Pete Laney was Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives during the entire six-year tenure of Governor George W. Bush in Austin. Laney offers no comment on what may or may not have happened in Washington since 9-11. He is a friend of the president’s and he has retired from public office and can now pick and choose when or to whom he gives his opinion.

But speaking of the years in which he was part of the gang of three that controlled the state—Governor Bush, Speaker Laney and the powerful lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, who was the future president’s mentor and the man credited with making George W. Bush a viable national candidate—former speaker Laney says of those long-past bipartisan days in Austin, “We headed off problems before they became problems.”

You may remember Mr. Laney, a modest man who has a cotton farm and used car dealership in Hale County, just south of the Panhandle, because it was he—after the Supreme Court had ruled and Vice President Gore conceded—who first introduced George W. Bush to the world as President-Elect of the United States. (Laney’s present comments are being made in a pancake house in Lubbock, in the mostly-flat kingdom of West Texas, a couple of hours north of the Bush dukedom, Midland. People pass the table and seem to half-recognize the former Speaker of the Texas House. “My wife and I were in the newspaper yesterday,” he explains almost reluctantly. Speaker Laney was usually the more reserved member of the trio—while Governor Bush and Lieutenant Governor Bullock, the state’s top Republican and Democrat respectively, were the focus of most of the public attention.)

The choice of Mr. Laney to make George W Bush’s introduction to national leadership was brilliant. After a month of anger and recrimination during the presidential recount in Florida a healer was needed, someone who could smooth out differences and bring people together, a role Laney had played during the entire Bush tenure in Austin as power changed hands from conservative Democrats like Bob Bullock and Pete Laney to more conservative Republicans like George W. Bush. But after thanking the speaker and thanking his wife and family, and calling for public prayers for defeated Vice President Al Gore, with the world listening the newly-proclaimed President-elect of the United States moved quickly to pay respect to the ghost in the state capitol—to the missing third member of the troika, the man who had not only marked W for greatness but smoothed his path to the White House as well. Describing Lieutenant Governor Bullock as “our mutual friend,” W promised that the late Democratic leader’s “ability to work in a bipartisan way [will] continue to be a model for all of us.” That did not happen. There are many adjectives to describe the Bush tenure in Washington but “bipartisan” is not one. His days in Austin were a happier time, however, because bipartisanship really was the rule. One person is mostly responsible for that felicity, Bob Bullock—not because Lieutenant Governor Bullock was a “nice guy,” which is the rarest animal in the Texas statehouse, nor because Bullock was more of a Southern gentleman than the gentlemanly Speaker of the House. But, by contrast, because Bob Bullock was capable of so much ill will if he set his mind to it.

For some reason the young Republican governor—or the promise George W. Bush once showed—brought out the old Democratic warhorse’s good side. Lt. Governor Bullock approved of W, and the world was changed because of it. Or at least that’s what some people say these days in Austin.

W Will Be President

Everyone who knew the lieutenant governor well has a favorite story about when Bob Bullock first predicted George W. Bush would be president. A former chief aide says Bullock told him when the lieutenant governor was in the hospital after a fall climbing the steps to a deer-hunting blind. The vision of W in the White House came in a kind of fever-dream—and then the real W came to kiss the old man’s forehead and wish him a speedy recovery.

Pete Laney himself recalls Governor Bush’s 50th birthday party at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, before the hunting accident—a private affair attended by former President George H.W. Bush and future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but no other politicos. Bullock made the prediction there, although Laney says Bullock predicted W would be president, but not necessarily the next president. The lieutenant governor had written the same thing to the governor’s mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, the year before that—though there’s some indication in the letter Bullock was just doing what politicians do, telling a proud mom that her boy would someday be President of the United States. What’s unclear is when Lieutenant Governor Bullock actually came to believe what he was saying, or decided to help make it so. Chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, profane as the day is long . . . when the co-opting of the state’s Democrats is lamented one name is always mentioned first—Bob Bullock’s. Considering the closeness of the 2000 election—the theory goes these days in Austin—if the influential lieutenant governor had been less of a friend to W the world would have been spared many of the scars of recent years.

