Word: state
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bush's grasp of the details and nuance of some domestic-policy issues--especially education--draws praise from experts around the country. He can also talk substantively and passionately about trade and immigration, two areas of "foreign policy" he encountered as Governor of a state that shares a 900-mile border with Mexico. Bush proved as much in Sioux City, Iowa, where he took a vague question from the crowd to deliver a message of compassion toward illegal immigrants. "I want to remind you of something about immigration," Bush told his nearly all-white audience. "Family values do not stop...
...students in his class at Yale. He mixed easily with the rich and the well bred, but, according to classmates, he developed an intense dislike for the class of Yalie he deemed "intellectual snobs." To Bush, the epitome of the type was Strobe Talbott, the current Deputy Secretary of State. Talbott (a distant relative of Bush) was one of the class of 1968's most ambitious brains--editor of the Daily News, Rhodes scholar roommate at Oxford to Bill Clinton, and before joining the Clinton Administration, career journalist for TIME magazine, specializing in defense and foreign policies. "Strobe...
...When he is briefed, he doesn't just sit back and listen. He engages his advisers, testing their logic and pressing them to get to the heart of the matter. From the minute someone starts talking about an issue, Bush is itching for a recommendation. As Albert Hawkins, his state budget director, says, "If you're going on too long, he tells you so." Says Bush: "I like to hear someone enunciate a position, pro or con. Because if someone cannot explain a position, that generally means they don't understand the issue well enough to be part...
...governing. In each legislative session, he set a few policy goals, outlined the principles by which he would judge success and gave other people the power to work out the details. "We can make decisions based on his principles, which are very clear," says Vance MacMahon, Bush's state policy director. "We don't have to run every decision up the flagpole...
Bush's ability to focus at the right time has yielded such results as tort reform in Texas. The bill had been languishing in the legislature in 1995. When state senator David Sibley, the G.O.P. author of the legislation, went to see Bush to tell him it was dead, Bush invited him to dinner at the Governor's mansion. Until then, the Governor had kept his distance from legislative machinations. That night he weighed in. With Sibley by his side, Bush got on the phone with the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Bob Bullock, and in a matter of minutes hammered...