George H.W. Bush in Iowa: The family campaign — 'it was easy to become part of their family'
Jason Noble
While George Herbert Walker Bush’s political strongholds were to the south and east, Iowa figured prominently in a pursuit of the presidency that began in the late 1970s and culminated with his inauguration in January 1989.
Iowans who knew him — and there are many, as Bush competed twice in the caucuses here — remember the 41st president of the United States with a long list of superlatives.
They describe him as graceful, classy, sincere, generous and down to earth despite his patrician background. (Before becoming a Texas oilman, he was a Connecticut Yankee and a Yale man; his father was a U.S. senator.)
In addition to his single term as president, from 1989 to 1993, Bush was vice president, a congressman from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, chief liaison to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Before all that, he was a decorated naval aviator in World War II and a successful oilman. Of his five children who survived to adulthood, two became governors. One followed him into the Oval Office and another attempted to do the same.
“He was just the all-American type guy, and yet he was so nice and personable,” said Steve Roberts, a Des Moines attorney who was a Republican Party leader in the 1980s. “He acted presidential in a positive sort of way. You looked up to him.”
“He was always a lot of fun,” recalled Becky Beach, a political activist from Des Moines who was a personal assistant for several years to his wife, Barbara Bush, “but also a great statesman — very wise, very fair.”
’80 caucuses: Falling in love with Iowa
Bush’s run at the presidency coincided with Iowa’s rise to prominence as the first nominating contest in the nation. Jimmy Carter’s successful bid in 1976 provided a playbook for a little-known candidate looking to make his name nationally.
Bush followed Carter’s Iowa strategy, said David Oman, a party leader and staffer to governors Robert Ray and Terry Branstad. Bush traveled the state relentlessly, hitting party dinners and chamber of commerce meetings, shaking hands and making contacts. And it wasn’t just him — his wife and several of his children joined him on the trail.
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“They covered the state border to border and river to river and fell in love with Iowa, and a lot of Iowans obviously embraced them,” Oman said.
Beach was on the Iowa campaign trail with the family as well, touring all 99 counties with Barbara Bush and spending plenty of time with the candidate. She remembered his kindness, his love of face-to-face retail politicking and the way he’d always stop to say hello to the staff in hotel corridors and kitchens.
When the press corps followed the candidate home, she recalled, the Bushes invited them over to the house to do their laundry.
“Everybody was equal, no matter what their role was,” she said. “It was easy to become part of their family.”
George and Barbara, Beach said, became like “a second set of parents.”
By caucus day 1980, Bush had visited the state 31 times, doggedly courting county-level GOP activists and building an extensive field operation along the way. Front-runner Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, believed he could coast on his popularity in the state and declined to engage — a bad miscalculation.
Evidence of Bush’s strength mounted throughout the summer and fall of 1979, as political scientists Hugh Winebrenner and Dennis J. Goldford relate in their book, “The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making of a Media Event.” He won a string of six consecutive straw polls held across the state.
Victory in Iowa key to vice presidency
Part of Bush’s success stemmed from the makeup of the field. He was the lone moderate among several conservatives, allowing him consistently to win pluralities if not a majority of GOP activist votes, said former Des Moines Register reporter and columnist David Yepsen, who covered the ’80 and ’88 campaigns.
On caucus night, Bush edged out Reagan by just over 2,000 votes and 2 percentage points, a victory that established him as a top-flight candidate and forced Reagan to change his tactics in the primaries that followed.
“Clearly, winning the Iowa caucuses made him the rival to Ronald Reagan,” said Branstad, who was lieutenant governor in 1980 and governor during Bush’s presidency.
Reagan regained his footing in the subsequent contests and went on to win the presidency. But Bush’s victory in Iowa legitimized him as the candidate of the GOP’s moderate wing, and led directly to his nomination as Reagan’s vice president.
At the Republican National Convention in 1980, Reagan initially pursued former President Gerald Ford as his running mate, but ultimately opted for Bush to unify the party’s conservative and moderate factions. Mary Louise Smith, the former national committee chairwoman, an Iowan and close Bush friend, was “instrumental” to getting Bush on the ticket, Roberts said.
“If it hadn’t been for Iowa, he would never have become vice president,” Yepsen said, an argument echoed by Roberts and Oman. “He would’ve just been one of the also-rans. He parlayed a good showing in Iowa into the Republican vice presidential nomination.”