Whether you believe that or not, Bob Bullock straddled the terms of the Texas presidents, wielding awesome power without ever going to Washington himself. And in contrast to the other great men of his generation in the state—the Bushes and LBJ for example—he did everything right. He went out on top, never indicted, never defeated, having called all his own shots and picked a winner, George W. Bush. Bob Bullock was the real thing. He really was a tough S.O.B. He was Texan in the epic sense—hard, competent—occasionally caring—and lightning-quick on the draw.

He really was as big as the state, as varied in his moods and as complex, “big as the land,” as people here like to say—but no bigger. Bullock knew, for instance, that he could never leave Texas. To him, Washington was not just out of state it was another world, one where he would never understand the rules of behavior and no one would understand or accept him. Bullock and W both, in fact, are evidence there are particularities to the nature of how power flows and how power is used in Austin which may make Texans particularly unsuited to national or international leadership. President Johnson, for example, could never understand why those “Com’nists,” as he called them, didn’t realize they were beaten in Vietnam, just as President Bush has never quite comprehended why angry Muslims haven’t given up like anybody with any sense back home would do. You’re reluctant to say hick because it’s more complicated than that, but with Bush as with LBJ there is a hick factor. Bullock was a hick too and he wouldn’t have understood either, but unlike the other “great” Texas politicians of the 20th century he understood that he wouldn’t understand, he knew that he wouldn’t know. Military service is over-appreciated in political leaders but Bullock had served in the Air Force in Korea and he knew that the world beyond the Rio Grande was different from the world he grew up in.

Former Speaker Laney says that after his own years in office he has a theory which may explain how the much-flawed Texas lieutenant governor stayed so popular and, therefore, made his endorsement of W so valuable. Laney believes that the state’s voters—perhaps voters anywhere—don’t care so much what you’ve done, whether you’ve made mistakes or not, “So long as they know you.” Familiarity may breed contempt among friends or lovers, but with the electorate it can breed support. Everybody in Texas knew Bullock, even people who had never met him. Hundreds of miles from Austin, off in a small town deep in the pine woods along the Louisiana state line, someone would lay down the newspaper and look at the person sitting across the table in the café and say, “Bullock is drinking again,” and they both knew exactly what that meant—government in Austin was in danger. Because, as the president would tell you, knowing Bob Bullock meant knowing his weaknesses—instead of hiding his bad side Lieutenant Governor Bullock made a point of showing off every imperfection. And unlike the president, Bullock had a great capacity for admitting he was wrong, usually after the fact, but nonetheless confessing. When Bullock went off to rehab his spokesman told reporters the reason he was seeking treatment: “He’s tired of waking up drunk.” What modern American political leader can you imagine being that honest with the voters? The people of the state loved him.

So did George W. Bush.

To Kill With a Smile

According to his former assistants, when Bullock first met someone there were three things he wanted to know: What you were bringing to the table, if you were going to try to trick him, and what your weaknesses were so that he could trick you. He could begin a negotiation by telling his opponent, “Now I know that Senator So-and-So is sticking your wife, but—” and the specifics of the agreement were settled from there.

Bullock wasn’t joking, Senator So-and-So really was sleeping with the man’s wife, and under the guise of offering condolences the lieutenant governor would throw the guy off balance and move in for the kill. (Sex was always an important move in Bullock’s gamebook. He once told his chief of staff that he wanted to know who in his policy office was sleeping with whomever else, in order to exploit the knowledge for better production from staff.) Bob Bullock was a rube and a thug, shrewd and cunning in equal parts, but he was not a genius. People in Texas call Bullock a genius today but he was not a genius unless you believe Michael Jordan is a genius or Muhammad Ali or Tiger Woods. Instead Bullock was a great player. Like a great athlete he could see the entire field, the entire apparatus of government, in his mind’s eye. Like an athlete he knew where there were openings and where to run. That was his “genius.” The question that preoccupies parts of official Austin these days is what Bullock saw in George W. Bush, who has turned out not to be quite so agile on the field.

