George W. Bush, No. 43

8 October 2023

New York City, NY

 

George W. Bush

For George W. Bush’s presidency, we headed to the World Trade Center memorial and museum in New York City. After all, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were THE defining moment of his presidency. (Ironically our visit to the World Trade Center Memorial coincided with Israel’s 9/11 moment the day before, a massacre of more than 1,400 people and the kidnapping of 240 additional people by Hamas terrorists.)

 

On Oct. 8, we hopped aboard Amtrak at BWI, rode to Penn Station, and then took the subway to our hotel, conveniently located across Church Street from the museum. An hour after arriving at Penn Station, we were heading to the memorials where the Twin Towers, North and South, once stood. 

 

Now, square infinity pools mark the footprints of the towers, with the names of those who died carved into the gray steel ledges along the pools’ edges. A thin veil of water falls from the top to 20 feet below, and then continues its descent to another 10-foot drop in the middle of the pool. The etched names include those who were in the towers, those in the planes that crashed into the towers, and all the first responders who died trying to save them: firefighters, police, Secret Service, FBI, Port Authority. On this day, white roses poked out from some of the names. American flags saluted above others. We were deeply moved as the new WTC tower gleamed in the sun in the bright blue sky, looking down upon us. 

Memorial pool

 

However, others apparently weren’t similarly moved, and we were appalled by some of the photos being taken. Group pictures, family pictures, selfies in front of the memorial. Smiling. Giving a “thumbs up” sign. Really? Even worse were the teens and young women taking “sexy” shots for their social media posts.

 

As we were scribbling notes into our notebooks, a 50-ish man in a sport jacket and slacks approached. He was wearing a lanyard. “Can I help you?” he asked. “I see you’re writing things down.” He sounded gruff. We were wary. Who is he?  Cathy said “no.”  I said “yes.”  He pointed at each of us. “You say yes, and she says no?  Which is it?” It turned out Dennis is a retired New York City detective who had served at the precinct on the corner the day of the attack. He is now a volunteer at the memorial. Although intimating at first, he ended up being friendly and talkative. He told us that the waterfall is turned off every night and a crew cleans out the leaves. He told us he was nearing the end of his shift on Sept. 11 and was escorting a “cuffed” prisoner. When he saw the plane hit the tower (not sure which one), he let the prisoner go telling him, “This looks bad.”  Dennis spent the next nine months recovering and identifying remains and notifying the families. We asked him where George Bush stood atop the debris field and made his famous bullhorn speech to the workers at the site. Dennis wasn’t sure.  

 

***

 

George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Conn., shortly after his father returned from WWII. He was the first of six children. Within two years of this birth, the family moved to Texas.

 

George was the likeable, charismatic family clown.  He had few cares and made friends quickly.  He was never a serious student and didn’t like to read.  By the time he followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by attending Yale, he was partying and drinking heavily.

 

He wasn’t sure what do after college, so he joined the Air National Guard as a pilot. Although not interested in politics, he was pushed to bank on his family name and run for Congress. He lost. 

 

George’s drinking continued and in 1976 he was arrested for drunken driving. Family friend Billy Graham was tapped to intercede. Through their many conversations and prayer together, George found religion and stopped drinking. His new wife, Laura Welsh, also helped stabilize him.   

 

By 1989, George was part owner of the Texas Rangers and life was good. In 1994, he surprised his family by announcing that he was going to run against popular Texas Gov. Ann Richards. The family was busy helping Jeb Bush with his own gubernatorial run in Florida. The family was shocked when George won and Jeb lost.  

 

George ended up being a popular governor and focused on crime, education and tax reform. He proclaimed June 10 as Jesus Day. His popularity was above 70% and he was easily reelected in 1998.  

 

Then he turned his attention to the presidency.  

 

As always, his well-connected family came to help.  Since George had little international experience, his father, George H.W. Bush, suggested putting his old secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, on the ticket as his running mate. Brother Jeb had finally won the governorship of Florida and helped George campaign there. When the 2000 election resulted in a deadlock, Jeb’s influence in Florida was key to navigating the state court system. It was Jeb’s administration that certified George’s victory, and Jeb signed the Florida certification document.  

 

***

 

We moved inside to the museum, where we didn’t have nearly enough time to explore before it closed for the day. The museum is set below ground in the WTC complex. It is composed of the North Tower area, South Tower area and the center passage, which is where visitors start after moving down the ramp and the introduction. It is dark but open and airy. Along the way, maps show where you are standing in relation to the towers.

 

Some of the artifacts include mangled steel columns from the towers, Ladder Company #3’s firetruck with the back and ladder warped and melted from falling debris, and part of the crushed transmission tower from the top of the North Building. One wall contains hundreds of blue tiles created by artists trying to remember what color of blue the sky was that warm, beautiful September day.

 

The center complex also includes the Vesey stairs, known was the Survivors Stairs, which was an escape route for hundreds of people in 5 World Trade Center. The granite stairs connected the Twin Towers’ Plaza to Vesey Street below. It also features concrete-enclosed steel boxes that held the steel columns anchoring the towers and the slurry wall, which was constructed when the towers were built to keep the Hudson River from flooding the site. Safety officials were worried the wall would not hold after the attacks and create even more tragedy, but it held.

