The contest that autumn between George Bush and the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, boiled down to the whether or not Americans approved of the course that Reagan had set. Just before the election, the vice president himself invited me to campaign with him and introduce him at some rallies. By now Bush had a decisive lead over Dukakis in the polls—something like 55 percent to 38 percent, with 4 percent undecided—so my job was just to help attract crowds and maintain the momentum. But I leaped at the chance; I wasn’t going to turn down a trip in Air Force Two!
We hit Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey a few days before the election. Peggy Noonan was on the plane to help out during the closing days of the campaign. She was the brilliant speechwriter who’d written many of Reagan’s great speeches. She’d also written the powerful acceptance speech Bush delivered in New Orleans. I loved the passage where Bush talked about who should succeed President Reagan: “In 1940, when I was barely more than a boy, Franklin Roosevelt said we shouldn’t change horses in midstream. My friends, these days the world moves even more quickly, and now, after two great terms, a switch will be made. But when you have to change horses in midstream, doesn’t it make sense to switch to one who’s going the same way?” That was also the speech where Bush told voters, “Read my lips. No new taxes”—a promise that hurt him later, but still a very powerful line. The day after that speech, he shot up in the polls. He’d shown leadership. He appeared determined. It was clear in America that this was our next president.
Our starting point was Columbus, where my friend and business partner Jim Lorimer organized a rally of five thousand people in the big plaza next to the headquarters of his company, Nationwide Insurance. It was a perfect day for speeches, sunny and cool, and the company let out its employees to help make sure that the plaza was full. Peggy Noonan had scripted me, as well as the vice president. You could tell she had fun playing off my action-hero persona. I introduced him as “the
Aboard Air Force Two, we relaxed and kicked back as we flew from stop to stop. We talked about the campaign, about his speeches, about whether he ever lost track of what city he was going to, and how he liked campaigning. Bush had a very casual approach to the campaign trail; not everything had to be set up perfectly.
Our conversation also came around to a specific interest of mine. Back in 1980, at the start of the Reagan administration, I’d turned down an offer to join the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. This was a twenty-four-member advisory panel that, in spite of its imposing title, was no longer part of the White House at all. It dated back to a fitness initiative by President Eisenhower, which, at the height of the Cold War, had been a really big deal—both he and his successor, John F. Kennedy, championed fitness as a way for America to stand strong against the Soviet threat. I especially loved the stories about what Kennedy did to promote fitness and sports. He started out as president-elect by publishing an essay in
During Vietnam, however, physical fitness fell out of the spotlight. The President’s Council became an appendage of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare bureaucracy and stayed that way for twenty years. The Council was still prestigious enough: astronaut Jim Lovell chaired it for a long time, and so did George Allen, the legendary NFL coach. But it never got much done. For instance, when the president would invite the US Olympic team or the World Series champs to the White House, the President’s Council was no longer even in the loop. That was why I turned down the invitation in 1980: I didn’t want to be part of a moribund organization. Now, almost ten years later, I felt it could be turned around.
“There’s a huge opportunity there,” I told Bush. I described how great it would be for the White House to reassert leadership on health and fitness—especially by shifting the focus back to the idea that fitness is important for all Americans, not just athletes. “What about the other 99.9 percent of the people who never go out for sports?” I pointed out. “Who is paying attention to the overweight kid? He will never be drafted for a football game or a tennis team or a swimming team or a volleyball team or a water polo team. And what about the scrawny kid with the Coke-bottle glasses? Who is paying attention to that kid?
“A lot of schools have great athletic programs but not great
I knew that George Bush liked sports and kept himself in very good shape. “That’s a brilliant idea if you want to put the time aside,” he said. “It would take some time. If you do something, you want to do it well.”
From Columbus we traveled on to Chicago, where we held a rally at a high school. On the way back to the airport, the vice president noticed this place called the Three Brothers Coffee Shop and said, “Hey, there’s a Greek diner. Let’s stop.” So the cars all pulled over, and we went in. He did it so casually, the way he went into that restaurant and tried all the food and schmoozed with the customers, the waiters, and the kitchen help, I thought it was wonderful. Then as I thought about it afterward, I realized, “Arnold, you schmuck, he’s campaigning against a guy named Dukakis.
It was a privilege to get such an inside view of a presidential campaign, especially just two weeks before the election. I’d never been involved in even a mayoral election, but now here I was seeing what the candidate does on the plane, how long he sleeps, how he preps for the next speech, how he studies the issues, how he communicates, and how relaxed he makes it all look. I was impressed with how easy Bush was with the people, how he posed for photos and talked to everybody and always knew the right thing to say. And how he kept his energy level up. He took a forty-five-minute nap on the plane. As Jimmy Carter once said, politicians are experts at naps. Then you have to wake up and absorb your briefing quickly. His staff would prep him so that he knew a little bit about the area. His daughter Doro was always along with him to lend moral support.
It was a whole different level of intensity from a movie set because everywhere you go, the media are there. You have no room for mistakes. Every wrong word, every gesture you make that’s a little odd, they will pick up and amplify into some huge thing. Bush dealt with it casually.
By Thanksgiving, as the Republicans were savoring Bush’s victory, we were getting ready to launch
The premiere of the movie was a much happier combination of my worlds than the Republican convention had been. Eunice and Sarge engineered a huge benefit event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the showing of
A demo of gymnastics and weight lifting by Special Olympics athletes opened the show. Then the president elect got up onstage and praised the athletes for their courage before turning to me. “There are all kinds of courage,” he joked. “There is the courage of my friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, who more than once campaigned with me across this country—then returned home each time to take the heat from his own in-laws.” That got a laugh.
In fact, Eunice and Sarge always went to see my movies, and they would call me the next day to tell me
