HOUSTON — Few people outside of the family knew President George H.W. Bush as well as Jean Becker, his longtime chief of staff. She is sharing stories from her new book, "Character Matters," calling it a roadmap to civility in our polarizing political climate.
Becker is a journalist who became deputy press secretary for Barbara Bush in the White House, then was asked by the president to become his chief of staff once he left office.
"I told him I didn't know how to be a chief of staff," Becker said. "I didn't know how to be a boss, do a budget. He said, 'Don't worry about it. We’ll make it up as we go.' So I said, 'OK, I'll stay.' We never talked about it again."
Becker stayed until he died. It was an extraordinary 25 years for this Missouri farm girl who grew up in a town of 300.
"It was surreal," she said.
Surreal and life changing. She became like family to the president and Mrs. Bush, sharing her admiration for the president in her first book about him called "The Man I Knew" in 2021. Now she's written "Character Matters," a collection of essays by those who knew and worked for Bush; stories reflecting what she calls a man who led with kindness and humility, something she believes is needed today.
"We don't talk to each other anymore," she said. "We yell at each other and we tend to hang out with people who look like us and think like us. We don't mix and mingle with people on other sides of the aisle or who don't believe what we believe."
For an example of Bush leadership, she took us back to 1988, when then Vice President Bush was running for the White House and made that famous speech at the Republican National Convention.
"Read my lips. No new taxes," Bush said then.
When he got into office, Becker says he realized he needed to compromise.
"But he raised taxes and he paid for it," Cannon said.
"He did," Becker answered. "And he wrote in his diary, 'I probably just made myself a one-term president, but I know it's what's right for the country.'"
In retirement. Bush made headlines by skydiving on his birthdays.
The first time, Becker said the Pentagon asked General Colin Powell to talk him out of it.
"The Pentagon is terrified that you're going to jump out of a plane," Becker recalled telling him.
His answer?
"'I'll be fine, Colin,'" Becker said. "He loved it. He said, 'Yeah, I'm jumping. Do you want to come? You want to jump with me?' He loved it. He said it was so quiet and peaceful. He just found it magical."
But it was his humility she admired most. In 1997, after touring the Bush Presidential Library in College Station with the president before it opened, she was shocked by his reaction.
"After the president toured the presidential library, he said it was too much about him," Cannon said. "And you said..."
"'It is the George Bush Library, sir,'" she said she told him. "It is supposed to be about you."
What did he want? Becker says then President Bush wanted the library to recognize more members of his team over the years. And the library made the changes.