 

Slurry wall (l) and
Last Column (r)

The center passage also features the “The Last Column,” which was one of 47 columns supporting the inner core of the South Tower. It is decorated with pictures of first responders, spray paint, regular paint, prayer cards and other tributes. It was the last column taken down during the cleanup effort, and it was draped with an American flag and loaded onto a flatbed truck, saluted by hundreds of first responders as it was driven away.

 

The North Tower area, where we headed first, focuses on the victims. A room holds photos of all the victims and the area displays some of their treasured possessions. The annual reading of the names is piped in through the audio system, which Cathy found particularly depressing.

 

The South Tower holds the “historical exhibition,” including photos, audio and video of the attacks and the day itself. It also looks into the days, weeks and months after the attacks. Among the displays, it has reports from various TV stations, interviews with onlookers and those who survived, audio from the frantic 911 calls, and hundreds of photos and artifacts.

 

Some of the more interesting, below-the-radar items include a display of New York newspaper front pages that morning, before the attacks. They were pretty mundane, with stories leading into the coming New York mayor’s election and a story about fashion.

 

Also exhibited was Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s schedule for the day:

“8 a.m.: Breakfast meeting

9:30 a.m.: Photo op. Canceled due to terrorist attack.

9:45 a.m.: Staff meeting. Canceled due to terrorist attack.”

And so on. 

 

A note from the New York MTA reads: “There will be no trains running at all today — anywhere.”

 

The rooms, overloading the senses with so much information stuffed into a relatively small space, include a timeline of events that winds along the walls.

 

Portions from the beginning of the timeline:

8:46 a.m.: Flight 11 hits WTC 1, the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors.

8:50 a.m.: President Bush, reading to elementary school students in Sarasota, Florida, is alerted. His aides assure him it’s an accident.

9:03 a.m.: Flight 175 hits the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors.

9:05 a.m.: Bush is alerted.

9:19 a.m.: Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, who is on Flight 77 that would later hit the Pentagon, calls him.

9:42 a.m.: The Federal Aviation Administration grounds all flights and orders them to land immediately, regardless of their destination.

9:45 a.m.: Bush boards Air Force One at the Sarasota airport and is flown around for hours.

 

The attacks were the first time in history that the continuity-in-government procedures to protect high-level government officials were used.

 

There is little mention of President Bush at the museum.  This Bush quote is included: “I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”  There is also a display of Bush’s “x” list.   Bush kept a list of the most-wanted terrorists; when one was captured or killed, Bush would put an x across the name.  

 

We didn’t see that famous photo of Bush and bullhorn atop the rubble pile on Sept. 14. 

 

***

 

People can blame George for not taking Osama bin Laden’s threats seriously, but September 11 was a true “black swan.” The term was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk theorist. All swans were once thought to be white until a black species was discovered in Australia in the 1600s. Taleb described a black swan as an unimaginable high-consequence event that in retrospect can be rationalized (Taleb, 2007). The attacks of September 11 fit the definition.  

 

The road from 9/11 led to an attack on Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden and then another ill-advised attack on Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — who had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  Bush didn’t make any distinction between terrorism and countries that sponsored terrorism, even if unassociated with 9/11. The administration presented “evidence” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban were routed but bin Laden was nowhere to be found.  In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was captured by the U.S. military in 2003, tried and executed in 2006.  It was a shock to hear Bush say in his second term that the way out of Afghanistan and Iraq would be left to the next president.  (The U.S. didn’t leave Iraq until 2011 and Afghanistan until 2021.)  

 

Besides executing the Global War on Terror, Bush governed as a “compassionate conservative” and emphasized returning tax money to the people. He pushed through two large tax cuts.

 

As his term was coming to a close in 2008, the economy imploded in what became known as the “Great Recession.” Rock bottom mortgage rates and lax banking regulations led to financial institutions creating incentives for homeowners to buy homes they couldn’t afford.  The resulting loans were bundled together and sold and traded worldwide.  When it became apparent that many of the bundled loans were worth far less than their original costs, banks were exposed. Nobody wanted the bundled securities, and they were sold off at pennies to the dollar. When Bear Stearns failed in 2008, the rout was on.  

 

By the time George left office on Jan. 20, 2009, The Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen from 14,000 to 7,900, a catastrophic drop for families and retirees with stock portfolios.  

 

DIRECTIONS

 

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is located at 180 Greenwich St, New York, NY next to the Oculus Center in Lower Manhattan.

 

REFERENCES

 

Schweizer, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer.  2004.  The Bushes:  Portrait of a Dynasty.  Doubleday.  New York, NY. 

 

Smith, C.  2005.  Presidents:  Every Question Answered.  Metro Books.  New York, NY.

 

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.  2007.  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  Random House.  New York, NY.

 

Woodward, Bob.  2002.  Bush at War.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY.

 

Videos

 

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.

 

Websites

 

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-rare-bird-how-europeans-got-the-black-swan-so-wrong-161654

 

                                                          William J. Clinton, No. 42

23 June 2023

Hope, AR

 

William Jefferson Clinton

This was our most insane trip ever.  We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30 a.m. for a 7:15 a.m. flight to Dallas, then drove three hours east in the scorching heat to Hope, Arkansas, to tour the Birthplace Home of Bill Clinton, only to find it …. closed.

