Chapter –XI

United Nations Ambassador, Kissinger Clone

At this point in his career, George Bush entered into a phase of close association with
both Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. As we will see, Bush was a member of the
Nixon cabinet from the spring of 1971 until the day that Nixon resigned. We will see
Bush on a number of important occasions literally acting as Nixon's speaking tube,
especially in international crisis situations. During these years, Nixon was Bush's patron,
providing him with appointments and urging him to look forward to bigger things in the
future. On certain occasions, however, others upstaged Bush in his quest for Nixon's
favor. Then there was Kissinger, far and away the most powerful figure in the
Washington regime of those days, who became Bush's boss when the latter became the
US Ambassador to the United Nations in New York City. Later, on the campaign trail in
1980, Bush would offer to make Kissinger Secretary of State in his administration.

Bush was now listing a net worth of over $1.3 million [fn 1], but the fact is that he was
now unemployed, but anxious to assume the next official post, to take the next step of
what in the career of a Roman Senator was called the cursus honorum, the patrician
career, for this is what he felt the world owed him.

Nixon had promised Bush an attractive and prestigious political plum in the Executive
branch, and it was now time for Nixon to deliver. Bush's problem was that in late 1970
Nixon was more interested in what another Texan could contribute to his Administration.
That other Texan was John Connally, who had played the role of Bush's nemesis in the
elections just concluded by virtue of the encouragement and decisive support which
Connally had given to the Bentsen candidacy. Nixon was now fascinated by the prospect
of including the right-wing Democrat Connally in his cabinet in order to provide himself
with a patina of bi-partisanship, while emphasizing the dissension among the Democrats,
strengthening Tricky Dick's chances of successfully executing his Southern Strategy a
second time during the 1972 elections.

The word among Nixon's inner circle of this period was "The Boss is in love," and the
object of his affections was Big Jawn. Nixon claimed that he was not happy with the
stature of his current cabinet, telling his domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichmann in the
fall of 1970 that "Every cabinet should have at least one potential President in it. Mine
doesn't." Nixon had tried to recruit leading Democrats before, asking Senator Henry
Jackson to be Secretary of Defense and offering the post of United Nations Ambassador
to Hubert Humphrey.