with due respect. Because of Bush's obsession with birth control for the lower orders, Mills gave
Bush the nickname "RubbeBush was not amused. One day Mills might ponder in retrospect, as so many others have, on Busrs," which stuck with him during his years in Congress. [fn 10] Poppyh's (^)
vindictiveness.
On one occasion Mills prolonged the questioning of Walter Reuther of the UAW, who was
appearing as a witess in hearings before the committee, to let George Bush get a few questions inand look good for the home-town press. Mills' career in public life was destroyed during the Ford (^)
Presidency when he was found cavorting drunk in public with the dancer Fanny Foxe. This came in
an era when the Church and Pike committees of Congress had been pounding the CIA, and when
George Bush was about to take over as CIA Director. The fall of Wilbur Mills, together with the
Koreagate scandal of alleged Congredesigned to knock the Congress on the defensive. ssional influence peddling, appeared at the time as retaliation
George and Barbara claim to have bought a home on Hillbrook Lane in northwest Washington sight
unseen over the telephone from Sen. Milward Simpson of Wyoming, the father of Sen. Al Simpson,
the current GOP minority whip. Later the family moved to Palisade Lane.
Bush's Congressional office in the Longworth Building was run by administrative assistant Rose
Zamaria, with Pete Roussel acting as the Congressman's presse secretary, and Jim Allison and
Aleene Smith also on the staff. Bush says that his closest cronies in those day included Bill Steiger
of Wisconsin, Rep. Sonny MYork (later attacked as "Barbarian Cannibal" in some developing countries when he was Presidentongomery of Mississippi, liberal Republican Barber Conable of New (^)
of the World Bank in the Reagan-Bush years), Tom Kleppe of North Dakota and John Paul
Hammerschmidt of Arkansas (a long-term ally).
In January, 1968, LCong's Tet offensive was making a shambles of his Vietnam war policy. The Republican replyBJ delivered his State of the Union message to Congress, even as the Viet (^)
came in a series of short statements by former President Eisenhower, House Minority leader Jerry
Ford, Rep. Melvin Laird, Senator Howard Baker, and other members of Congress. Another tribute
to the efforts of the Prescott Bush-Skull and Bones networks was the fact that amid this parade of
Republican worthies there appeared, with tense jaw and fist clenched to pound on tGeorge Bush. he table, Rep.
The Johnson Administration had claimed that austerity measures were not necessary during the time
that the war in Vietnam was being prosecuted. LBJ had promised the people "guns and butter," but
now the economy was beginning to go into decline. Bush's overall public rhetorical stance duringthese years was to demand that the Democratic administration impose specific austerity measures (^)
and replace big- spending programs with appropriate defecit-cutting rigor. Here is what Bush told a
nationwide network television audience on Jan. 23, 1968:
"The nation faces this year just as it did last a tremendous deficit in the Federal budget, but in the
President's message there was no sense of sacrifice on the part of the Government, no assignment ofpriorities, no hint of the need to put first things first. And this reckless policy has imposed the cruel
tax of rising prices on the people, pushed interest rates to their highest levels in 100 years, sharply
reduced the rate of real economic growth and saddled every man and woman and child in American
with the largest tax burden in our history.
"And what does the President say? He says we must pay still more taxes and he proposes drastic
restrictions on the rights of Americans to invest and travel abroad. If the President wants to control
inflation, he's got to cut back on Federal spending and the best way, the best way to stop the gold
drain is to live within our means in this country." [fn 11]