 

East Texas is a world unto itself: conservative, depressed, hot.  Snippet from our drive from Dallas to Hope:  We stopped at one of the many Love mega gas stations we saw on the way.  Inside the store, Cathy was examining the ingredients of a bag of potato chips when she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard someone say: “Potato chips have three ingredients, potatoes, salt and fat.”  This from a middle-aged Texan, a white cowboy hat perched on his grinning head.  Strapped to his waist was a holster holding a long-bladed knife with a white handle.  The holster was oriented for a quick grab and slash.  

 

We continued through Texarkana into Arkansas.  Soon we were in Hope.  I had always pictured Hope as tree-y and hilly.  It was not.  “Downtrodden” is the way Cathy describes it.  

 

It wasn’t hard to find the Clinton Birthplace Home since the town has fewer than 9,000 people.  The house is a

Closed National Historic Site

white, two-story bungalow with dark green shutters. On busy South Hervey Street, it is next to the railroad tracks in not a particularly attractive part of town.

 

As we mentioned, the house was closed for, what a sign said, was “excessive heat & mechanical issues,’ which we interpreted to mean the inside of the house was a furnace.  

 

The National Park Service visitors center on the property was also closed. 

 

Peaking in the windows

Dejected, all we could do was walk around the property, peek in some windows (the white, lace curtains in the front obscured our view of what we assumed were the living and dining rooms), and check out the granite marker in the backyard garden dedicated to Clinton’s mother, Virginia Clinton Kelley.

 

Two more couples showed up to look at the house.  First, was a couple roaming the country in an RV--they had left Atlanta a year ago.  Both work remotely.  Cathy told them that, she would like to do something like that when we retire.  “Why wait?”  the woman asked. The second couple was from Cincinnati.  The husband said his wife’s “bummed she can’t get her (NPS) stamp.”  We chatted with said wife about the Reds and the Bengals.

 

 

Clinton's boyhood home

Next, we headed about a mile across town to the Boyhood Home of Clinton on E. 13th Street, currently
occupied by a family. A big sign as well as a smaller plaque in front of the fenced-in property alert visitors to the home.  He lived there between the ages of 4 and 7.  The house is occupied and the owners appear not to be big Clinton fans.  They have a large poster with a photo of Bill and Hillary that says: “Nepotism Rules Here.”

 

On our way out of town, we decided to drive through the downtown — full of vacant storefronts and decrepit-looking buildings.

 

Downtown Hope, AR

Then we saw the former train depot, with a “Bill Clinton exhibits” sign outside the town’s visitor center. And it was open. 

 

Saved!

 

About two-thirds of the space is devoted to the Clintons, and it is full of photos, campaign memorabilia and knickknacks, from his boyhood in Hope to the presidency. It’s not a big space, and it didn’t detail his accomplishments or failures — or scandals — but it did give us a window into Bill Clinton the boy as well as the importance of Hope in his life. 

 

A plaque hanging on the outside wall memorializes Bill Clinton’s visit to the train depot for its dedication. He

Train depot visitor's center

visited with his chief of staff and childhood friend, also a Hope native, Mack McClarty.

 

Much of the Clinton information was displayed on large wooden boards hanging from the ceiling on chains.  The exhibits feature black and white photos of him growing up, class photos, friends, family, etc. As a youth, he wanted to be a cowboy, and many pictures of Bill as a young boy are of him dressed as one. There are several photos of him in the hospital after he broke his leg jump roping with his cowboy boots on. The town watermelon festival, complete with a seed-spitting contest also was a highlight of his youth, according to the exhibit. The center also has photos from his mother’s funeral.

 

Also — a framed Inauguration T-shirt highlighting Socks the cat, surrounded by campaign pins. Several life-size cutouts of Bill, including one of him playing the saxophone. More campaign pins and White House Christmas ornaments. And in the women’s bathroom, a wall full of White House Christmas cards.

 

The exhibits

We learned that Clinton never knew his father, William Blythe, who was killed in a one car accident months before he was born.  Blythe was traveling to Missouri to pick up his very pregnant wife from a family visit.  His tire blew and the car crashed.  In those days before seat belts, Blythe was ejected from the car and apparently, in a state of confusion, crawled into a roadside ditch where he was found drowned. 

 

Clinton’s mother, Virginia and her parents raised Bill alone until she remarried a few years later to Roger Clinton who turned out to be an abusive husband.

 

Clinton was politically motivated from a young age.  There is a famous photo of 17-year-old Clinton, as a delegate to Boys Nation, shaking hands with then President John F. Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden.  In 30 years, the 47-year-old Clinton would be the next youngest since President Kennedy. 

 

And then there’s Hillary.  Always Hillary.  Everybody seems to have strong opinions about her, pro and con.  Bill met Hillary Rodham while both were Yale law students.  Hillary, an Illinois native, was a smart, ambitious go-getter.  As valedictorian of her Wellesley graduating class, she berated attending Senator Edward Brooks for his support of the Vietnam War. (Interestingly, in high school, Hillary, who came from a conservative family, was a Goldwater Republican but never voted for him because she was too young.  She became more liberal in college.)

