southern Democratic senators have routinely joined with Bush to block overrides of
Bush's many vetoes, or to provide a pro-Bush majority on key votes like the Gulf war
resolution.
Bush's style in the Oval Office was described during this period as "extremely secretive."
Many members of Bush's staff felt that the president had his own long-term plans, but
refused to discuss them with his own top White House personnel. During Bush's first
year, the White House was described as "a tomb," without the usual dense barrage of
leaks, counter-leaks, trial balloons, and signals which government insiders customarily
employ to influence public debate on policy matters. Bush is said to employ a "need to
know" approach even with his closest White House collaborators, keeping each one of
them in the dark about what the others are doing. Aides have complained of their inability
to keep up with Bush's phone calls when he goes into his famous "speed-dialing mode,"
in which he can contact dozens of politicians, bankers or world leaders within a couple of
hours. Unauthorized passages of information from one office to another inside the White
House constitute leaks in Bush's opinion, and he has been at pains to suppress them.
When information was given to the press about a planned meeting with Gorbachov, Bush
threatened his top-level advisers: "If we cannot maintain proper secrecy with this group,
we will cut the circle down."
Bush routinely humiliates and mortifies his subordinates. This recalls his style in dealing
with the numerous hapless servants and domestics who populated his patrician youth; it
may also have been re-enforced by the characteristic style of Henry Kissinger. If advisers
or staff dare to manifest disagreement, the typical Bush retort is a whining "If you're so
damned smart, why are you doing what you're doing and I'm the president of the United
States?" [fn 16]
In one sense, Bush's style reflects his desire to seem "absolute and autocratic" in the
tradition of the Romanov tsars and other Byzantine rulers. He refuses to be advised or
dissuaded on many issues, relying on his enraged, hypethyroid intuitions. More
profoundly, Bush's "absolute and autocratic" act was a cover for the fact that many of his
initiatives, ideas, and policies came from outside of the United States government, since
they originated in the rarified ether of those international finance circles where names
like Harriman, Kravis and Gammell were the coin of the realm. Indeed, many of Bush's
policies came from outside of the United States altogether, and derived from the
oligarchical financial circles of the City of London. The classic case will the the Gulf
crisis of 1990-91. When the documents on the Bush Administration are finally thrown
open to the public, it is s safe bet that some top British financiers and Foreign Office
types will be found to have combined remarkable access and power with a non-existent
public profile.
One of the defining moments in the first year of the Bush's presidency was his reaction to
the Tien An Men massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the magnificent movement
of the anti-totalitarian Chinese students who used the occasion of the funeral of Hu
Yaobang in the spring of 1989 to launch a movement of protest and reform against the
monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiao-ping, Yang Shankun, and Prime Minister Li Peng.