to give him, instead, the number-two job at the State Department, as deputy to Secretary
Henry Kissinger. Foreign affairs was his top priority, he said. Nixon was cool to this idea,
and Bush capitulated." [fn 4] According to Bush's own account, he asked Nixon for some
time to ponder the offer of the RNC chairmanship. Among those who Bush said he
consulted on whether or not to accept was Rogers C.B. Morton, the former Congressman
whom Nixon had made Secretary of Commerce. Morton suggested that if Bush wanted to
accept, he insist that he continue as a member of the Nixon cabinet, where, it should be
recalled, he had been sitting since he was named to the UN. Pennsylvania Senator Hugh
Scott, one of the Republican Congressional leaders, also advised Bush to demand to
continue on in the cabinet: "Insist on it," Bush recalls him saying. Bush also consulted
Barbara. The story goes that Bar had demanded that George pledge that the one job he
would never take was the RNC post. But now he wanted to take precisely that post,
which appeared to be a political graveyard, George explained his wimpish obedience to
Nixon: "Boy, you can't turn a President down." [fn 5] Bush then told Ehrlichman that he
would accept provided he could stay on in the cabinet. Nixon approved this condition,
and the era of Chairman George had begun.
Of course, making the chairman of the Republican Party an ex- officio member of the
president's cabinet seems to imply something resembling a one-party state. But George
was not deterred by such difficulties.
While he was at the UN, Bush had kept his eyes open for the next post on the way up his
personal cursus honorum. In November of 1971 there was a boomlet for Bush among
Texas Republican leaders who were looking for a candidate to run for governor. [fn 6]
Nixon's choice of Bush to head the RNC was announced on December 11, 1972. The
outgoing RNC Chariman was Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, an asset of the grain cartel
but, in that period, not totally devoid of human qualities. According to press reports,
Nixon palace guard heavies like Haldeman and Charles W. Colson, later a central
Watergate figure, were not happy with Dole because he would not take orders from the
White House. Dole also tended to function as a conduit for grass roots complaints and
resistance to White House directives from the GOP rank and file. In the context of the
1972 campaign, "White House" means specifically Clark MacGregor's Committee to Re-
Elect the President (CREEP), one of the collective protagonists of the Watergate scandal.
[fn 7] Dole was considered remarkable for his "irreverence" for Nixon: "he joked about
the Watergate issue, about the White House staff and about the management of the
Republican convention with its `spontaneous demonstrations that will last precisely ten
minutes.'" [ fn 8] Bush's own account of how he got the RNC post ignores Dole, who was
Bush's most serious rival for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. According to
Dole's version, he conferred with Nixon about the RNC post on November 28, and told
the president that he would have to quit the RNC in 1973 in order to get ready to run for
re-election in 1974. According to Dole, it was he who recommended Bush to Nixon. Dole
even said that he had gone to New York to convince Bush to accept the post. Dole sought
to remove any implication that he had been fired by Nixon, and contradicted "speculation
that I went to the mountaintop to be pushed off," for "that was not the case." What was
clear was that Nixon and retainers had chosen a replacement for Dole whom they
expected to be more obedient to the commands of the White House palace guard. Bush