 

Hillary was an activist Arkansas first lady during Clinton’s two terms as governor.  She was also an activist First Lady.  She famously said, “"You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life. And I tried very, very hard to be as careful as possible, and that's all that I can tell you."  (She would later go on to become a senator, secretary of state, and the first woman major party nominee.  She was nearly elected as president in 2016, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote.)

 

We were the only visitors, and the woman who was volunteering at the center, after welcoming us, had left and was waiting in her car for us to leave.  We asked her if she had ever met Bill Clinton but she had not.  

 

Nowhere in the visitor center is there mention of Clinton’s impeachment.  Big surprise—we’ve found over our journey that museums and visitors centers are largely sympathetic to their respective presidents and leave out or minimize the unsavory details. 

 

Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky would have gone unacknowledged except that it was revealed during the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton and then picked up by the Whitewater special prosecutor, Ken Starr.  Both Lewinsky and Clinton denied the affair under oath.  Unfortunately for both, a “friend” of Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, recorded their phone conversations.  On August 17, 1998, Clinton admitted to the affair.  His lies under oath and possible obstruction of justice led to a vote of impeachment—largely along party lines—on Dec. 19, 1998.  He was the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson in 1868.  After a Senate trial, Clinton was acquitted on Feb. 12, 1999.  

 

Clinton’s successes included a negotiated a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.  The agreement was signed at the White House in September 1993.  He signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993 that established a five-day waiting period, a national criminal background check and ban of assault weapons for 10 years.  He signed the (later) controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.  In spite of these early successes, the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, won the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.  Republicans now had full power in Congress.

 

At the end of 1995, the government shut down as Clinton and Congress couldn’t agree on a budget.  The blame fell mostly on the Republicans and Clinton won another term. 

 

Clinton had to work closely with Congress to get anything done.  Together, they passed a balanced budget and created a budget surplus for the 1998 fiscal year.  It happened again in 1999 with a budget surplus of $184M.  That has not happened since.  

 

In 1999, U.S. forces as part of NATO began a bombing campaign in Serbia.  And in 2000, Clinton signed legislation normalizing trade with China.  

 

The train station visitor center reminded us of the train station in Plains, GA that served as Carter’s presidential campaign headquarters. The town itself is also similar to Plains but even more depressed as we mentioned.  Not many stores were open.  

 

We left Hope and drove 1.5 hours west to an AirBnB outside Leesburg in east Texas.  Our lodging was a cute two-bedroom log cottage on the shore of Lake Bob Sandlin, a 9,000-acre muddy brown lake.  

 

As avid open water swimmers, we jumped into the hot water and swam for an hour, our safety buoys trailing behind us. Occasionally Tom imagined he felt something nipping at his toes.  That night we walked out to the dock and watched in horror as hordes of 1-2 ft spotted gar  snapped their needle-sharp teeth at bugs attracted to the light.  Gar are a serpent-like prehistoric fish that live in dirty, oxygen-depleted water because they can breathe surface air if needed.  Not a friendly bunch.  Nor good news for our planned swim the next morning.  

Into the gar infested
water

 

That night we found a local waterfront restaurant named Cove.  Lots of tattoos, cowboy/baseball hats, and swagger.  Two men sitting behind Cathy sported mohawks, beards, deep tans and serious demeanors.  Tom said the men looked “like killers.”  A duo performed country music outside.  

 

The next morning, we beat back our fears and jumped into the water for another swim.  We tried not to think about the ancient and possible new life forms in the primordial organic soup. (Many of the homes along the lake, including the one we rented, have septic systems, which undoubtedly contribute pollutants to the mess.)  Luckily, we had no gar encounters.

 

After swimming, we rushed to Love Field and learned our flight was delayed three hours.  Despite our many questions, we were never able get a straight answer from any of the airline staff.  We head everything from mechanical problems to weather problems to delay problems at other airports.  We couldn’t even learn if our connecting flight had left the ground.  No, yes, no.  Everyone we asked stared at their computer screens and gave different answers.  We could get better information from a Ouija board.

 

When we finally landed 3 hours late at BWI, the flight attendant apologized for the delay and said, “we’ll make it up to you next time.”  But the torture wasn’t over--no gate was open for us at 11 p.m.  Later our shuttle driver gave us yet another reason for the delay: a traffic control in the Washington DC area had caught fire at 4 pm!

 

Directions

Hope is located in western Arkansas on Highway 30, 200 miles from Dallas or 110 miles from Little Rock.

 

References

 

Smith, Carter.  2004.  Presidents: Every Question Answered.  Hylas Publishing.  New York, NY.

 

 

                                                             George H.W. Bush, No. 41

25 February 2023

Kennebunkport, ME

 

 

George Herbert Walker Bush

We headed to Kennebunkport, the famous summer home of the Bush clan, during our annual snowboarding trip to Maine. It was a cold, gray February day — 18 degrees and lots of snow on the ground. Here in the Washington area, we’ve almost forgotten what snow looks like. We had a whopping half inch the entire winter. But we digress…..