People were afraid of the lieutenant governor when he was alive but now that he can’t hurt anybody—dead these nine years, buried over on Republic Hill in the State Cemetery near Barbara Jordan and “Big John” Connally, on a site manicured by state prisoners in preparation for his arrival—there’s anger among Democrats, as well as guilt. Bullock could have softened up George W. Bush for Vice President Al Gore, after all. It wouldn’t have taken much. A few well-placed shots to the body, nothing that would have left bruises visible to the public but still left W with a limp or slurred speech on election day—that sort of thing was Bullock’s specialty. It wasn’t like the independently-elected lieutenant governor was incapable of hamstringing a governor.

Or, alternatively, Bullock could have offered the same kind of benign neglect he bestowed upon W’s predecessor, Ann Richards. Before her defeat in the 1994 election, Governor Richards spoke at a roast for the lieutenant governor and she told the crowd she was present at the dinner for the same reason everyone else was there, “Because I’d be afraid not to be.” The line brought forth a roar of laughter because like the best humor—it was true.

Ann Richards and Bob Bullock were longtime friends, part of the thinning field of Democratic officials in Texas at the end of the twentieth century, and years earlier Ann Richards is said to have been at the airport to meet Bullock’s plane when he came back from detox, which in political circles in Austin was like relation by marriage. So why did Bullock find common cause with W? That’s the question that echoes in the hallways of the state capitol today. The actual answer can be found in the two men’s political bios.

We all know the general trajectory of W’s life: Andover—Yale—the oil and gas industry—professional baseball—the governor’s mansion—White House and D.C. Bullock’s life was more self-driven, which is inherently neither good nor bad, but was obviously more the product of his own abilities and desire. His father died when he was a child and he and his mother were taken in by relatives. His upbringing was middle class, in the town of Hillsborough, in the Hill County near Fort Worth, a populist area more than strictly Democratic. His professional life centered around Austin and state government. Governor’s appointment secretary, governor’s general counsel—secretary of state—lobbyist—state comptroller and tax man. Three decades after his start he had arrived at the summit of elected power, lieutenant governor and president of the Texas Senate, and he was in a unique position to show the young George W. Bush where all the political bodies were buried in Austin because Bullock himself had buried many of them, each with a single neat bullet wound between the eyes.

The late George Christian, who was President Johnson’s press secretary and a close friend of Lieutenant Governor Bullock’s, said that like many other “great” men at the pinnacle of his career Bullock became obsessed with posterity and what would be thought of him. The Bushes, who were the new establishment in the state, were key to that and Bullock knew it.

Christian also remembered the first time he saw Bullock, decades earlier at the Texas House of Representatives, when young Bob was just another hayseed first-term state rep from a forgotten county.

That day in the capitol, Bullock was wearing high-water pants, part of a cheap suit, and could have had manure on his boots for all anyone knew. No one yet realized he had come to take over.

The Three Bobs

The three phases of Bullock’s political life are best viewed as photographs.

The first is young Bob as an operator, shaking hands with his idol, former president Lyndon Johnson. The photo, apparently taken at an airstrip, shows Johnson in his final years, ill and discredited in exile in Texas as his legacy was destroyed half a world away in Vietnam.

The second photo was taken years later during Bullock’s own dark period. He was at the height of his mental powers but not yet the height of his political power. The picture was shot outside, apparently at a bar, and was taken over the shoulder of an anonymous drinking companion. “Uncle Bob” is dressed in a Levi’s jacket, his eyes hidden by shades, what appears to be an empty glass of an adult beverage on the table in front of him. He looks like a Hollywood movie agent of the 1960s or a Mafioso of any era, an air Bullock went to some lengths to cultivate, and it’s a great picture not just because of the subject but because it’s somehow reminiscent of an even greater picture, also of a political leader—a shot of General Augusto Pinochet taken during his 15-year rule in Chile. In that shot Pinochet is in uniform, also wearing dark glasses, seated with the other members of the junta, the general’s arms crossed in the ultimate closed body language, and on his face he’s wearing a “Screw you, I’m in charge here” look which was also a favorite facial expression of the Texas comptroller of public accounts. The most significant feature of the Bullock picture is the empty glass. It was Bullock’s dark period because he was drinking heavily. The great man’s inborn temperament was already moody enough that alcohol only served to take him from one extreme to another. But this was, nonetheless, also the time of his greatest creativity—as comptroller, Bullock had the brilliant idea of actually collecting all the money that was owed to the government by businessmen across the state, something that had never been done before.

