spending," and thought that money might be found by forcing France and the USSR to
finally pay up their war debts from the two world wars!
When it came to urban renewal, Bush spoke up for the Charles Percy National Home
Ownership Foundation, which carried the name of a leading liberal Republican senator.
Bush wanted to place the federal emphasis on such things as "rehabilitating old homes."
"I favor the concept of local option on urban renewal. Let the people decide," he said,
with a slight nod in the direction of the emerging New Left.
In Bush's campaign ads he invited the voters to "take a couple of minutes and see if you
don't agree with me on six important points," including Vietnam, inflation, civil
disobedience, jobs, voting rights, and "extremism" (Bush was against the far right and the
far left). And there was George, billed as "successful businessman...civic leader...world
traveler..war hero," bareheaded in a white shirt and tie, with his jacket slung over his
shoulder in the post-Kennedy fashion.
In the context of a pro-GOP trend that brought 59 freshman Republican Congressmen
into the House, the biggest influx in two decades, Bush's calculated approach worked.
Bush got about 35% of the black vote, 44% of the usually yellow-dog Democrat rural
vote, and 70% in the exclusive River Oaks suburb. Still, his margin was not large: Bush
got 58% of the votes in the district. Bob Gray, the candidate of the Constitution Party, got
less than 1%. Despite the role of black voters in his narrow victory, Bush could not
refrain from whining. "If there was a disappointing aspect in the vote, it was my being
swamped in the black precincts, despite our making an all-out effort to attract black
voters. It was both puzzling and frustrating," Bush observed in his 1987 campaign
autobiography. [fn 6] After all, Bush complained, he had put the GOP's funds in a black-
owned bank when he was party chairman; he had opened a party office with full-time
staff near Texas Southern a black college,; he had worked closely with Bill Trent of the
United Negro College Fund, all with scant payoff as Bush saw it. Many black voters had
not been prepared to reward Bush's noblesse oblige and that threw him into a rage state,
whether or not his thyroid was already working overtime in 1966.
When Bush got to Washington in January, 1967, the Brown Brothers, Harriman networks
delivered: Bush became the first freshman member of the House of either party to be
given a seat on the Ways and Means Committee since 1904. And he did this, it must be
recalled, as a member of the minority party, and in an era when the freshman
Congressman was supposed to be seen and not heard. The Ways and Means Committee
in those years was still a real center of power, one of the most strategic points in the
House along with the Rules Committee and a few others. By Constitutional provision, all
tax legislation had to originate in the House of Representatives, and given the traditions
of committee organization, all tax bills had to originate in the Ways and Means
Committee. In addition to the national importance of such a committee assignment, Ways
and Means oversaw the legislation impacting such vital Texas and district concerns as oil
and gas depletion allowances, and the like.