 

Walker's Point

The Bush compound sits on a small, rocky peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s called Walker’s Point, for George H.W.’s great-grandfather David Davis Walker and grandfather (Mr. Walker’s son) George Herbert Walker (aka Bert), who jointly bought the property. Closed off by security gates and the always-present Secret Service booth, the compound is a collection of Bush family houses. The large, main house on the estate is at the end of the point, but there are several smaller houses leading up to it, as well. From the road, we could also see the tennis court. It also has a pool, boat house, dock and guest house (according to Wikipedia).

 

Prior to our walk along Ocean Drive, we had prepped for our visit by stopping at the University of New England’s Biddeford campus, which hosts the George and Barbara Bush Center. The center has an exhibit dedicated to the Bush family’s time in Maine. Admittedly, it is a very small exhibit — one room attached to the library. The center, which is 11 miles north of Walker’s Point, was built and dedicated in 2008. It also includes administrative offices (a statue of Bush greets you as you climb the stairs) and a cafe. It sits on the water, and the big glass windows offer stunning views.

 

Tom behind replica
of Resolute Desk

The walls of the center are lined with photos of the Bush family in Maine and includes the desk and chair from Bush’s Walker’s Point office. It also has a replica of the Oval Office’s famous Resolute Desk, the original made of the timbers from the HMS Resolute. As the display explains, the Resolute was a British ship—abandoned in the Arctic in the mid 1850’s—that was discovered by the U.S. and was fixed and returned to Queen Victoria. She gave the desk to President Rutherford B. Hayes as a gift of gratitude in 1880. All presidents since Hayes have used it except for Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. 

Display at George and Barbara
Bush Center

Among the small collections are items from wife Barbara Bush, a book by daughter Doro Bush, some of George H.W.’s fishing gear, baseball caps, cuff links and tie clips.

 

Many of the photos were taken at the Bush compound on Walker’s Point.  George Bush wrote:  

“It’s a great joy being there with the sea pounding into the rocks, the boat, the new tennis court, being with Mother, seeing the Walkers and the kids, and our own grandchildren running around the place.  It was a supreme joy, a physical lift” (Sweitzer & Sweitzer, 2004).

 

(The Kennebunkport Historical Society owns a historic mansion that includes an exhibit devoted to the Bush family, but it was closed for the winter.)

 

* * * 

 

George Bush, nicknamed “Poppy,” was brought up in a frugal household with a strong-willed mother.  She admonished her children to think of others over themselves and discouraged the use of the pronouns “I and me.”  (This was the reason for Bush’s strange sentence structures as an adult.)  Bush thrived in prep school, becoming the captains of the Andover soccer and baseball teams.

 

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Bush and his fellow classmates were eager to join the fight.  He was the youngest recruit to join the Navy and went on to become the youngest pilot in the Navy—a few days shy of his 19^th birthday.  Because he desired to fly from aircraft carriers, he became a torpedo bomber pilot.  This was one of the most dangerous jobs in naval aviation.  Torpedo bombing entailed lining the aircraft up with an enemy ship and approaching the ship just over the water surface at top speed while ignoring the intense antiaircraft fire.  The plane would release a torpedo and then pull up in a steep climb.  Twice, Bush’s plane went down in the sea.  The first time, all the crew were saved.  The second time, Bush was the sole survivor and was rescued by a U.S. submarine just as Japanese boats were approaching to intercept his life raft.  The loss of his crew haunted Bush for the rest of his life.

Bush being rescued during WWII
(source: Schweizer & Schweizer, 2004)  

 After the war, Bush attended Yale University where he was captain of the baseball team.  He was also tapped to join the legendary Skull and Bones secret society.  And he was active in promoting the United Negro College Fund.

 

After graduation, the Bushes—he married Barbara Pierce in 1944—left the East Coast and settled in Texas.  Using family money, Bush started an oil company (Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company).  His second company (Zapata Petroleum) hit a deposit and made his family rich.

 

Bush ran for the Senate in 1964 as a so-called Goldwater conservative.  Unlike his father, former Senator Prescott Bush, Bush was against the civil rights bill being pushed by President Lyndon Johnson.  He thought civil rights should be a state issue.  But he still supported the United Negro College Fund.  He wasn’t a great speaker—he had a high-pitched voice and waved his arms around.  And, of course, his strange syntax caused by his mother urging him to avoid the pronouns “I” and “me.”  Also, his sentences tended to run together.  Bush lost the race in what was then heavily Democratic Texas.  

 

In 1960, he ran for Congress and won.  Once Bush was in office, retired senator Prescott Bush pulled some strings and got freshman Bush on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.  Bush’s stance against the civil rights began to change when he traveled to Vietnam and saw Blacks serving in the Army but being denied basic civil rights back home.  So, he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and received hate mail from his Texas constituents.  He was also pro-choice on abortion rights.  

 

After stints as UN Representative, Head of the Republican National Committee, U.S. Representative to China and head of the CIA, he was tapped to be Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1980.  He was a loyal vice president and supported all of Reagan’s positions in public.

 

In 1988, Bush ran for president and denied Jimmy Carter a second term.  He became the first vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1837. As president, Bush didn’t take himself too seriously.  He tended to continue Reagan’s policies and had “no clear vision” of what he wanted to accomplish (Sweitzer & Sweitzer, 2004).  

To win the presidency, Bush had promised not to raise taxes.  He said during the campaign, “Read my lips: no new taxes” (Schweizer & Sweitzer, 2004).  But he soon violated his promise and raised some taxes in exchange for revenue cuts—this would come back to haunt him in the next election.  

