July 20: Bush was on a foreign trip that included a meeting with Mitterrand in Rambouillet, near
Paris, the G-7 meeting in London, awas examined every day by Burton Lee. As one journalist travelling with Bush's party tells it,nd a trip to Turkey and Greece. According to press accounts, he
"Toward the end of the trip, [Bush] looked tired. Last Saturday [July 20], he could not recall the
details of a speech he was to give in two days. 'It's a speech in the Rose Garden to some special
group,' he told a news conference. 'Don't ask me any more.'"
On Sunday, taking questions from reporters while posing for photographs with Suleyman Demirel,
leader of a Turkish opposition party, Bush testily objected to the tone of an American radio
reporter's question. "Now, wait a minute," Bush said. You don't ask in that tone; just ask the
question." [fn 54]
July 23: At a White House meeting with GOP leaders, even the New York Times could not ignore
Bush's "apparent irritation" on the Gates issue, a leading Bush obsession. Bush was still furious
about Gates being left to twist in the wind all summer. "I think the man deserves to be confirmed,
and I've seen nothing other than innuendo and reports that he must have known this or something. I
don't want to get started. [Understandable, after his previous nonstop rage monologue.] I told thecabinet yesterday how strongly I feel about this and so I will stand by this man." [fn 56]
August 2: One day after returning to Washington from the Moscow summit, Bush gave a news
conference in the Rose Garden that was heavily colored by obsessive rage, as can be seen from a
front-page photograph in the next day's Washington Post, which shows him snarling andgesticulating. Bush's main theme was an attack on the Congress, "a Congress that is frustratingly (^)
negative on everything." "I'm getting fired up thinking about it, Bush said. He then launched into a
tirade:
We've got excellent programs, and the only way when the other party controls the Congredefeat some of their lousy ideas and then keep saying to the American people, 'Have your ss is to
congressman try the president's ideas. We need more farsighted people like me in Congress.
So please, American people, -- let me look over this way -- please, do not listen to the charges by
frantic Democrats who are trying to say we don't have a domestic policy when we have a good oneGive it a chance. Let the president's programs come up, and let's have some support for what he was. (^)
elected to do.
According to Bush, the Democrats "seem to have a concerted policy...to tear down the president."
Asked about possible Democratic presidential candidates meeting with the widow of his familybenefactor, Bush responded with muted anger, "These fellows who are very nice, very pleasant -- (^)
all go down to Pamela Harriman's farm down here, the bastion of democracy, and come back and
tell me that we don't have a domestic program. C'mon. Lighten up out there." After the long
diatribes, it was perhaps not surprising that someone asked Bush how he was feeling. "Right now, I
feel like a million bucks," he replied. But he was adamant that it was time for his vacation: "I'mhistory...It's going to be a vacation. I think I've earned it, like a lot of Americans, and I'm looking (^)
forward to it. And it will not be denied." [fn 55]
August 14: Bush's rage profile was once more on display as he called for an extension of the federal
death penalty in a Pittsburgh speech that was also full of racist overtones. Addressing the NationalConvention of the Fraternal Order of Police, Bush ranted that "the time has come to show less
compassion for the architects of crime and more compassion for its victims. Our citizens want and
deserve to feel safe." "We must remember that the first obligation of a penal system is to punish
those who break our laws....You can't turn bad people into saints." Bush wanted courts to be able to
use evidence that had been seized illegally: "There's no reason -- none at all-- that good police