It was also Bullock’s dark period because he was under great pressure. The people of the state had begun to rely on him as a kind of fixed star of leadership: Governors came and governors went but Bob Bullock remained at the state capitol. Common people knew that he wasn’t perfect yet they trusted his instincts, especially in regards the spending of their tax money. But because of his power and the boldness with which he used his influence Bullock fell under suspicion, not unjustifiably, from others in power. The FBI began a years-long surveillance of Bullock’s personal and political activities. The district attorney in Austin tried “to get him” too, as Bullock called it. Alcohol exacerbated everything, even the suspicion—and, actually, the first criminal incident recorded by authorities involved booze, not political payoffs, and was illustrative of Bullock’s character and his tenure in office, which were both surprisingly closely tied to the fermentation of malt and hops.

Recording for posterity were the Austin police, not federal agents.

It was a midsummer’s night, the time one-thirty in the morning, and leaving his forty-ninth birthday party Bullock blew out the two right tires of his new bronze-and-white Cadillac bouncing the car off a street curb. An unidentified passenger was hanging out the right front window of the Caddie, apparently uninjured but nonetheless wasted when police arrived on the scene.

Comptroller Bullock stepped out of the driver’s side and swayed as officers approached. He had, as the police noted in their reports, a “moderate odor of alcoholic beverage” on his breath. The officers checked on the then-Mrs. Bullock, who was a passenger in the car. She was feeling no pain.

An Officer Smith interviewed Comptroller Bullock (the officer unaware that he was talking to the future mentor of a future president) “to determine his level of intoxication”: “I first asked him how much he had to drink tonight. He said, ‘A few drinks,’” Patrolman Smith wrote in his report. “I asked where and he said, ‘Steak & Ale.’ What did you have to drink? ‘Beer.’ What time did you start? ‘About 9:30.’ What time is it now, without looking at your watch? ‘About 11:00,’” Bullock answered. He was only off by two-and-a-half hours; anyone could make the same mistake. Another cop took over questioning.

“Officer Doyle asked Mr. Bullock, ‘Do you know where you are now?’ [Bullock] said, ‘Yes . . . Well, no, I don’t know the name of this street, but that’s Steck Avenue.’” He was actually pointing at a street called West Anderson Lane. At least he was in the right neighborhood. In any case, the police had all the answers they needed.

Then came the arch-typical Bullock moment—the unexpected turn in which he never failed to surprise and impress his fans and foes—later among them a brash young Republican governor.

Resigned to his fate, Texas’s “most powerful official” talked freely as he was driven to jail.

“I’ll admit,” he explained with considerable courage, “I’ve had too much to drink.”

Moderates, in a Texas Way

You can choose the third photograph yourself. The selection is wide—W and Bullock took quite a few pictures together, photos with their wives, with other politicians, at inaugurations and special events. One of the best shots was taken on the floor of the Texas Senate where Lieutenant Governor Bullock was presiding officer. It looks to be early in the Bush administration in Austin because in this photo the two governors are seated side by side and—while the older man looks as if he is in command, instructing a newcomer on the intricacies of the legislative process—W looks as if it is a hard lesson to absorb. This photograph is, in fact, more revealing than many of the others they took together. Seeing the shot of Bush and Bullock together that day is like looking into the funny mirror at an amusement park, except in reverse, because instead of taking a normal image and reshaping it into something bizarre, this photo took something bizarre and made it look normal.

The two men were from different parties and approached government in Austin in a non-partisan way, sure. They were moderates, yes—but a moderate in Texas—well, look at each of the men individually, one at a time, and that explains why bipartisanship is not always such a good thing. Bullock was a gun nut who routinely threatened to shoot people who disagreed with him, he had been married five times including twice to the same woman and he had an FBI dossier big enough to choke a file clerk. The lieutenant governor was considered a “moderate” in the Texas context because he believed in equal rights for blacks and browns and because he believed that not all state expenditures are waste and that public spending actually sometimes does serve a purpose.

