By Steve Taylor
What I remember most fondly about covering President George H.W. Bush was laughing.
It’s not that he was a stand-up comic. Rather, there was an awkward but endearing oddness about him that could be very funny. Once during a visit to California, he brought a little boy onstage. Positioning the child in front of him, Bush started patting him on the head as he made the points of his speech. Soon the pats became light taps, finger drumming, as if the youngster’s cranium had become a podium. It didn’t take long for the kid’s what-do-I-do-now? facial expression to get the crowd laughing. When Bush realized what he was doing, he released the boy with an apologetic shrug and a goofy grin.
It’s not that he was a stand-up comic. Rather, there was an awkward but endearing oddness about him that could be very funny.
I never heard the President curse intentionally, but often he could come close, as when he angrily complained in a speech about “carping little liberal Democrats jumping all over my, ah… my you-know-what!” When he got excited, his tongue would sometimes tangle. One time, a sarcastic reference to the singing group Nitty Gritty Dirt Band came out “nitty shitty great bird.”
The press corps sometimes called George H. W. Bush “Goofy” and I guess he knew it. Once during a visit to Disneyland, he appeared with some of the costumed cartoon characters. Later a reporter asked him if he’d spoken with Goofy. His reply: “No, but one of the three little pigs was looking at me funny.”
We concluded that we all were the pig in question. So a few days later, we responded by greeting him wearing … pig masks.
To be sure, when things were serious, jocularity disappeared. Nobody joked about the Persian Gulf War, the invasion of Panama or the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
It may be hard to believe in this era of unrelenting hostility between reporters and President Trump, but light-hearted media exchanges like that were common with the first President Bush. It was more likely to happen when he was in the U.S. or, if overseas, in the security bubble of the White House filing center.
I sometimes wondered what the non-U.S. journalists who managed to arrange admittance to our filing centers thought about the comments sometimes voiced aloud. Once in Brussels after a news-free briefing by a Cabinet Secretary, I said — to myself, I thought — “He can’t be that dumb.”
From across the aisle came the growl of a famous columnist replying, “He is!”
To be sure, when things were serious, jocularity disappeared. Nobody joked about the Persian Gulf War, the invasion of Panama or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After economic conditions caused the president to abandon his No-New-Taxes pledge, we knew he’d never appreciate a wisecrack about that.
But when the time was right, you could get away with stuff. One morning the President had minor surgery for, believe it or not, a seriously ingrown fingernail. That afternoon, there was an Oval Office photo op with some White House visitor. Mr. Bush shrugged off the media pool’s questions about the medical procedure, ribbing us for taking it seriously. Since his bandage — on the right middle finger — was very prominent, I asked, “Mr. President, would you care to show us where it hurts?”
Unfortunately, he realized immediately the pose I was hoping to get. Glaring with mock disapproval, he kept his hands in his lap and said nothing. But his Chief of Staff, John Sununu, pointed at me and said, “Especially you!”
This is in one sense a farewell, because the campaign is ending and some of us, no matter how it turns out, will go our separate ways. But before we part, I wanted you to know that I’m aware of what kind of sacrifice all of you have made the past few months to cover this campaign.
On the last leg of the last day the 1988 campaign, the day before then-Vice President Bush nailed down the big job, I was on the press charter flying back to Washington when his voice came over the PA system… a farewell message that he had recorded for us.
“We’ve come a long way together,” he said. “This is in one sense a farewell, because the campaign is ending and some of us, no matter how it turns out, will go our separate ways. But before we part, I wanted you to know that I’m aware of what kind of sacrifice all of you have made the past few months to cover this campaign.”
He mentioned leaving families and friends behind, putting up with long hours, six-AM baggage calls “and the hurry-up-and-wait nature of modern campaigning.
“There have been times when I’ve looked across the tarmac and seen you standing there, shivering in your parkas against the wind, and times when I saw you scrambling for a bus about to leave and jumping aboard it as it rolled away, and waving the high-five.Or the friendly two-fingered V salute. And occasionally, the one-fingered gesture of friendship and respect.”
“Wait a minute,” I said to myself.
“I’ve seen you rushing with the cameras and the mics when I unexpectedly walk one way instead of another,” he continued. “And I’ve seen all this, and looked at you and thought, ‘Tough! Too bad. Who cares? It’s your problem. Get a raise. Get a real job. Get a haircut!’
“You know, I’m out here busting, busting” — He could not bring himself to curse. — “And I don’t even know if I’m gonna have a job in January! And you, you’re the stars. You’re out here yukking it up with a pretty stewardess and a free steak dinner, and everybody back there in the newsroom calling you a star.”
The plane was wobbling with laughter.
“But seriously,” he said, changing his tone, “I do thank you all. And so does Barbara and so do our kids.
“And by the way, this has been my 210th press conference! Thank you. God bless you all.”
After the election, George H.W. Bush sent every member of the traveling press corps a personal note of thanks. The Bushes hosted us at a Christmas reception at the Vice President’s mansion.
As a reporter for the United Stations/Unistar Radio Networks, SPJ DC Pro member Steve Taylor covered George H. W. Bush’s presidency daily at the White House and during most of his overseas trips, including his Thanksgiving 1990 visit to Desert Shield troops in Saudi Arabia. He attended the nuclear disarmament summits with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and covered the president’s European and Far Eastern trips, plus most of his domestic travel and his vacations in Houston and Kennebunkport, Maine.