 

Bush reaped the reward of Regan’s high military spending, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and freedom swept across the former Soviet satellite nations. 

 

On August 1, 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwait border threatening world oil supplies. Bush collaborated with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and convinced the United Nations to pass a resolution authorizing the use of force to repel Iraq.  In January 1991 a multinational coalition led by the Americans attacked the Iraq army in Kuwait and quickly expelled them. There was no pursuit of the Iraqis into Iraq.  With the success of “Desert Storm,” George Bush’s ratings skyrocketed to 90%.  

 

But as the reelection campaign began, his popularity lowered.  The U.S. economy had slipped in recession.  In addition, he had violated his “no  new taxes” pledge.  In addition, longtime nemesis, Ross Perot, ran against him and likely siphoned off many Bush voters.   Bill Clinton won easily.

 

* * *

 

So, what do locals say about the Bushes?  After viewing the compound, we drove to a nearby restaurant called Striper’s.  The waitress told us that the Bushes would visit the restaurant as an “entourage” with “layers” of Secret Service agents.  

 

Dinner at Striper's

At our next destination—favorite ski hill, Sunday River, ME—we met the owner of the Good Food Store who was from Kennebunk.  He said that his claim to fame is that George Bush was his high school graduation speaker.  We asked if he had visited the compound.  “They wouldn’t let the likes of me in,” he replied.  But he has biked by it quite often.

 

The insulation of the Bush family from the townsfolk is in sharp contrast to Jimmy Carter mingling with the people of Plains, GA.

 

DIRECTIONS

 

The Bush compound is located close to the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Sandy Cove Road in Kennebunkport, ME.  The George and Barbara Bush Center is located at the University of New England, 11 Hills Beach Road, Biddeford, ME.

 

REFERENCES

 

Schweizer, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer.  2004.  The Bushes:  Portrait of a Dynasty.  Doubleday.  New York, NY. 

 

Videos

 

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.

                                                             Ronald Reagan, No. 40

27 November 2022 / 15 January 2023

Dixon, IL / Washington, DC

 

Perhaps we can thank the town of Dixon, Illinois, for the fall of the Berlin Wall. And not just because it was where Ronald Reagan grew up.

 

In 1989, Dixon became a sister city to Dikson, in Siberia in the USSR. The relationship began that year as a result of a contact by a Russian journalist, according to the Dixon Sister Cities Association. A local journalist then responded, which led to the relationship between the two cities. It was formalized in Russia in May 1989 by Dikson Mayor Nikolai Kartamychev and Dixon Mayor James Dixon.

 

Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly said if the two cities could share peace, the countries could
, too. And the wall came down in November 1989.

 

Alas, Dixon didn’t get a piece of the Berlin Wall when pieces were handed out, but it does have a pretty terrific reproduction, which we discovered as we wandered around town on a cold, raw Thanksgiving weekend. Found in the “Wings of Peace and Freedom Park,” the reproduction comes complete with graffiti as well as a replica marker highlighting Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech and a sculpture of a dove. The park also features three large murals illustrating the wall’s history, from President Kennedy’s time to its destruction. Above, a big peace sign, which lights up, hangs on the side of the city’s historic theater. The little park can be found at the corner of south Galena and E. 2nd streets.

Replica of the Berlin Wall

 

Reagan had a singular focus on defeating communism from the first day of his presidency, particularly Soviet communism.  He famously labeled Russia the “Evil Empire.”   Although he initially lifted President Carter’s grain embargo to incentivize better behavior, he thought the best way to thwart Russia was to build up U.S. defenses.  Over time U.S. defense spending was increased to about 7 percent of annual spending but in the USSR, it was estimated to be a whopping 25 percent of their budget (Morris, 1999).  

 

In 1983, Reagan started the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a space-based defense system to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.  The defense shield, once deployed, would consist of particle beams, chemical rockets, lasers, and x-rays.  It was quickly dubbed “Star Wars.”  [Tom worked on the environmental permitting for the SDI in the early 1990s, holed up in a sensitive compartmented information facility  (SCIFs) in a downtown Washington, DC “Beltway Bandit” office building.  The SDI program was unfunded in 1993.]

 

And of course, a major contributor to Reagan’s success in tearing apart the Eastern Block was the ascension of liberal Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.  Reagan felt that Gorbachev, unlike previous Soviet leaders, could be reasoned with.  

 

Reagan’s defense spending is credited for pushing the Russian economy into a tailspin and forcing  Gorbachev to institute perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness).  Within a year of Reagan leaving office, Soviet empire would fold on itself and the Berlin Wall would be torn down.  Russian communism was dead after 72 brutal years.

 

The park was one of our last stops on our tour through Dixon. After driving into town and passing several “home of President Ronald Reagan” signs, we started our day at a cute diner called Flynnie’s. We ordered a very tasty breakfast: Cathy had waffles and sausage, while Tom ate scrambled eggs with sausage and hash browns. Cathy might have had something healthier, but Flynnie’s (on Depot Road, across from a grain elevator), stops serving oatmeal and yogurt parfaits at 11 a.m. on Saturdays. We showed up around noon (darn). National Waffle Day was also the following day, so Cathy thought it appropriate that she commemorate the day a bit early.

