Ford's lobbying operation went into high gear. Inside the White House, Max Friedersdorf wrote amemo to William Kendall on November 6, sending along the useful fact that "I understand that
Senator Howard Baker is most anxious to assist in the confirmation of George Bush at the CIA."
Mike Duval wrote to Jack Marsh on November 18 that "[Rep.] Sonny Montgomery (a close friend
of Bush) should contact Senator Stennis." Duval also related his findings that "Senators McGee and
Bellmon will be most supportive," while "Senator Stieger can advise you what House memberswould be most useful in talking to their own Senators, if that is needed." [fn 16] It was.
Bush's confirmation hearings got under way on December 15, 1975. Even judged by Bush's
standards of today, they constitute a landmark exercise in sanctimonious hypocrisy so astounding as
to defy comprehension. If BusMoliere's Tartuffe. h were ever to try an acting career, he might be best cast in the role of
Bush's sponsor was GOP Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on
Senator John Stennis's Senate Armed Services Committee. Later, in 1988, it was to be Thurmond's
political protege, Lee Atwater, cunning in the ways of the GOP "southern strategy," who ran Bush'spresidential campaign. Thurmond unloaded a mawkish panegyric in favor of Bush: "I think all of
this shows an interest on your part in humanity, in civic development, love of your country, and
willingness to serve your fellow man." Could the aide writing that, even if it was Lee Atwater, have
kept a straight face?
Bush's opening statement was also in the main a tissue of banality and cliches. He indicated his
support for the Rockefeller Commission report without having mastered its contents in detail. He
pointed out that he had attended Cabinet meetings from 1971 to 1974, without mentioning who the
president was in those days. Everybody was waiting for this consummate pontificator to get to the
issue of whether he was going to attempt the vice-presidency in 1976. Repropaganda biographies know that he never decides on his own to run for offiaders of Bush'sce, but always (^)
responds to the urging of his friends. Within those limits, his answer was that he was available for
the second spot on the ticket. More remarkably, he indicated that he had a hereditary right to it--it
was, as he said, his "birthright."
Would Bush accept a draft? "I cannot in all honesty tell you that I would not accept, and I do not
think, gentlemen, that any American should be asked to say he would not accept, and to my
knowledge, no one in the history of this Republic has been asked to renounce his political birthright
as the price of confirmation for any office. And I can tell you that I will not seek any office while I
hold the job of CIABush argued, his willingness to serve at the CIA reflected his sense of nobl Director. I will put politics wholly out of my sphere of activities." Even more,esse oblige. Friends had (^)
asked him why he wanted to go to Langley at all, "with all the controversy swirling around the CIA,
with its obvious barriers to political future?"
Magnanimously Bush replied to his own rhetorical question: "My answer is simple. First, the workis desperately important to the survival of this country, and to the survival of freedom around the
world. And second, old fashioned as it may seem to some, it is my duty to serve my country. And I
did not seek this job but I want to do it and I will do my very best." [fn 17]
Stennis responded with a joke that sounds eerie in retrospect: "If I though that you were seeking theVice Presidential nomination or Presidential nomination by way of the route of being Director of
the CIA, I would question you judgment most severely." There was laughter in the committee room.
Senators Goldwater and Stuart Symington made clear that they would give Bush a free ride not only
out of deference to Ford, but also out of regard for the late Prescott Bush, with whom they had both