Bush, Quayle, and SEI

“There are moments in history when challenges occur of such a
compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the whole meaning of
an epoch. Space is such a challenge. ”

James Michener, 19791

By 1989, the American space program had been in a steady decline for nearly two decades. NASA had failed to find its footing in the years following the triumphs of the Apollo moon landings. During the intervening period, the space agency had become increasingly conservative, risk averse, and bureaucratic. After failing to gain support for a robust human exploration program, the agency had retreated and become an ever more cautious organization. During this time, the space program had no great supporters in the White House, nor great advocates within the Con­gress. This forced the agency to focus its political energies on protecting its turf (e. g., the Space Shuttle and space station programs) and trying to slow the regular reduc­tions in its annual appropriation. The result was a NASA that hardly resembled the organization that had taken on the Soviet Union on one of the most prominent battlegrounds of the Cold War—an agency that had won a great victory for the United States.

Despite this long interlude, there had been stirrings within the space policy com­munity in recent years that seemed to indicate that a return to glory might be achiev­able. The National Commission on Space had recommended human exploration of Mars as the appropriate long-term objective of the space program. The American [85] public had rallied around NASA in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger acci­dent. President Reagan had placed human exploration beyond Earth orbit back on the space agenda for the first time in two decades. Perhaps most importantly, Presi­dent-elect George Bush was an outspoken supporter of the space program—perhaps more supportive then any incoming president in the history of the space age. On the larger national stage, however, forces that are more significant were develop­ing that didn’t bode well for the adoption of an overly aggressive or expensive new undertaking in human spaceflight. In particular, a struggling economy and rising deficits were placing enormous pressure on the federal budget. This political reality would be the most important constraint facing adoption of an expanded exploration program and attempts to revitalize the national space program. In fact, the situation was so grave that it seriously called into question whether the new president should support such an endeavor at all. Despite the potential hazards, though, only a few short months after taking office, President George Bush and his key space policy advisors decided to champion an ill-defined yet exorbitantly expensive exploration plan—the Space Exploration Initiative.

George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts on 12 June 1912, the second child of Dorothy Walker and Prescott Bush, an investment banker and later Republican Senator from Connecticut. He grew up a member of the East­ern elite. Biographer John Robert Greene writes that Bush’s parents were “…mem­bers of the genteel class—well educated, well pedigreed, well mannered, and well connected. They were also wealthy— The world in which the Bush children were raised then was one in which comfort was never an issue, but neither were the constant reminders that that comfort could not be taken for granted. Prescott Bush used his wealth as a safety net for his children. They were expected to go out, earn their own wealth, and do the same.” As befitting one of this social standing, George received a private school education—first attending the Greenwich County Day School and then moving to prep school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachu­setts. On his 18th birthday, George graduated from Phillips Academy and enlisted in the U. S. Navy. Within a year, he received a commission as an ensign and became the youngest pilot in the navy. During World War II, Bush flew 58 combat mis­sions against Japanese forces, survived being shot down on a bombing mission, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Upon returning from the war, he entered Yale University, where he earned a B. A. in economics in only two years and gradu­ated Phi Beta Kappa. Following college, Bush spent the subsequent two decades earning his fortune as an executive in the oil industry.[86]

In 1964, George Bush made his first run for elective office when he challenged incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough for the U. S. Senate. Despite a good show­ing for a Republican in Texas, a Democratic Party united under the leadership of fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson stymied Bush—he only received 43% of the vote in the November election. Two years later, however, in 1966, Bush made a successful run for a congressional seat in Houston, becoming the first Republican to repre­sent that city. One of the few freshman congressional representatives ever selected to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee; he was reelected two years later without opposition. In 1970, at the behest of President Nixon, Bush made another run for the U. S. Senate. This time running against conservative Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, who had surprisingly beaten Yarborough in the primary, he lost once again, garnering only 46% of the vote.[87]

On 11 December 1970, President Nixon, who greatly appreciated Bushs willing­ness to sacrifice a safe House seat to run for the Senate, appointed him to the post of U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He served in this capacity for two years, but in early 1973 Nixon asked him to take the reigns of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in. In that position, Bush was an early defender of Nixon. When tapes were released that proved the president was guilty of obstruction of justice, however, he changed his stance and strongly lobbied the president to resign. In December 1975, after serving as the American envoy to China for a year, President Ford appointed Bush as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). After Jimmy Carters election, despite a solid record of achievement at the CIA, he became the first DCI to be dismissed by an incoming president-elect. He spent the next four years preparing to contend for the Republi­can presidential nomination. In 1980, despite winning the Iowa caucuses, George Bush never recovered from his loss to former California governor Ronald Reagan in the New Hampshire primary. After an effort to create a Reagan-Ford “dream ticket” collapsed, the conservative Reagan asked Bush to accept the vice presidential nomination because he was “the most attractive surviving moderate.” Biographer John Robert Greene explains, “Bushs major task as Vice President was to be the administration’s front man on the road. Between 1981 and 1989, Bush put in 1.3 million miles of travel, visiting the 50 states and 65 different countries.”[88]