Younger Bush rarely called on elder Bush during presidency

FILE: I’m a lucky man to be named for George Bush and to be with “41” on his 94th birthday. (Photo: George W. Bush/Facebook)

WASHINGTON — George W. Bush said that during his two terms in office, he rarely called on his father’s counsel. But there were exceptions, intersections where the personal drifted into the presidential .

A look at some of those times as cited by Bush in his 2014 book “A Portrait of My Father” about George H.W. Bush, who died late Friday at age 94:

— The younger Bush asked his dad what he thought about making Dick Cheney his vice-presidential choice, and his father approved. Cheney was the elder Bush’s defence chief and the most influential of the people who served the 41st president to work for the 43rd.

— The elder Bush confessed to “uncontrollable sobs” that wracked his body when he watched on TV as his son reacted to the Supreme Court decision settling the 2000 election in his favour.

— The new and former presidents stood together in the Oval Office on the younger Bush’s first day in office, when he invited his parents to come stay at the White House anytime.

— On Sept. 11, 2001, a day after his parents stayed at the White House, the closing of air space to commercial traffic after the terrorist attacks stranded his parents in a Brookfield, Wisconsin, motel on their way to Minnesota for an engagement. Barbara Bush joked about the indignity in a chat with her son, in what he remembers as a bit of levity that painful day.

— The younger Bush says he did not use email during his presidency; his dad would send corny jokes to presidential aides, who passed them on.

— The younger Bush also sought his father’s opinions about making Colin Powell secretary of state and Bob Gates his defence chief. The elder Bush liked the choice of both men, who had also served with him.

— After the devastating 2004 tsunami, Bush asked his father and the Democrat who defeated him in 1992, Bill Clinton, to lead a private fundraising mission to the stricken region. Thus began an unlikely friendship between the two old rivals, and a partnership that continued when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

— Bush asked his dad in 2007 if he thought it would be a good idea to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Bush family’s summer home in coastal Maine. The father heartily approved and joined them. The dad, then 83, took them on a speedboat at top speed. “Putin loved the ride,” said Bush the son. The next day, they went fishing; only Putin caught a fish.