W and Gregg: Bosom Buddies
WASHINGTON – When Americans think of President George W. Bush, they probably wouldn’t guess that one of this hearty Texan’s good friends and close allies is a quiet Granite Stater.
But Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, and Bush have been pals for a couple years now, and it all started in New Hampshire.
“I like him, he’s got a great sense of humor and he’s fun to be around,” Gregg said of Bush. “He and I have the same views on a lot of things and have the same interests. We’re friends. He’s fun to sit around and BS with.”
Gregg, who said his father, former New Hampshire Governor Hugh Gregg, is close friends with the President’s father, visits the White House often for personal and business reasons. He also spends time at the Bushes’ Texas ranch home and talks to the President regularly, but he prefers to keep the details private, including the particulars of squaring off with Candidate Bush in mock debates as Al Gore.
A few months after the 2000 New Hampshire Republican primary, where Bush and Gregg had gotten to know each other, Gregg said Bush advisors Karl Rove and Karen Hughes approached him, and “asked me if I would be willing to participate in debate preparation doing Al Gore.”
“I really got to know him rather well then, both he and Laura,” Gregg said. “People didn’t know this but we were meeting every week, starting in early May. [We met] everywhere – Kennebunk, sometimes it would be at the [Bushes’ Texas] ranch with he and Laura. It was always a small group, there were only probably six players in the debate prep who were core players, and they’d bring people in and out depending on the issue. We spent a lot of time together, it was very interesting.”
This close contact made Gregg come to “really admire” Bush and conclude that “‘this guy would be an extraordinarily strong president.’ They grossly underestimated him.”
“I saw his strengths in the debate prep that nobody ever got to really see,” said Gore. “I mean he did a great job in the debates but he was never really tested by Gore. He really is an individual who has a tremendous sense of self, of who he is and where he wants to lead this country.”
The Senator said that when his friend is “interested in an issue, his knowledge on the issue is definitely complete – he totally absorbs himself. That’s why I think he’s such a good leader at this point, because he’s an incredibly focused person. They were intense sessions, much more intense than I suspect most people expect.”
Gregg said playing the former Vice President was “exhausting.”
“I basically spent thousands of hours listening to tapes, watching videos, and reading everything I could, and it was boring as heck,” he said. “I put a lot of personal pressure on myself because I felt very strongly that I had an obligation to not miss anything that Al Gore might do in the debates, either in style, in tactics or in substance.”
Gore was a tricky character to master, Gregg said, but it was an important task.
“My job was to get this person who might become president of the United States in what was going to be the key element of the campaign, ready to deal with someone who I felt was a bit of a chameleon,” he said. “Al Gore can morph himself rather quickly and he’s very bright and you have to be anticipating in which direction he’s going to go. It was very difficult.”
“My wife, Kathy, got so tired of Al Gore tapes and Al Gore videos that she consigned me to the cellar to watch them,” Gregg added.
Gregg said the experience was “a lot of work and the only thing I can compare it to is probably preparing for a major trial as a young attorney. You had to anticipate everything, and in order to anticipate you have to be totally informed about what is being said.”
Gregg said said Laura Bush and “Kathy [Gregg] get along great.”
“Laura is exceptional,” Gregg continued. “She’s really down to earth, I think the American people are getting to know her now and like her a lot because she’s so straight-forward and self-effacing and confident in who she is. She really is someone who it wouldn’t bother her tomorrow if she weren’t First Lady.”
He said he has some personal stories about unwinding at the ranch and the White House with the First Couple, but “one of the things about being friends with the President is you don’t talk about it.”
“I’ve never discussed the specifics of the debate prep, or my conversations with him because I think that’s important,” he said. “It’s important to him to know that when we’re talking that I’m not going to be talking to the press about it.”
Gregg said he and the President “talk at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, sometimes once every other week,” he doesn’t consider himself part of the President’s “inner circle.”
“No, his inner circle are people who work for him at the White House,” he said. “I like to think I [influence Bush]. Sometimes he actually does things I suggest, but I suspect somebody else suggested them, so he took their advice. He’s got a lot of good people around him. I’m probably second or third at the table with the idea but hopefully it reinforces the idea occasionally.”
