A STEADY LEADER
VIRTUALLY FROM THE MOMENT HE DEFEATED Michael Dukakis in the election of 1988, George Herbert Walker Bush made it clear that he was going to be a very different sort of Commander in Chief than Ronald Reagan. He told the Secret Service to turn off its sirens and ordered his motorcade to come to a halt at stoplights. He let it slip that he (sometimes) showered with his dog. He took pictures of his aides when they fell asleep during meetings. He went jogging in the mornings, repaired to a newly built horseshoe pit for a little “prudent R and R” in the afternoons, and liked to zip out to suburban Virginia for Chinese food, sweeping up family, aides and occasionally even perfect strangers in the adventure.
He wrote thank-you notes by the dozen, as if he were winning over the country one correspondence card at a time. Just before Christmas one year, he went bonefishing in the Florida Keys. But he stayed in Washington for the holiday itself so that his bodyguards could spend the day with their families. He treated traveling press photographers to regular weenie roasts. He dragged Cabinet members up to Camp David for the weekend, whether they wanted to go or not. Asked what surprised him most about the spacious White House residence, Bush, who loved to throw spontaneous dinners, replied, “I can have 40 people up there.”
He could be wry. When TIME asked the new President to explain his decisionmaking process, he ordered
