Going to Windward: A Mosbacher Family Memoir

20: Don’t Let Them Put You Out Front

Chapter 20 Don’t Let Them Put You Out Front As a rule, running doctors and nurses are a bad sign; but throw in a state dinner, and the sight of running medical personnel can cause instant alarm. It was the evening of January 8, 1992, the tenth day of a twelve-day trip to Asia. Together with the president and first lady—and a contingent of some two dozen business leaders—we had already traveled to Australia , Singapore, and South Korea to push for greater access in these international markets for American goods and services. Now in Japan, we were clearly saving the toughest case for last. For years, the Japanese had gained market share here in the United States by overcharging their domestic consumers at home, then cutting the prices on the goods they exported to us. In December of 1991, in fact, my department found that Japanese automakers had been “dumping” minivans on our market at artificially low prices. Coupled with a $41 billion trade deficit with Japan, and rising unemployment, the main purpose of this trip was to send a message to Tokyo that the status quo was no longer acceptable. To be candid, the trip was also undertaken at my urging to send an equally clear message to American voters that the Bush administration was fighting to create more jobs through foreign trade. “Every billion dollars of goods sold overseas creates 20,000 American jobs,” I said on Meet the Press on the eve of our Asia travels, hoping to frame the context of the debate. This trip was a swan song of sorts for me at Commerce, but also the opening gambit of the 1992 campaign—and a chance for me to help spur the administration to take a more proactive stance on the economy. The night of January 8, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa hosted a formal dinner at his official residence, but the evening was not getting off to a smooth start. After I went through the receiving line at a predinner reception, the president turned to me and asked, “How are you feeling, pal?” I was feeling fine, but he clearly was not. Like a ton of people on the trip—including a bunch of the media traveling with us—the president had caught an intestinal bug. At the reception , he appeared pale and drained. The truth is, he shouldn’t have been going to dinner, and Barbara was encouraging him not to go—but as George Bush saw it, Don’t Let Them Put You Out Front 夝 261 he could not cancel. “It would be too embarrassing for the Japanese,” he said. As usual, he was putting the feelings and concerns of others ahead of his own. At dinner, I was seated next to Barbara on the dais with the two leaders, Deputy Prime Minister Watanabe, and a couple of the ministers. The dinner had just started when suddenly I saw one of the White House nurses racing full speed down the aisle toward the head of the table. It startled me, and instinctively I looked over to see if there was an attack on the president. About the time my eyes fell on him, he just slumped over. Oh my God, he’s had a heart attack, I thought as I grabbed Barbara’s hand. She stood to go over, and I went with her. After a few tense moments, we heard the president joke, “Why don’t you just roll me under the table and let me sleep it off?” Assured by the doctors that the president would be fine—he would be taken back to his room, not the hospital—Barbara immediately took over. At far left next to Treasury Secretary Nick Brady, President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa address American and Japanese business leaders on January 8, 1992. The President was fighting to honor his scheduled commitments despite a stomach virus that overtook him later that night. 262 夝 Don’t Let Them Put You Out Front “I can’t explain what happened to George, because it has never happened before,” she explained to the crowd, “but I’m beginning to think it’s the ambassador ’s [Mike Armacost] fault. He and George played the Emperor and the Crowned Prince in tennis today, and they were badly beaten. And we Bushes aren’t used to that. So he felt much worse than I thought...