![]() ![]() He sort of tossed it at me and said, “It’s okay, but it needs be to peaced up a bit.” His manner was, I thought, in my youthful chesty way, slightly aloof. At any rate, there was a certain sense of us-versus-them aboard Air Force Two as we winged from Brussels to Berlin to Rome to Paris to Geneva to London making the world safe for more nuclear weapons.Ĭommander Blair handed me back the draft of speech number one (there would be about a half-dozen, plus arrival statements, departure statements, toasts, pledges of undying unity, etc,). Admiral Murphy was of course friendly toward Commander Blair, but he too felt a little, um, supervised. “Murf,” a term I never-ever-used to his face, was a genial, Brooklyn-Irish guy, and an 800 pound gorilla when it came to bureaucratic infighting. The VP’s chief of staff was himself a naval personage, a former four-star admiral, Daniel J. Moreover, I was informed that I would have to “clear” my speech drafts with him. Bush “The Vishnu” for reasons I won’t bother going into) felt a little, um, supervised by the presence of an NSC nanny. It was all very collegial and we were all on Team America and all that but we on the Vishnu’s staff (we used to call Mr. It was grueling, but it worked-NATO went through with the deployments and six years later the Berlin Wall came down.īut to my little story: this was a vice presidential mission, but as it was one of actual importance (unlike-let’s face it-most vice presidential missions), the White House sent along Commander Blair, to keep an eye on things and-we figured in West Wing paranoid fashion-to report on us. I can’t remember, my noggin is still spinning. The Vice President hit eight countries in nine days or nine countries in eight days. Bush was dispatched to make nice-which he was brilliant at-while simultaneously stiffening Euro-spines so that the deployments would go forward and maintain the balance of deterrence. Then, a year after asking us to deploy INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces), the Europeans, being total weenies, were backing down, under pressure from the Soviets. to deploy intermediate-range Pershing nuclear missiles and air-launched cruise missiles (“Al-Cums” in the grim parlance of Armageddon), to protect them against similar weapons already deployed by the Evil Empire (the Rooskies, who are still evil they just dress better these days). In brief: NATO countries had petitioned the U.S. In February 1983, Vice President was dispatched on a hand-holding mission to our allies in Europe. But these facts were unknown knowns back then, as Mr. As we now know, the Russians absolutely believed that Ronald Reagan would launch nukes if necessary just as we now know that Ronald Reagan would never have used “the nuclear option,” even in retaliation. Anyway, it was on, back in 1983, and running kind of hot for a cold war. Remember the Cold War? God, I miss the Cold War. (Whenever I put it that way, I sound like Austin Powers, “One million dollars!”) I was speechwriter to George Herbert Walker Bush, as fine a man as I have ever known (next to my late dad). My own august title was Chief Speechwriter to the Vice President of the United States. He was, at the time, a bright and quite dashing Navy commander, seconded (a British term-being affected, I tend use a lot of them) to the National Security Council at the White House.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |