Did They Ever Work for a Living?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 6, 1999 | by Michael Rust

Though the front-runners for president have benefited from powerful political and business connections due to their backgrounds, they also have shown talent.

Running for president, it has become a cliche to notice, has become a full-time job. It's no wonder, then, that the leading candidates in the 2000 White House race have, it seems, been spending much of their adult lives preparing for this moment. The acknowledged front-runners -- Republican Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore for the Democrats -- were raised as the scions of political families, educated at prep schools and Ivy League universities and saw their careers boosted through family connections.

At one time, the idea of raising oneself up through hard labor from poverty or isolation was thought to be a useful filler for resumes of presidential hopefuls. Abraham Lincoln's rail-splitting background loudly was trumpeted throughout his campaign in 1860. Twenty years later, James Garfield's boyhood stint as "canal boy" was trumpeted by his friend, author Horatio Alger.

Whether that sweat-ethic is possible these days is debatable. "The idea of being nothing but a candidate for president is a fairly new one," historian Forrest McDonald tells Insight. McDonald, author of The American Presidency, points out that a lifetime devoted to a quest for the presidency is not unprecedented. John Kennedy, he notes, "was groomed since his brother died" for the Oval Office; likewise, brother Ted "was a professional candidate for president until he stuck his foot in his mouth" in 1980.

Gore usually is cited as an example of someone raised from an early age for presidential office. The vice president was criticized earlier this year for remarks to farmers in which he claimed to remember plowing the fields of the family farm in Tennessee. Actually, according to Bob Zelnick's Gore: A Political Life, that was correct. Gore's senator father insisted his son do farmwork each summer in Carthage, Tenn. The rest of the year, he lived in the deluxe Fairfax Hotel of Washington.

Following his Vietnam service, Gore worked as a newspaper reporter and attended both divinity school and law school before running for Congress at age 28. He had the jump, in this respect, on George W. Bush, who seemed to spend his 20s drifting in search of an anchor before making his bid for Congress at the age of 30. (Unlike Gore, Bush lost his effort to get to Washington.)

Like his father, Bush has made a political asset out of friendships, contacts and a gregarious nature. "It's hard to go anywhere without running into a friend of his," longtime Bush spokesman Karen Hughes told the Associated Press earlier this year. After spending his 20s as a fighter pilot in the Air National Guard and in a series of uninspired jobs -- including clothing salesman and ranch hand -- Bush ran unsuccessfully for Congress, got married, started a family and entered the oil business. But the results of the oil business were less than spectacular, and he entered baseball's field of dreams much more successfully.

Bush earned a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School, a move he once called "a vocational training exercise in capitalism." After graduation in 1975, he headed west through the far plains of Texas and decided to stop at the Midland oil fields. Crude-oil prices were skyrocketing and he has said he was attracted by the "entrepreneurial fever" unleashed by the Arab oil embargo.

He started as a landman, checking deeds and mineral rights, and two years later founded an exploration firm putting together private partnerships for drilling ventures. He named it Arbusto, meaning "bush" in Spanish. The company did not begin active operations until 1979 -- a year after Bush made an unsuccessful bid for a congressional seat. The first oil well he drilled was dry, and the company actually would drill few wells. Instead, Bush primarily brokered deals or participated in those put together by others.

By 1982, Arbusto had fallen on hard times. The company had less than $50,000 in the bank and also was about $420,000 in debt. Bush changed the name of the firm to Bush Exploration Co. and took the business public. About this same period, Bush was named a director of United Bank of Midland. During his tenure as director, the bank loaned his company $372,000. The deal later was scrutinized intensely by the press even though the loan was approved by a committee of the bank which did not include Bush. No wrongdoing was found, and the money was repaid in due course.

It was not long afterward that Bush's company merged with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., a firm of Cincinnati-based investors which backed independent oil producers. Spectrum itself was languishing in a depressed oil market and, within two years, merged with Harken Energy, an Irving, Texas-based corporation that made its mark by buying small, insolvent companies and making them profitable. Bush and his partners got $2 million in stock in the merger, and he became a consultant and director of Harken.