My strategy was to make myself the buyer of choice. Laura and I moved to Dallas, and I visited Eddie and his wife Fran frequently. I promised to be a good steward of the franchise he loved. He said, “You’ve got a great name and a lot of potential. I’d love to sell to you, son, but you don’t have any money.”
I went to work lining up potential investors, mostly friends across the country. When Commissioner Peter Ueberroth argued that we needed more local owners, I went to see a highly successful Fort Worth investor, Richard Rainwater. I had courted Richard before and he had turned me down. This time he was receptive. Richard agreed to raise half the money for the franchise, so long as I raised the other half and agreed to make his friend Rusty Rose co-managing partner.
I went to meet Rusty at Brook Hollow Golf Club in Dallas. He seemed like a shy guy. He had never followed baseball, but he was great with finances. We talked about him being the inside guy who dealt with the numbers, and me being the outside guy who dealt with the public.
Shortly thereafter, Laura and I were at a black-tie charity function. Our plans for the team had leaked out, and a casual acquaintance pulled me aside and whispered: “Do you know that Rusty Rose is crazy? You’d better watch out.” At first I blew this off as mindless chatter. Then I fretted. What did “crazy” mean?
I called Richard and told him what I had heard. He suggested that I ask Rusty myself. That would be a little awkward. I barely knew the guy, and I was supposed to question his mental stability? I saw Rusty at a meeting that afternoon. As soon as I entered the conference room, he walked over to me and said, “I understand you have a problem with my mental state. I see a shrink. I have been sick. What of it?”
It turns out Rusty was not crazy. This was his awkward way of laying out the truth, which was that he suffered from a chemical imbalance that, if not properly treated, could drive his bright mind toward anxiety. I felt so small. I apologized.
Rusty and I went on to build a great friendship. He helped me to understand how depression, an illness I later learned had also afflicted Mother for a time in her life, could be managed with proper care. Two decades later in the Oval Office, I stood with Senators Pete Domenici and Ted Kennedy and signed a bill mandating that insurance companies cover treatment for patients with mental illness. As I did, I thought of my friend Rusty Rose.
With Rusty and Richard as part of our ownership group, we were approved to buy the team.** Eddie Chiles suggested that he introduce us to the fans as the new owners on Opening Day 1989. We walked out of the dugout, across the lush green grass, and onto the pitcher’s mound, where we joined Eddie and legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry, who threw out the first pitch. I turned to Rusty and said, “This is as good as it gets.”
Over the next five seasons, Laura and I went to fifty or sixty ball games a year. We saw a lot of wins, endured our fair share of losses, and enjoyed countless hours side by side. We took the girls to spring training and brought them to the park as much as possible. I traveled throughout the Rangers’ market, delivering speeches to sell tickets and talking up the ball club with local media. Over time, I grew more comfortable behind the lectern. I learned how to connect with a crowd and convey a clear message. I also gained valuable experience handling tough questions from journalists, in this case mostly about our shaky pitching rotation.
In the Rangers’ dugout with our girls. Owning a ballclub was my dream, and I was certain it was the best job I’d ever have.
Running the Rangers sharpened my management skills. Rusty and I spent our time on the major financial and strategic issues, and left the baseball decisions to baseball men. When people did not perform, we made changes. It wasn’t easy to ask decent folks like Bobby Valentine, a dynamic manager who had become a friend of mine, to move on. But I tried to deliver the news in a thoughtful way, and Bobby handled it like a professional. I was grateful when, years later, I heard him say, “I voted for George W. Bush, even though he fired me.”
When Rusty and I took over, the Rangers had finished with a losing record seven of the previous nine years. The club posted a winning record four of our first five seasons. The improvements on the field brought more people to the stands. Still, the economics of baseball were tough for a small-market team. We never asked the ownership group for more capital, but we never distributed cash, either.
Rusty and I realized the best way to increase the long-term value of the franchise was to upgrade our stadium. The Rangers were a major league team playing in a minor league ballpark. We designed a public-private financing system to fund the construction of a new stadium. I had no objection to a temporary sales tax increase to pay for the park, so long as local citizens had a chance to vote on it. They passed it by a margin of nearly two to one.
Thanks to the leadership of Tom Schieffer—a former Democratic state representative who did such a fine job overseeing the stadium project that I later asked him to serve as ambassador to Australia and Japan—the beautiful new ballpark was ready for Opening Day 1994. Over the following years, millions of Texans came to watch games at the new venue. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to know that I had been part of the management team that made it possible. By then, though, a pennant race wasn’t the only kind I had on my mind.
Shortly after we bought the Rangers in 1989, the campaign for the 1990 Texas gubernatorial election began. Several friends in politics suggested I run. I was flattered but never considered it seriously.
Most of my political involvement focused on Dad. Within months of taking office as president, he was confronted with seismic shifts in the world. With almost no warning, the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. I admired the way Dad managed the situation. He knew grandstanding could needlessly provoke the Soviets, who needed time and space to make the transition out of communism peacefully.
Thanks to Dad’s steady diplomacy at the end of the Cold War—and his strong responses to aggression in Panama and Iraq—the country had tremendous trust in George Bush’s foreign policy judgment. But I was worried about the economy, which had started to slow in 1989. By 1990, I feared a recession could be coming. I liquidated my meager holdings and paid off the loan I had taken out to buy my share of the Rangers. I hoped any downturn would end quickly, for the country and for Dad.
Meanwhile, Dad had to decide whether to stand for reelection. “Son, I’m not so sure I ought to run again,” he told me as we were fishing together in Maine in the summer of 1991.
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
“I feel responsible for what happened to Neil,” he said.
My brother Neil had served on the board of Silverado, a failed savings and loan in Colorado. Dad believed Neil had been subjected to harsh press attacks because he was the president’s son. I felt awful for Neil, and I could understand Dad’s anguish. But the country needed George Bush’s leadership. I was relieved when Dad told the family he had one last race in him.
The reelection effort got off to a bad start. The first lesson in electoral politics is to consolidate your base. But in 1992, Dad’s base was eroding. The primary reason was his reneging on his vow not to raise taxes—the infamous “Read my lips” line from his 1988 convention speech. Dad had accepted a tax increase from the Democratic Congress in return for reining in spending. While his decision benefited the budget, he had made a political mistake.