On W’s side of the aisle, here was a governor who would sign off on 153 of 154 executions brought to his desk, who had no interest in the environment except as a source of leisure activities or business wealth, who believed in the oil and gas industry as a kind of secular religion and who thought that he himself, as the son of a former president of the United States, had had a hard row to hoe in life. Governor Bush was considered a moderate, in the Texas context, because he agreed to the reprieve of one out of 154 condemned prisoners and because he too believed that blacks and browns should have equal rights. Bullock and Bush were political allies who got along, sure, because they had extremism in common. In all those smiling photographs what’s missing is the context—what’s been cut away is the larger background—Texas itself, the blood-red red state, where ordinary citizens have the right to carry a concealed handgun, where health insurance for children is considered a luxury and where survival of the fittest is still the law of the land. So how to explain Bullock’s allegiance to W?

Maybe it’s not so hard at all.

A Few Good Vices

At the end of Bullock’s political life few of his vices remained. He had been happily married to his wife Jan for years. He had definitively given up drinking. He would never stop smoking (even lifting his oxygen mask during his final days, according to his aides, to take a puff.) That left only one weakness—airplanes.

Bullock’s weakness for aircraft was well-known. He was ex-Air Force after all. Earlier in his political career he had almost been indicted by the Austin district attorney for use of state airplanes for political purposes. As lieutenant governor, at the end of his career, FBI agents noted in his Justice Department file that Bullock’s association with a private law firm in Austin gave Bullock access to the firm’s private jet, which agents believed was a perk of particular importance to this public official. In Texas, especially, because of the state’s size and because of the importance of high-profile evidence of wealth and influence (unlike on the East Coast where the rich sometimes try to hide their money) private aircraft are the inevitable next step up from a Mercedes or a Jag, the preferred way to get home to the ranch on the weekend. W’s supporters noted Bullock’s interest in flying whenever he could.

According to one close Bullock aide, Republican boosters offered Lieutenant Governor Bullock plenty of air time, “not in small commuter planes,” according to this source, “but in big executive jets.” Free flights on big planes were not necessary for Bullock to know that supporting W’s presidential aspirations was in the lieutenant governor’s best interests, but didn’t hurt either. And if airplanes were the lieutenant governor’s weakness they were Governor Bush’s strength. Bullock’s much-deleted FBI file ends suddenly—or at least the version made public ends suddenly—just as agents begin a discussion of the use of state aircraft by the Texas’s top three officials, Bush, Bullock and Speaker Laney (also a private pilot, but who liked to fly his own plane). Whatever the confidential nature of the agents observations, the political importance of state airplanes is easily verified.

On the second floor of the state capitol, in the Legislative Reference Library, are the bound volumes of the state aircraft flight logs from the Bush years. Here W stands out on his own for having done heavy lifting to make his political aspirations a reality. On page after page are his trips to the state’s small towns and rural counties, which Texas politicians ignore only at great peril. On these endless trips to the farthest reaches of the state, Governor Bush perfected the greeting and handshaking, the baby-kissing and speech-making, the boots-on-the-ground attention to constituents that Bullock taught him and which served as the foundation for a successful run for the White House.

"There Will Be No Tell-it-all"

An anonymous FBI agent offered one final clue to Bullock’s character in 1998, during the old man’s last year in office.

An informant had provided a lead regarding Lone Star Long Distance, a company in which the “suspect” had an interest. “It is unknown if Bullock was able to obtain favorable rates from AT&T Telephone Company for this long distance service,” Agent X wrote in a memo to the director. “Bullock in the past has been very hard on AT&T; however, Source advised that companies in the telecom industry and the regulated utilities keep courting legislators even if they have been unfairly treated in the past. There is always new legislation being proposed for these industries and the lobbyists are forced to ‘keep smiling’ even if they take abuse from a legislator . . . . ” The agent suggested the possibility of setting a trap for the lieutenant governor. “In attempts to get customers to switch to this service, salesmen were using Bullock’s name in contacting lobbyists and other legislators. Bullock claimed to have no knowledge of the fact that his name was being used in promoting this company and claimed that his investment was passive but [the unnamed informant] believes that in the future Bullock and state legislators will be more favorable to AT&T.”