In office, Bush nurtures Iowa ties
As vice president, Bush stayed connected to the state, clearly anticipating another run for the top office in ’88. His engagement was calculated, Republicans said, but also heartfelt.
“There was a general sense among the Bush team throughout the 1980s that they owed a lot to Iowa,” Oman said.
In 1986, for instance, Steve Roberts’ wife, Dawn, ran for Iowa secretary of state, but was injured in a car accident on the campaign trail. Bush called her in the hospital and, when she was well enough to campaign again, sent his then-33-year-old son Jeb out on the trail with her. Jeb Bush later ran for president in 2016 but had disappointing results in Iowa and elsewhere.
Many Iowans still have mementos of one thing the Bushes littered across the country: personal notes and cards.
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In “What it Takes,” an account of the 1988 campaign, author Richard Ben Cramer describes Bush dashing off hundreds of hand-written notes, cards, letters and invitations each week. The family, according to Cramer, sent 30,000 Christmas cards a year to “friends” across the country.
Oman himself was a recipient on multiple occasions. One, from Barbara Bush, thanked him for accompanying her to a speaking engagement at an elementary school on caucus day in 1988.
“He was an old-school gentleman, always would thank people, always respectful, always kind, very appreciative of even the smallest effort made on his behalf,” he said.
That attention to detail, enacted on a national scale (and alongside supreme organization, strategy and funding), ultimately launched Bush into the presidency. But it actually didn’t help him very much in Iowa in 1988.
Rough going as front-runner in ’88
Bush entered the ’88 race as the front-runner, and spent little time in Iowa in the early months of the primary campaign, Winebrenner and Goldford wrote. In August 1987, Bush participated along with four other major candidates in the “Cavalcade of Stars,” a GOP fundraiser on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames.
Observers, reflecting on his organization and reputation from the 1980 race, tagged Bush as the favorite — a label that made his third-place finish behind evangelical leader Pat Robertson and U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, of Kansas, all the more jarring.
The Iowa caucuses finish was similar. He placed third again, with 19 percent of the vote, this time behind Dole, at 37 percent, and Robertson, at 25 percent.
“Bush comes back as a sitting vice president trying to replicate (his success from 1980), and gets his clock cleaned,” Yepsen said.
“That campaign turned out to be a donnybrook,” added Oman.
The reasons for his stumble were varied. The rise of Christian conservatism within the Republican Party — embodied by Robertson’s success — figured into his poor showing, but so did the farm crisis. Iowa’s economy was struggling at the time, Yepsen said, and Bush was tied to the policies of Reagan, whom Iowans didn’t see as helping their plight. The contrast Dole, a Kansan, could empathize with Iowa’s agricultural struggles.
Simply being vice president was a drag, as well, Oman said. Unlike the 1980 campaign, where he could tour the state, shake hands and meet people on their level, the ’88 campaign stops were accompanied by the Secret Service, a massive media presence, more formality and more demands on Bush's time.
“It was a whole different kind of campaign just based on the fact that he was No. 2 officeholder in the United States,” he said. “That limited him in.”
On caucus night, U.S. Sen Chuck Grassley, a Dole supporter, told the Des Moines Register of Bush’s loss: “I think it mortally wounds him.”
Grassley, though, was wrong. Bush overcame the early loss and went on to win in New Hampshire, gather momentum, rack up delegates and clinch the nomination.
As president, ties with Iowa continue
In a letter to Cedar Rapids supporter Sally J. Novetzke, dated Feb. 17, 1988, and recorded in Bush’s book, “All the Best, George Bush,” he wrote: “There is no way I can properly express my gratitude — Barbara’s too. You worked hard, you stood at my side when the going got tough, and you were with me, your hand on my shoulder, when things looked very gloomy indeed.”
He won the general election in a rout, although Iowa remained unfriendly. Democrat Michael Dukakis won the state by more than 10 points in November.
In office, though, the links between Bush and Iowa continued.
He appointed Novetzke, a Republican activist and one-time chairwoman of the state party, as ambassador to Malta.
When Branstad proposed a national summit on education, Bush enthusiastically took up the idea, attending the conference at the University of Virginia along with the vice president, many cabinet members, and 49 state governors.
The education goals that resulted from the conference showed up in Bush’s State of the Union address the following year, and the president invited Branstad to ride with him to the Capitol and sit with the first lady during the speech.
“George Bush was a great patriot,” Branstad said. “He’s somebody who’s served his country in many capacities. ... He’s a great man. He’s given a lot to his country.”