 

Inside Flynnie's Diner

We chatted with our waiter, the son of the owners, and asked him about Reagan. He told us that nobody in Dixon really thinks about the fact that Reagan grew up there. Our first thought was that Dixon was a far cry from Plains, Georgia, which basically worships Jimmy Carter, a valued and integral member of the community.

 

We showed our waiter a photo of Dixon in March 1981 with a huge crowd holding “Get well, Dutch” signs following the assassination attempt that month.  “That’s pretty cool,” he said, “I was born in 1983.”  “Your parent may have been in that crowd,” we told him.

 

And while perhaps the current locals don’t think about Reagan too often, it’s hard to miss his influence, as tributes dot the landscape throughout the city — which we were already discovering.

 

Those who remember Reagan recall a charming optimist who tried to see the good in people.  He was known for his sly sense of humor including the unforgettable comeback during the 1984 presidential debate when he was asked about his “advanced” age of 73 versus that of Democrat Walter Mondale’s 56.  He glibly replied, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”  The audience roared.  Even Mondale laughed.  (Reagan’s detractors weren’t as kind and called him remote, guarded, overly trusting, not detail oriented and an intellectual lightweight.) 

 

We headed out on the raw, gray, 40-degree day. Thankfully, the rain — which had been coming down hard on the way west from Chicago — stopped as we ventured forth. 

 

Our first stop was the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, which is a bit of a misnomer. Reagan’s family moved in when he was 9, in 1920, and stayed until 1923 before moving on to another house in town. Reagan lived in various houses in Dixon until he was 21.

 

 

After attending Eureka College, Reagan became a local radio personality but had a desire to be in the movie industry.  A Hollywood friend connection got him a screen test.  His athletic build and good looks impressed and he landed a contract.  By the time he was 32 years old, he a was top box office draw; rating higher than James Cagney.  One of his best-known roles was as the dying George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American.

 

Tom in front of Reagan's home
in Dixon, IL

The white, two-story house is on South Hennepin Street, fairly close to the business district. It has a nice, welcoming porch. Unfortunately, that’s all we could see of the house, which closed in October for the winter (It reopens in April). There’s also a visitor center next door, but that was closed, too. 

 

A statue of a standing, presidential Reagan is on the property outside the visitor center, with the placard sporting a typo (it’s instead of its) that has obviously been fixed up.

 

After looking through the windows of the house, we drove down to the riverfront, where we discovered a lovely walking path along the Rock River. 

 

The returning
Hollywood star

There in the center of a plaza is another tribute to Reagan, a statue depicting him as a young man on horseback—evoking his celebratory ride leading a parade through the city when he visited in 1950 as a returning Hollywood star. 

 

By that time, Reagan had become a central figure in Hollywood and was elected as president of the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) in 1947, serving until 1952.  He even led a strike while SAG president.

 

We also found a tribute to the Illinois part of the Lincoln Highway, a gazebo featuring interpretive panels detailing the history of the Lincoln Highway as it passed through Dixon (a timely find since Cathy had recently finished reading Amor Towles’ “The Lincoln Highway”).

 

Next, we walked up the hill along Galena Avenue toward the Dixon Arch that welcomes visitors to town, since Tom wanted to take a picture of the arch from the same angle as the one shown in the book “Dutch.” 

 

That’s when we discovered the Berlin Wall reproduction.

 

Our last stop was Lowell Park, where Reagan famously spent summers as a lifeguard once he turned 16. Reagan spent seven summers there as a lifeguard, saving 77 swimmers from drowning. The park is on the Rock River, which had a strong current when we checked it out. Reagan often showed visitors to the Oval Office a picture of the river while telling them that lifeguarding was “one of the best jobs I ever had,” according to the official Dixon website. The park

Lifeguard Reagan at Lowell Park

is on the National Register of Historic Places.

 Reagan wasn’t always a conservative Republican.  In fact, he was a New Deal Democratic and supported FDR and the New Deal.  He campaigned for Harry Truman in 1948.  While in Hollywood Reagan actually tried to join the communist party but was turned down because he wasn’t viewed as fervent enough.  

 

Reagan eventually turned against communism and embraced more and more a conservative philosophy.  He registered as a Republican in 1962.   In 1966, he ran for governor of California as a Republican and defeated Governor Edmund Brown.  He was now governor of the world’s sixth largest economy.  He fought against programs that he thought rewarded not working.  In 1971, he signed the Welfare Reform Act resulting in stricter eligibility standards and compliance monitoring. Eventually 300,000 people were removed from welfare.  These successes had an effect across the country and Reagan became a national figure.

 

In 1976, Reagan shook up the Republican Party and challenged incumbent Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination.  Reagan didn’t respect that Ford was an unelected president.  During Ford’s presidency, Reagan had turned down offers to serve as Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Commerce.  The nomination fight was bitter and Ford eked out a narrow win.  But he was damaged and a sitting duck for Jimmy Carter.  

Four years later, Reagan handily won the Republican nomination and the presidency.  The conservative revolution had begun.  Reagan famously said:  “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem” (Morris, 1999).