The report was a good example of democracy in action—a clear view on the real operations of state government—but apparently no one in the Justice Department had the energy to chase Bullock down. And it didn’t really matter because his career was already over. Ill and tired, Bob Bullock announced his retirement a short time later.

“There will be no tell-it-all autobiography,” the lieutenant governor said in his public farewell. He took a moment to attack the real enemy—not the Republicans, but the press. “For those in the news media who, for whatever reason, have said for years that my career wouldn’t last, I have a parting message: I’ve outlasted the reporters, columnists, editors and publishers who started with me. And I’ve outlasted the Dallas Times-Herald, the Houston Post and the San Antonio Light. End of story.” In fact in political terms he had outlasted most of his contemporaries, including the last six governors he had worked with—W being the sole exception—but in a twist of fate the governors all outlived him. His death certificate mentioned emphysema and lung cancer, and the attending physician, when asked if cigarettes had played a part in the great man’s demise, said yes but liquor was not mentioned. Well, as Bullock himself might have said, if booze didn’t carry him to his cemetery a bottle certainly came along for the ride.

And for once in his political career he was completely loyal, even from the grave. Bullock’s estate was valued at $1.1 million, relatively modest by Texas political standards, but his campaign war chest contained almost $3 million—most of it money squeezed out of lobbyists. Bullock’s estate gave $1 million to his alma mater, Baylor University . . . a few thousand here . . . a few thousand there . . . and in negotiations with Texas A&M University and Bush School of Government interim-dean (now U.S. Secretary of Defense) Bob Gates, Bullock’s widow gave $1 million to establish the Bob Bullock Chair of Government and Public Policy at the Bush School.

Populism, Power, Tragedy

An ironic smile creeps over Pete Laney’s features when asked about the former lieutenant governor. Mr. Laney takes a moment to recall when Bullock threatened to kill a Democratic legislator from the eastern part of the state during an encounter in the capitol. The legislator, who was no shrinking violent himself, told Bullock that he would kill Bullock if the lieutenant governor ever made a threat like that again. Bullock could be intimidating, Pete Laney says with grim humor, using his characteristically sparse speech, “If you let him.”

As to whether the powerful lieutenant governor was too weak to fight by the time the new Republican governor appeared on the scene, Mr. Laney denies that is the case.

“He still had claws,” Laney says.

But in A Charge to Keep, published in time for the 2000 election, W painted a kinder gentler picture of his mentor. Governor Bush described the deathbed scene in which the Republican presidential candidate came home from the campaign trail to hear a few final words from the Democrat whose blessing would help make national victory possible.

“He cleared the room. Jan and Laura went into the living room to have coffee, I remained behind. He asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral. I was hugely honored,” the future president wrote, playing bipartisanship for what it was worth. “In the end, we wept together. He was so proud, so eager, so convinced that I had a great chance to become the next President. He had told friends that he looked forward to watching me take the oath of office. Bullock, a man who had lived for years on his sheer strength of will, realized that if that happened, he would not be there to see it.”

Bob Bullock was the best and the worst of the Democratic Party in the state, the reason it rose to power—populism—and the reason it fell, cronyism. He was also a drunk and a philosopher. He just wasn’t a clairvoyant. If Lieutenant Governor Bullock couldn’t see the future neither could tens of millions of American voters or five members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lieutenant Governor Bullock was great, whatever that word means—in Austin it’s usually used for someone who dominates public affairs for good or bad; ideology aside, the accent in Texas is on raw power. In the case of this government official there was something shady, sure, the legendary Lone Star underbelly, the dark side of the force. Power, yes—and ruthlessness too. But by background and by upbringing Bob Bullock and his protégé couldn’t have been more different. Bullock was self-made power, not self-made money, as opposed to George W. Bush, who was born with both.

Both Bush and Bullock may be seen by history as the subjects of tragedies, but the lieutenant governor of Texas was a different kind of tragedy—one in which the hero dies blessed and the rest of us live on to suffer.

Or at least that’s what they tell you these days in Austin.

***


Lucius Lomax is a freelance writer in Austin and can be reached at lulo23us@yahoo.com.