Bush's opening statement was also in the main a tissue of banality and cliches. He
indicated his support for the Rockefeller Commission report without having mastered its
contents in detail. He pointed out that he had attended Cabinet meetings from 1971 to
1974, without mentioning who the president was in those days. Everybody was waiting
for this consummate pontificator to get to the issue of whether he was going to attempt
the vice-presidency in 1976. Readers of Bush's propaganda biographies know that he
never decides on his own to run for office, but always responds to the urging of his
friends. Within those limits, his answer was that he was available for the second spot on
the ticket. More remarkably, he indicated that he had a hereditary right to it--it was, as he
said, his "birthright."
Would Bush accept a draft? "I cannot in all honesty tell you that I would not accept, and I
do not think, gentlemen, that any American should be asked to say he would not accept,
and to my knowledge, no one in the history of this Republic has been asked to renounce
his political birthright as the price of confirmation for any office. And I can tell you that I
will not seek any office while I hold the job of CIA Director. I will put politics wholly
out of my sphere of activities." Even more, Bush argued, his willingness to serve at the
CIA reflected his sense of noblesse oblige. Friends had asked him why he wanted to go to
Langley at all, "with all the controversy swirling around the CIA, with its obvious
barriers to political future?"
Magnanimously Bush replied to his own rhetorical question: "My answer is simple. First,
the work is desperately important to the survival of this country, and to the survival of
freedom around the world. And second, old fashioned as it may seem to some, it is my
duty to serve my country. And I did not seek this job but I want to do it and I will do my
very best." [fn 17]
Stennis responded with a joke that sounds eerie in retrospect: "If I though that you were
seeking the Vice Presidential nomination or Presidential nomination by way of the route
of being Director of the CIA, I would question you judgment most severely." There was
laughter in the committee room.
Senators Goldwater and Stuart Symington made clear that they would give Bush a free
ride not only out of deference to Ford, but also out of regard for the late Prescott Bush,
with whom they had both started out in the Senate in 1952. Senator McIntyre was more
demanding, and raised the issue of enemies' list operations, a notorious abuse of the
Nixon (and subsequent) administratio ns:
"What if you get a call from the President, next July or August, saying 'George, I would
like to see you.' You go in the White House. He takes you over in the corner and says,
'look, things are not going too well in my campaign. This Reagan is gaining on me all the
time. Now, he is a movie star of some renown and has traveled with the fast set. He was a
Holywood star. I want you to get any dirt you can on this guy because I need it."
What would Bush do? "I do not think that is difficult, sir," intoned Bush. "I would
simply say that it gets back to character and it gets back to integrity; and furthermore, I