 

Once president, Reagan pushed hard for tax and spending cuts. He embraced the philosophy of economist Arthur Laffer who argued that if tax rates were cut, people and corporations would have more incentive to work--increased tax revenues more than making up for the shortfall in rates.  Regan got his tax cuts but not the spending cuts (in fact, spending, led by defense, rose).  This caused the national debt to double to $1T.  Reagan’s approach was dubbed “Reagonomics.”  The country headed into a recession, mostly because the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat the 13+ percent inflation when Reagan took office.  Hard economic times are usually blamed on the president and Reagan’s popularity fell to 35 percent by 1982.  

 

An assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton nearly brought his presidency and his life to an early close.  On March 30, 1981, Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton after giving a speech to members of the AFL-CIO.  If was 2:25 p.m.  Six shots were fired in a scant two seconds.  Four of those bullets hit Reagan and his party.  The Secret Service shoved Reagan into a limo and raced to the George Washington University Hospital.  Nobody knew the extent of his injuries.  Once at the hospital, Reagan walked into the emergency room and then collapsed.  A fragment of one of the .22 caliber Devastator bullets had lodged within an inch of his heart.  He was losing blood fast and ultimately lost half of his supply.  But, of course, he survived—as did his humor.  At one point he quipped to his surgeons, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” (Morris, 1999).  He also told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” (Morris, 1999).  In addition to Reagan, a Secret Service agent suffered a shot in his chest and a Washington policeman took a bullet in his spine.  The unluckiest was press secretary James Brady who was shot in the head and would never walk again.  (He spent the rest of his life advocating for gun control.)  Reagan walked out of the hospital on April 11.

 

Side door of the 
Washington Hilton:
site of the 1981
assassination attempt.

In January, we drove to the site, the side door of the Hilton. We had been through that door many times to register for the annual Washington DC Triathlon or to attend an occasional White House Correspondents’ Dinner. but had never lingered to contemplate the historic significance.  On this night, it was full of cars, hotel guests and valets.  We couldn’t stay long and had to back out of the scrum.  

 

Reagan’s foray into the Middle East was less successful than his handling of the USSR.  In 1983, he sent troops to Lebanon as part of a multi-national force to help quell the civil war rocking the country.  In April 1983, a truck bomb struck the American embassy killing 17 Americans and scores of Lebanese.  An even worse calamity struck in October the same year when another truck bomb decimated the Marine barracks at Beirut airport and killed 241 marines.  By 1984, there were no more American troops in Lebanon.

 

Still, Reagan was easily elected in 1984, beating Walter Mondale in every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota.

 

His second term was more troubled than his first.  In May 1985, he visited Europe to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.  As part of that visit, he made an ill-advised side trip to the Bitburg Cemetery knowing there were former SS officers buried there.  He said, “Those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service…They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camp” (Morris, 1999).  Margaret Thatcher, usually a strong Reagan ally said that his visit was “deeply offensive and insulting to the memory of the victims…to all who fought in the last war to destroy the Nazi tyranny” (Morris, 1999). 

 

He attempted to even out the faux pas by also visiting the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp the following day.  This was where Anne Frank perished.  [It was also where Tom’s Jewish Hungarian great aunt Ibi was incarcerated toward the end of the war.  Fortunately, she survived. She later told Tom that when they were freed, they were nothing but csont emberek (bone people).]

 

Further diminishing Reagan’s legacy was the complicated Iran/Contra scandal. Through Israel, the United States sold 2,000+ TOW antitank missiles and 18 Hawk helicopters to Iran in support of their  war against Iraq.  As a direct result, Iran facilitated the release of seven U.S. hostages.  This sale violated the Arms Export Control Act since it should have been reported to Congress.  To make matters worse, some of the money was funneled through Swiss bank accounts to Nicaragua to support a group of so called “contras” fighting the Sandinista government. That action violated the Boland Amendment which stipulated no secret funding of the contras.  Reagan to his credit was out of the loop but his staff were implicated.  Colonel Oliver North headed up the operations and was convicted for his role. (North served no prison time and his conviction was vacated in 1991.) Reagan’s approval rating fell to 46 percent.

 

***

 

Reagan’s legacy is the emergence of the modern conservative movement and the defeat of the Soviet Union.  

 

Always in love
(Source: Vogue.com)

It's impossible to write about Reagan without mentioning his wife Nancy.  Their 52 year marriage was a love story.  Reagan’s Hollywood nine-year marriage to Jane Wyman had ended in divorce and in Reagan’s words, “along came Nancy Davis and saved my soul.” (Morris, 1999).  They were married March 4, 1952.  Reagan would write love letters to Nancy that included lines such as “…just waking up becomes a warm glow because you are there….” (Morris, 1999).  She was his soulmate and confidante.  She was a good judge of people and helped Reagan build and pare his presidential staff.  If she sensed that someone wasn’t performing, she would find ways to get rid of them.  

 

 

DIRECTIONS

 

Dixon is located on State Highway 52, just under two hours from Chicago.

 

REFERENCES

 

Rubenstein, David.  2019.  The American Story:  Conversations with Master Historians.  H.W. Brands on Ronald Reagan.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY. 

 

Morris, Edmund.  1999.  Dutch:  A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.  Random House.  New York, NY.  

 

Videos

 

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.