privation would be a life without servants, and whose concept of a domestic agenda
would be a plan to hire two maids and a butler.
One of the landmark corporate battles of the first Reagan Administration was the battle
over control of Getty Oil, a battle fought between Texaco, at that time the third largest oil
company in the United States and the fourth largest industrial corporation, and J. Hugh
Liedkte's Pennzoil. George Bush's old partner and constant crony, J. Hugh Liedtke, was
still obsessed with his dream of building Pennzoil into a major oil company, one that
could become the seventh of the traditional Seven Sisters after Chevron and Gulf merged.
But the sands of biological time were running out on "Chairman Mao" Liedkte, as the
abrasive Pennzoil boss was known in the years after he became the first US oilman to
drill in China, thanks to Bush. The only way that Chairman Mao Liedkte could realize his
lifelong dream would be by acquiring a large oil company and using its reserves to build
Pennzoil up to world-class status.
Liedtke was the chairman of the Pennzoil board, and the Pennzoil president was now
Blaine Kerr, a former lawyer from Baker & Botts in Houston. Blaine Kerr was also an
old friend of George Bush. Back in 1970, when George was running against Lloyd
Bentsen, Kerr had advised Bush on a proposed business deal involving a loan request
from Victor A. Flaherty, who needed money to buy Fidelity Printing Company. Blaine
Kerr was a hard bargainer: he recommended that Bush make the loan, but that he also
demand some stock in Fidelity Printing as part of the deal. Three years later, when
Fidelity Printing was sold, Bush cashed in his stock for $499,600 in profit, a gain of
1,900% on his original investment. That was the kind of return that George Bush liked,
the kind that honest activities can so rarely produce. [fn 1]
Chairman Mao Liedkte and his sidekick Blaine Kerr constantly scanned their radar
screens for an oil company to acquire. They studied Superior Oil, which was in play, but
Superior Oil did too much of its business in Canada, where there had been no equivalent
of George Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief, and where the oil companies were
still subject to some restraints. Chairman Mao ruled that one out. Then there was Gulf
Oil, where T. Boone Pickens was attempting a takeover, but Liedkte reluctantly decided
that Gulf was beyond his means. Then, Chairman Mao began to hear reports of conflicts
on the board of Getty Oil. Getty Oil, with 20,000 employees, was a $12 billion
corporation, about six times larger than Pennzoil. But Chairman Mao had already
managed to fagocitate United Gas when that compnay was about six times larger than his
own Pennzoil. Getty Oil had about a billion barrels of oil in the ground. Now Chairman
Mao was very interested.
The trouble on the Getty Board was a conflict between Gordon Getty, the surviving son
of the freebooting founder J. Paul Getty, and Sidney Petersen, the chairman of the Getty
Board. Gordon Getty had musical-aesthetic ambitions; but he wanted to be consulted on
all major policy decisions by Getty Oil. Gordon and his wife moved in the social circles
of Graham Allison of Harvard's Kennedy School, Lawrence Tisch of Loewe's
Corporation, and Warren Buffett, the owner of the Berkshire Hathaway investment house
in Omaha. Gordon Getty now controlled the Sarah Getty Trust with 40% of the