The two men shared overlapping résumés -- schooling at Andover and Yale, membership in Skull and Bones, and an affinity for Texas and the oil business. But that's about where the similarities end. From the privileged confines of Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was raised, to Walker's Point, the Bush family summer compound in Kennebunkport where his family golfed and ate lobster on the rugged Maine coast, to the posh River Oaks section of Houston after they settled in Texas, George H.W. Bush epitomized a blue-blooded, old money, Eastern establishment ethos that was abhorrent to the Bible Belt. By contrast, his son had been a fish out of water among the Andover and Yale elite, and scurried back to the West Texas town of Midland after graduating from the Harvard Business School. Nothing made him happier than clearing brush off the Texas plains.
People who knew both men tended to favor the father. "Bush senior finds it impossible to strut, and Bush junior finds it impossible not to," said Bob Strauss, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who served as ambassador to Moscow under Bush 41 and remained a loyal friend. "That's the big difference between the two of them."
More profoundly, they epitomized two diametrically opposed forces. On one side was the father, George H.W. Bush, a realist and a pragmatist whose domestic and foreign policies fit comfortably within the age-old American traditions of Jeffersonian democracy. On the other was his son George W. Bush, a radical evangelical poised to enact a vision of American exceptionalism shared by the Christian Right, who saw American destiny as ordained by God, and by neoconservative ideologues, who believed that America's "greatness" was founded on "universal principles" that applied to all men and all nations -- and gave America the right to change the world.
And so an extraordinary constrained nonconversation of sorts between father and son had ensued. Real content was expressed only via surrogates. In August 2002, more than seven months before the start of the Iraq War, Brent Scowcroft, a man of modest demeanor but of great intellectual resolve, was the first to speak out. At seventy-seven, Scowcroft conducted himself with a self-effacing manner that belied his considerable achievements. Ever the loyal retainer, he was the public voice of Bush 41, which meant he had the tacit approval of the former president. "They are two old friends who talk every day," says Bob Strauss. "Scowcroft knew it wouldn't terribly displease his friend."
Well aware that war was afoot, Scowcroft had tried to head it off with an August 15, 2002, Wall Street Journal op-ed piece titled "Don't Attack Saddam" and TV interviews. As a purveyor of the realist school of foreign policy, and as a protégé of Henry Kissinger, Scowcroft believed that idealism should take a backseat to America's strategic self-interest, and his case was simple. "There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations," he wrote, "and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks." To attack Iraq, while ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, "could turn the whole region into a cauldron and, thus, destroy the war on terrorism." A few days later, former secretary of state James Baker, who had carefully assembled the massive coalition for the Gulf War in 1991, joined in, warning the Bush administration that if it were to attack Saddam, it should not go it alone.
On one side, aligned with Bush 41, were pragmatic moderates who had served at the highest levels of the national security apparatus -- Scowcroft, Baker, former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, and Colin Powell, with only Powell, as the sitting secretary of state, having a seat at the table in the new administration. On the other side, under the younger George Bush, were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory Board Committee -- all far more hawkish and ideological than their rivals.
Of course, both Scowcroft and Baker would have preferred to give their advice to the young president directly rather than through the media, and as close friends to Bush senior for more than thirty years, that should not have been difficult. After all, Scowcroft's best friend was the president's father, his close friend Dick Cheney was vice president, and Scowcroft counted National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley among his protégés. And James Baker had an even more storied history with the Bushes.
"Am I happy at not being closer to the White House?" Scowcroft asked. "No. I would prefer to be closer. I like George Bush personally, and he is the son of a man I'm just crazy about."
But in the wake of Scowcroft's piece in the Journal, both men were denied access to the White House. When the elder Bush tried to intercede on Scowcroft's behalf, he met with no success. "There have been occasions when Forty-one has engineered meetings in which Forty-three and Scowcroft are in the same place at the same time, but they were social settings that weren't conducive to talking about substantive issues," a Scowcroft confidant told The New Yorker.
Meanwhile, Bush senior did not dare tell his son that he shared Scowcroft's views. According to the Bushes' conservative biographers, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, family members could see his torment. When his sister, Nancy Ellis, asked him what he thought about his son's plan for the war, Bush 41 replied, "But do they have an exit strategy?"
In direct talks between father and son, however, such vital policy issues were verboten. "[Bush senior is] so careful about his son's prerogatives that I don't think he would tell him his own views," a former aide to the elder Bush told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. When the Washington Post's Bob Woodward told Bush 43 that it was hard to believe he had not asked his father for advice about Iraq, the president insisted the war was never discussed. "If it wouldn't be credible," Bush added, "I guess I better make something up."
Likewise, friends who saw them together found that they had absolutely nothing to say to each other on matters of vital national importance. "I was curious to see how they related to one another, and I'll be damned," said Bob Strauss, who shared an intimate dinner with them in the White House. "They never discussed the war, never discussed politics. We talked about social things, friendships, what was going on back in Texas. It was like a couple of old friends just gossiping about the past."
About the writer
Craig Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of "House of Bush, House of Saud" and a frequent analyst on CNN, ABC Radio, Air America, "The Charlie Rose Show," NBC's "Today" show and other broadcast outlets. He has written for the New Yorker, Esquire and many other publications and is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He lives in New York, where he is a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at NYU's School of Law.
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