ELECTION DAY FINALLY arrived on November 8, 1988. Dad was exhausted but optimistic. Our extended family gathered to watch the returns at the Houstonian Hotel. When New Jersey and Ohio came out in Dad’s column, we knew the race was over. He went on to carry forty of the fifty states, including some that no Republican has won since: California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Michael Dukakis waited for the polls to close on the West Coast and then called to graciously concede. After a brief celebration with family and campaign aides, Dad went to deliver his victory speech. Mother was at his side, and our whole family stood behind them. Forty years earlier, he, Mother, and I had moved out to a little house in West Texas, having no idea what the future would hold. The path from that day had not been easy for George Bush. He had chosen a career in politics as a Republican in a Democratic state. He had lost as many elections as he had won. He had lived under the shadows of the Van Buren factor and Iran-Contra. Through it all, he refused to give up. He kept working, kept running, kept striving to do his best. And now, after one of the great public service careers of the twentieth century, he had the job he wanted more than any other. George Herbert Walker Bush was going to be the forty-first President of the United States.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
