Finding his voice

George Osborne

THE RIGHT MAN: THE SURPRISE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH by David Frum Weidenfeld, i9.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0297847325

y the end we knew more than we ever wanted to know about the Clinton White House: the junk food and the late-night politicking; the whizz kids and the golfing partners; the bust-ups and the make-ups; and the tiny, three-foot-long corridor behind the Oval Office that was the only place in the building where the President and his intern could be alone together. It combined the brilliance of West Wing with the seediness of the Playboy Mansion.

In contrast, we know very little about the White House of George W. Bush. No one leaks. No one kisses and tells. The public business of government is very much a private matter. That is partly what makes David Frum's book so riveting. The Right Man is the first insider account of the Bush administration, written by the presidential speechwriter who famously coined the phrase 'axis of evil' (although, as he candidly admits in the book, his original phrase 'axis of hatred' was changed to 'axis of evil' to make it more biblical).

Frum paints a vivid picture of a president who is as self-consciously un-Clinton as it possible to get. Clinton was never on time; Bush makes a point of always being on time. The staff stayed sitting when Clinton entered the room; they jump to attention when Bush comes in. Bush is already long tucked up in bed by the time Clinton used to order in more pizzas. Former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos describes in his memoirs a moment when, 'clad in sweatpants and a baseball cap, chomping on a banana smeared with peanut butter, the President came down from the Residence after midnight to talk to his aides. In today's White House, that man would be arrested.

As Frum's book reveals, the character of the Bush administration takes its cue from the character of Bush himself. He is an unabashed Christian evangelist, as are many of his aides. Frum tells us that the very first words he hears uttered in the White House's West Wing are, 'Missed you at Bible study.' That evangelism seems the obvious explanation for why Bush demands such high standards of behaviour from himself and his staff. But there is a deeper, darker explanation. 'Close up,' Frum says, 'one saw a man keeping a tight grip on himself'. He puts forward the theory that this is because George Bush was close to being an alcoholic when younger. 'Bush wakes up knowing one thing for absolute certain: today is a day on which he will not have a drink. Everything else falls into place after that.'

There is one thing that does not fit with this picture of rigid presidential selfcontrol and reserve: in private, and with people he hardly knows, he often lets drop some breathtakingly candid remarks or asides. It happened with me on the two occasions I met George Bush — first in Texas when he was a front-runner for the presidency, and second in London on his first visit to the UK as President. In those meetings, he made extraordinarily frank and amusing observations about, among others, Tony Blair, the President of Sweden and Bill Clinton, all of which would have caused uproar if they had been repeated in public. Why trust a complete stranger with such remarks? David Frum's guess is that it is all a cleverly calculated risk, what you might call the presidential equivalent of showing a bit of leg to win people over. I suspect there is a simpler

explanation: it is a certain mischievous streak that got Bush into so much trouble when he was young, which means he just cannot resist upsetting the apple cart a little.

The Right Man, however, is much more than a well-observed pen-portrait. It is also the story of the making of a president, and the transformation of George W. Bush from the butt of every talkshow host's jokes to a war leader who unites a nation after the trauma of II September. There is a vivid account of that fateful day itself from inside the White House — or, to be more accurate, from inside the offices of Daimler-Chrysler, which is to where the White House operation is hastily evacuated. There are important chapters on how the administration's thinking on Iraq, Iran and Israel/Palestine develops in the months that follow. But as a former speechwriter myself what I found most fascinating in this book was the unique perspective of the speechwriter's eyes which Frum brings to the story of the post-9/1I Bush.

It is interesting how it is often the speechwriters who have given us the greatest insights into modern presidents — think of Ted Sorensen's gripping account of the Kennedys' Camelot or Peggy Noonan's brilliant portrayal of the Reagan White House. It is not immediately obvious why this should be so. Presidential speechwriters come well down in White House pecking order, and are rarely involved in policy-making or political strategy. But every presidency has its own language by which it comes to be known and remembered, and it is the speechwriters who create that language.

The whole language of the Bush presidency changes after 11 September. Bush became president because he was the first Conservative politician to master the new third-way, new-age political language of the Clinton-Blair era. People were not 'parents', they were 'moms and dads'. 'Businesses' were always called 'employers'. The phrase 'tax cuts' was banned, and we had kinder, softer, gentler 'tax relief' instead.

When a clearlyshaken George Bush addressed a frightened American nation on the evening of 11 September itself, live on television from the Oval Office, he was still speaking that language of compassionate conservatism. The victims were 'moms and dads, friends and neighbors', as if it was not enough to say simply that thousands had died. He thanked Congress for 'joining me in strongly condemning

these attacks', as if he was thanking them for condemning a particularly nasty Hollywood film. The address became known in the White House as the Awful Office Address and added to growing doubts about whether Bush was remotely equal to the task.

By the time he finished addressing a packed congregation at Washington National Cathedral just three days later, the doubts were being dispelled. That was because his speechwriters had found a whole new language for him, It was harder and harsher, more direct and less compassionate. 'This conflict,' Bush said. 'was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour. of our choosing.' Immediately after the service. Bush flew to New York to visit Ground Zero for the first time. In an age when every second of a president's public appearances are scripted, something extraordinary happened there. No speech was planned, there were no notes, no microphones, no rostrum, but surrounded by anxious rescue workers Bush felt he had to say something. He climbed onto a wrecked fire engine, grabbed a fireman's bullhorn, and gave one of the most memorable speeches of his presidency. The American people have not questioned his leadership since then.

Throughout his political career. George Bush has had the great advantage of being consistently underestimated by his critics. The universal derision of the Left here in Britain and across Europe is by now wearily familiar. What is less well known is the suspicion he generates from the Right, particularly in America. David Frum is particularly illuminating about this as he was one of Bush's most prominent neoconservative critics, before being persuaded to come to work for him.

Like others on the Republican Right. Frum believed that Bush's compassionate conservatism 'sounded less like a philosophy and more like a marketing slogan'. Even after his time at the White House, he still cannot shake off his doubts that Bush's domestic agenda is little more than a mish-mash of random and unrelated ideas, To my mind, Frum does not give Bush enough credit for forcing the Republican party to stop talking to itself and start talking to voters_ Bush consciously rejected the abrasive and shrill language that had characterised right-wing politics in the 1990s, He risked the wrath of the powerful Republican party chiefs in Congress by attacking them for 'balancing the budget on the backs of the poor'. He challenged the obsessions of the religious Right when he warned that too often 'my party has painted an image of America slouching towards Gomorrah', Slouching Towards Gomorrah being the title of a best-selling book by the religious conservative Robert Bork. These were all courageous political positions for Bush to take. None of them

was easy, but they were right and they won him the presidency. There is a powerful lesson here for the British Conservatives.

In this revealing book, David Frum has given us a ringside view of George W. Bush's presidency. It show us a politician who is more agile, imaginative and measured than his opponents, at home and abroad, ever suspected. It is fascinating stuff.

George Osborne is Conservative MP for Tatton and a former speechwriter for William Hague.