Before you relegate him to the history books, meet the George Bush you never got to see: a president-in-waiting who viewed the world through a political prism and himself as a master's apprentice.
Bush intensely tracked public opinion about himself, critiqued the news media in terms of their favor toward him and religiously studied President Ronald Reagan."He (Reagan) smiles when the press fire these tough questions. That is something I have got to learn and learn better. I will keep trying," Bush mused in a Nov. 15, 1986, entry to his diary.
It is excerpts from that taped diary, released in Bush's last week in office as part of the Iran-Contra investigation, that give a self-portrait of the man who later became the nation's 41st president.
The passages provide a snapshot of Bush between Nov. 4, 1986, and Jan. 2, 1987, during which he was already ambitiously plotting his bid to take over the White House two years later.
Throughout the period, he viewed the events and people around him in terms of their political implications.
Bush recounted receiving advice from several of his close friends, including James A. Baker III, to distance himself from Reagan during the height of the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead, he said he decided he was "not going to desert the president."
But he occasionally agonized over his position, ultimately rationalizing it by the political good it might do him.
"In the long run . . . this whole matter will be resolved. It will be OK and then we can have stories out there, `didn't panic,' `didn't run,' `didn't duck away from the president,' " he dictated in one diary excerpt.
Bush other times recounted his experiences with other Reagan administration officials.
In early November 1986, Bush recounted his concern that then-Secretary of State George Shultz might resign. Bush met with Shultz and said afterward he found the secretary of state "thoughtful" for worrying about the effects of the scandal on his 1988 run for president.
But just two weeks later, Bush described walking into Reagan's office and insisting that Shultz be fired to ensure Reagan "get this all behind him in the next couple of months."
The diary also shows that Bush, who publicly professed indifference to national opinion polls, tracked them studiously as he geared up his bid for the White House.
He stewed over his image, regularly fearing his political ambitions would be crushed by the scandal. "I'm inclined to feel that I have been a loser out of this Iran thing," Bush said at one point. Others times he characterized himself as "bleeding" or "diminished."
Near the end of the diary Bush added: "The irony is that everyone says that the vice president has no power, and yet I am the one damaged."
The diary portrays Bush as carefully monitoring the news media, passing judgment on reporters' work and evaluating how it affected him.
At one point, he referred to Washington Times reporter Ralph Hallow as "a horrible fellow, a right-wing guy" whose story analyzing what Bush knew about the Iran-Contra scandal nonetheless "wasn't bad at all."
Hallow did not return a message left at his office. There was no answer at his home Saturday.
Another time, Bush lamented about the "kind of doubt and meanness that gets into the faces of the reporters when they simply don't think you're telling the truth."
Bush directed some of his diary observations at public officials, once referring to fellow Texan and then-House Speaker Jim Wright as "his oily self."
As for Iran-Contra figures Oliver North and John Poindexter, Bush regarded them as "both patriots, both decent and honorable men. Both walking the plank."
But many of his diary's personal observations were reserved for Reagan, painted with the careful reverence a student affords his mentor.
"He is amazing. I don't know how he can take this pummeling, pummeling, but I'm absolutely convinced he will come back," Bush dictated on Dec. 4, 1986.
Occasionally, though, Bush chafed about being left out of some of Reagan's decisions.
"The truth of the matter is: The president makes his decisions in very oblique ways. I am not in the decision process . . . not on personnel and not on major decision matters," Bush dictated to the diary on Jan. 1, 1987.
Yet, he said, such snubs were a political blessing: "On the other hand, you wind up not dragged into the mess."