Transcript: Chapter 20

Narrator: Bush could take some comfort on Christmas day 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. President Mikhail Gorbachev's last phone call was to him.

Mikhail Gorbachev: I said that I will be stepping down, that I will be resigning, and Bush at that time thanked me for the very fruitful work that we did together in international affairs, in building the bilateral relationship. He said that he felt that I had made a great decisive contribution to positive change in the world.

Condoleezza Rice: That last phone call from Gorbachev to President Bush is, to me, still one of the most remarkable things in history, that the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the President of the great Soviet Union, in its dying moments, would choose to call the President of the United States. It says that, I think, Gorbachev needed affirmation that what he was doing was right, to let the Soviet Union die a peaceful death.

Mikhail Gorbachev: We had a very good and serious and friendly conversation, and at that time President Bush gave me serious moral support.

Condoleezza Rice: I talked to President Bush about that on a couple of occasions. And what's very funny is that he didn't see it as particularly extraordinary. And that says something about his modesty and about his humility.

George H. W. Bush (archival): I'd like to express, on behalf of the American people, my gratitude to Mikhail Gorbachev for years of sustained commitment to world peace, and for his intellect, vision, and courage.

Narrator: If ever anyone needed a big win, it was George Bush. Yet that Christmas, he did not talk of winners. Instead Bush televised his thank you note to Gorbachev.

George H. W. Bush (archival): This struggle changed the lives of all Americans. It forced all nations to live under the specter of nuclear destruction. That confrontation is now over.

Narrator: A month later Bush did talk of winners. It was a presidential election year.

George H. W. Bush (archival): The biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this. By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.

Narrator: Still, Bush called no attention to his role in helping shepherd the Soviet Union out of existence without a shot being fired.

George H. W. Bush (archival): And I have an announcement to make. I want to continue serving as your president four more years.

Narrator: The fact that he waited until February to announce his candidacy led some to believe he was not interested in a second term. Bush would campaign without Lee Atwater, the bare-knuckled political guru who had masterminded success four years earlier. Atwater had died of brain cancer.

John Robert Greene: The death of Lee Atwater was the most important event in the Bush campaign of 1992. It took out of the mix the one person who could have made George Bush fight and made George Bush see the logic of negative campaigning.

Richard Norton Smith: I don't think you can exaggerate the significance of what was lost to the Bush presidency when Lee Atwater died. It's as if one lobe of the president's brain was removed: the political part. And for someone who was already, in many ways, uncomfortable with the demands of the political presidency, it was a crushing blow.

Narrator: Chief of Staff John Sununu, who had delivered New Hampshire for Bush in 88, was forced to resign at the end of 1991. He had used presidential planes for personal business including trips to his dentist.

Supporters (archival): We want Bush! We want Bush!

Narrator: The Republican party continued to fracture. In New Hampshire, Bush was challenged by Pat Buchanan, a conservative talk show pundit and former aide to presidents Nixon and Reagan. Buchanan hammered Bush for raising taxes.

Pat Buchanan (archival): It was not some liberal democrat who declared "read my lips, no new taxes" and then broke his word to cut a seedy back room deal with the big spenders on Capitol Hill.

Narrator: Bush could not campaign on the things in which he took pride -- the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. To movement conservatives they simply expanded government at the taxpayer's expense.

Richard Norton Smith: So in addition to Bush's innate modesty, there's also a political imperative. Bush doesn't want to call that much attention to these accomplishments because in his political universe, they are the right thing to do, they are the responsible thing to do, they are the establishment thing to do, they are the thing that Prescott Bush would do if he was in the White House, but in the new political era in which George Bush finds himself, they're actually liabilities.

Richard Viguerie: They were major liabilities. There's few things that send the conservatives up the wall and off the wall more than to be told by establishment Republicans, "We can do anything we want. We can advocate most any policy or program, because we are still a little bit better than the Democrats, so you have no place else to go." And this angers us. And so because we felt we had no stake in his presidency, it was easy to oppose his nomination.

John Robert Greene: The Republican Party changes during Bush's administration. It swings, lurches to the right. It's a seismic shift. And the reason for it is because conservative Republicans were able to position George Bush as having let them down, as having broken the Reagan faith. And a lot of that's true. George Bush was a moderate Republican. He was not a Reagan Republican.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (archival): I want you to vote, and at the same time send a message to Congress, and send a message to Pat Buchanan: hasta la vista, baby!

Pat Buchanan (archival): The Buchanan brigades met King George's army...

Narrator: In February of 1992, Bush won the New Hampshire primary, but Buchanan captured 37% of the vote.

Narrator: Two days later, Ross Perot, a Texas tycoon and an old friend of Bush's, challenged him as a third party candidate.

Ross Perot (archival): Number one I'll promise you this between now and the convention we'll get both parties' heads straight.

Narrator: Bush had problems. So did Democrat Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas.

Reporter (archival): Governor did you burn your draft card?

Bill Clinton (archival): No.

Gennifer Flowers (archival): Yes I was Bill Clinton's lover for 12 years...

Narrator: Bush could not believe anyone could survive these accusations and win his party's nomination.

Marlin Fitzwater: I think the President felt at the time that his record would preclude him winning. In this country, we had never really had a candidate who was a philanderer and who'd had the marital problems he had, and still win an election. We certainly never had a president who'd been accused of draft dodging and still be elected president. And that seemed like pretty heavy baggage. And so I don't think anybody believed Clinton could win.

George H. W. Bush (archival): There is a clear pattern to Governor Clinton's past. A pattern of deception. Character does matter. A pattern of deception is not right for the Oval Office.

Narrator: Clinton may have had baggage, but he was capable of hitting Bush where it hurt.

Bill Clinton (archival): You know what George Bush said yesterday to David and Rita Springs? He said, "if you want to get the economy going, go by a car or buy a house. It's a good time to buy a car, it's a good time to buy a house." It's a good time to buy a car or a house because if you're on welfare and food stamps, you can't pay the light bill and be a thousand points of light, much less buy a house or a car.