forty years later, when I drove through the White House gates as president, I thought back to that first visit and had a good chuckle.”
That anecdote is included in “41: A Portrait Of My Father.” Here are several other entertaining nuggets from the book:
Family was nervous about George H.W. Bush skydiving
Bush recounts a phone conversation with his father’s longtime chief-of staff, who called to tell him his father planned to mark his 90th birthday by skydiving again.
“Are you sure this is what he wants?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“What do the doctors say?”
“Some say yes, some say no.”
“What about Mother?”
“She is concerned. She knows that he wants to do it. But she’s worried that the jump will tire him out and he won’t be able to enjoy the birthday party that she’s planning for the night.”
After some thought I said, “I think he ought to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because it will make him feel younger.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s birthday message to 41
After going skydiving for his birthday, George H.W. Bush received a call from former movie star and governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“Happy birthday to the most badass ninety-year-old I know,” the body builder told the former president.
Bush and Laura surprised at dinner when learned Reagan picked dad for VP
“Laura and I did not attend the convention,” Bush wrote of the 1980 election, after his father lost to Ronald Reagan in the primaries. “Instead we went to New York, where I had meetings with investors to discuss the oil and gas exploration company that I had started in 1979. One of our friends in New York invited us to dinner at the 21 Club. Near the end of the meal, the maitre d’ approached and said excitedly, ‘Mr. Bush, there’s something on the news that I think you’ll want to see.’ He wheeled out a portable television, and Laura and I watched in shock as Lesley Stahl of CBS News announced to the nation that Ronald Reagan had picked George Bush as his running mate.”
Reagan assassination attempt showed president he could trust Bush
Bush argues the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan showed the president he could trust his vice president. After Reagan was shot, George H.W. Bush refused to land his helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House, where the president usually lands. Leading a cabinet meeting, Bush also refused to sit in the the president’s seat.
“Crisis has a way of revealing character,” Bush wrote of his father. “The President — and the country — had just seen that Vice President George Bush was a man they could trust.”
Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan were not close
“Mother enjoyed the vice presidential years too,” Bush wrote. “She used her platform as Second Lady to promote important causes, especially literacy and volunteerism. Unfortunately, she did not have as close relationship with Nancy Reagan as Dad with the President. Mrs. Reagan was cordial, but she did not go out of her way to make Mother feel welcome.”
“I was surprised when Mother told me shortly after Dad was elected President that in her eight years as the wife of the Vice President she had never toured the White House residence,” Bush wrote. “When I became President, Laura and and I made it a point to invite Dick Cheney, Lynne Cheney, and their family to the residence and to include them in White House events.”
Bush recalls dismissing affair rumors about father
“He spent all of 1987 with a target on his back, and the press and his political rivals in both parties let plenty of arrows fly,” Bush wrote of his father. “One of the most outrageous charges was that he had engaged in an extra marital affair.”
Bush gave an interview to a reporter, and referenced the allegations: “The answer to the Big A is N-O.”
Bush said his mother was “furious” he would even dignify the rumors.
“How dare you disgrace your father by bringing this up?” Bush said his mother told him.
“My quip did make national news,” he recalls. “Thankfully, the story died shortly thereafter.”
How the seed was planted in his mind to write this book
After leaving the White House, Bush invited the daughter of historian David McCullough and her husband to his ranch in Texas. She told Bush that her father regrets President John Quincy Adams never completed a serious account of his father, President John Adams.
“For history’s sake,” she said, “I think you should write about your father.”
Bush said that planted the seed. “Eventually, it sprouted into this book.”