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After the oil-price crash, Bush had begun looking for a bigger fish to swallow his little one. His "bail-out strategy," as he calls it now, was to have Spectrum bought out by a publicly traded company so his investors would have a shot at getting their money back. Texas-based Harken Oil & Gas (now known as Harken Energy Corp.) had been buying up troubled independents on the cheap, and Spectrum fit the profile. In one six-month period before the acquisition, Spectrum lost $402,000. It was $3 million in debt, with no hope of attracting a dollar for new drilling. On Sept. 30, 1986, less than three months after Bush's 40th birthday, Harken swooped in with an angelic deal. In exchange for Bush's 14.9% stake in Spectrum, he would receive Harken stock worth some $320,000--his first real personal wealth. Bush was also made a Harken director and retained as a consultant at $80,000 a year--$5,000 more than he had made at Spectrum. He got generous stock options, and Harken hired some of his employees. As for the dozen who weren't hired, Bush worked his network hard and, impressively, found oil jobs for all of them.
What did the Harken bosses see in Spectrum? Some productive oil wells, to be sure, but mostly they saw the son of the sitting Vice President. "His name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him," says Harken founder Phil Kendrick, who sold the company in 1983 but stayed on as a consultant. Whatever the motivation, it was liberating for Bush. He had money and no day job, a combination that let him accept an offer that had been lurking in the back of his mind for more than a year--a job that would provide action, fun and something more important. It would get him back into politics and put him close to the old man.
1988 DAD'S CAMPAIGN
The offer had come from Lee Atwater, the brilliant, erratic young political hotshot Vice President Bush had picked to be campaign manager for his coming presidential bid. On April 27, 1985, Big George had called his family to Camp David to meet the staff that would run his campaign. George W. and his brother Jeb--a Florida real estate investor who was generally regarded as the political comer among the Bush kids--had doubts about Atwater's loyalty because his consulting firm was doing work for Bush rival Jack Kemp. George W. asked him, "How can we trust you?" Atwater came back with a challenge: "Why don't you come up here and watch? And if I am disloyal, you can do something about it."
The proposal lurked in Bush's mind throughout the hard times of 1985-86. He says he didn't think seriously about it until after the Harken deal, but some employees say it came up earlier. "He was ready to go," says Dickey. In summer 1987 the Bushes sold their house in Midland, loaded up the family wagon and drove to D.C. Bush says he had no idea what he'd do after the election.