Jean Becker, chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush during his post-presidency, recently sat down with the Presidential Leadership Scholars team to discuss her time serving President Bush, his impact on the program, and what she hopes Scholars learn from their time at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.
What led you to serving as President Bush’s chief of staff in his post-presidency?
It was an accident. I worked for Mrs. Bush at the White House as one of her deputy press secretaries – that was also an accident, but that’s a long story. I came to Houston with them after he lost the 1992 election to President Bill Clinton. [Mrs. Bush] asked me to come help her with her memoir. She wrote it herself, but I served as her editor, fact-checker, and researcher.
In March of 1994, the book was done, and I was preparing to return to my previous life as a newspaper reporter. I actually had a job waiting for me at the Chicago Sun-Times, which I was very excited about. President Bush called me into his office. By then, I had gotten to know him a little because my desk was actually a card table set up in his kitchen – that’s how I got to know him.
His first post-White House chief of staff was retiring, and he told me he needed to find a new one. He said he didn’t have any ideas yet and needed time to think it through. But Bar (as in his wife Barbara as he called her) thought I could help keep the seat warm while he figured it out. He asked if I would stay until he hired someone new.
I told him no. I said, “Sir, I don’t know how to be a chief of staff. I’ve never been anyone’s boss. I can’t even balance my own checkbook. I cannot run your office.” He said, “If you could just stay for a little while. We’ll make it up as we go. As Bar said, we just need someone to keep the seat warm and help us out.” Then he added, “The big thing, Jean, is that you can go back to Kennebunkport, Maine with us this summer. It’ll be one last summer in Maine. I promise that by Labor Day I will have hired a chief of staff.”
You’re going to swear I’m making this up, but it’s true: we never talked about it again. We got incredibly busy. His sons, George W. and Jeb, were both running for governor in their states. Twenty years later I teased him and asked if he was ever going to hire a chief of staff, and he said, “What the hell are you talking about?” So that’s the story.
If you had one word to describe President Bush in all your years working with him, what would it be?
I’m going to cheat a little, because I wrote a whole book about his character. The word would be character. He was a man of character.
Is there one story or experience that stands out and represents that?
That’s a hard question. There are so many great examples. One is his friendship with President Clinton. This is a man who defeated him in 1992, and that was not an easy election. It was very hurtful, and it took him a while to get over it. Then he became, as Mrs. Bush said, “the father Bill Clinton never had.” It takes a person of character to be able to put aside hurt and political differences. They said ugly things to each other during that campaign, and yet they became best friends.
I’ll share a more random story. President Bush was shot down during World War II and rescued by the USS Finback submarine. About ten years before he died, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, of which President Bush had been chairman of the board for a while, received a call from a young man whose father had just died. While going through belongings, they found a pistol hidden under the attic floorboards with a note explaining that his father had served on the Finback. President Bush had slept in his bunk during the day while the man stood watch at night, and Bush had given him the pistol as a thank you.
The son said his father never talked about knowing President Bush, and they had no idea until they found the pistol. He wanted to donate it to the Constitution Center. The center wanted to make a big deal about it – a former president’s World War II weapon found in an attic. They wanted to do a big roll out.
President Bush agreed to come to Philadelphia, meet the family, and participate in the event. On the way, he told me he was worried. He said, “What if it isn’t my gun? What if this is one huge misunderstanding?” I said, “Sir, it’s a little too late to take it back. We should probably just go with it so the Constitution Center isn’t embarrassed.” He looked at me and said, “I will not lie about this. If it’s not my gun, I will not lie.”
He didn’t have the chance to see it before the event. I stood in the back with the press, terrified. When the gun was presented to him, he unwrapped it, looked at it, looked up at me, and nodded. On the way home I asked how he knew, and he said, “I just knew. The minute I unwrapped it, I knew it was my gun.”
I love telling that story because it shows how deeply committed he was to the truth – even when his own chief of staff was telling him to lie. Which I’m not proud of!
Looking to the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, President and Mrs. Bush were involved in the early years and visited cohorts when they came to College Station. What do you remember from when PLS was founded over 10 years ago?
I remember that President Bush loved the idea. He was so excited about it. Unfortunately, unlike his son and unlike President Clinton, by the time PLS was founded it was too late for him to take an active role. But he attended every year, sat in the back of the room, listened to the speakers, and the Scholars were always thrilled to see him. One of the things he loved most about it is that it was bipartisan – and he thought that was so smart and so important that the Scholars would learn from two Democratic presidents and two Republican presidents. He just loved it.
How do you see President Bush’s influence on the program?
That’s a tough question because he’s been gone for seven years. I’m proud to be one of the people, along with Andy Card, Fred McClure, and others, to talk about him – just like Mark Updegrove and others do at the LBJ Library. You all have been very welcoming in letting us talk about our presidents who are gone.
When I visit with Scholars, I can feel that they’re learning from [President George H. W Bush]. That means everything.
You have the opportunity to speak with Scholars every year. What do you hope they take away from their time in College Station?
I hope they learn that character is very important to being a good leader. When they tour the library and see everything President Bush accomplished and how he accomplished it. He was not a blow hard or a bully – he was a leader. I love that they get to study that and see how he led the country and how he was the leader of the free world and all that he accomplished by just being a very steady, honest leader.
What is your hope for the future of PLS?
That it never goes away. I know there will come a time – and I hate saying it out loud – when all four presidents will no longer be here. My hope is that those of us at the 41 Library and the LBJ Library have done a good enough job representing our presidents that the Clinton and Bush Center teams will continue as well. There is so much young leaders can learn from these four very different president and men – even the two George Bushes, who were themselves very different.
I love leadership programs, especially mid-career ones. I can only imagine how many people you’ve helped over the years — people who were unsure, timid, or hesitant to take on leadership roles. I wish when I was in my 30s there had a been a program like this I could have attended.
