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Now, with a new year under way and the trials of 1988 looming, Bush sat in his White House office, legs stretched out in front of him, sipping a cup of Chinese tea. At 62, the Vice President is remarkably fit. His ruddy face is unlined, his hair only slightly gray. Dark blue eyes focused intently through his rimless aviator glasses. Bush was unruffled as he listened to questions / about his political nerve. "I know inside," he said, quietly tapping his chest, "I've got a lot of fiber here." He conceded he had been somewhat excessive in wooing conservatives but felt comfortable with it. There was, after all, a fundamental conservative underpinning to his philosophy, he said.
He was indeed engaged in the formation of policy, Bush pointed out. Cabinet officers regularly called him with proposals for Reagan. He heard often from old colleagues on the Hill. "I've helped on a lot of issues," he emphasized, his hands extended forward as if holding an invisible melon. "I've made this thing work."
There was plenty of time, Bush observed, to define himself better. Sometime this year he would make clear where he thought the country needed to head. Bush stopped for a moment and gazed across the long rectangular office. "It's going to hurt me some down the road," he said. No matter what the pressure, the Vice President declared, he would not identify any issues on which he differed with Reagan. "I'm not going to separate myself from the President," Bush said.
He will in the end fall back on his enormous energy and zeal. Motion, if nothing else, always makes Bush feel more like his own man. He has for six years buried any differences with Reagan. Establishing the independence and vitality of his own ideas will be a painful task. For behind all the motion there is a shallowness to Bush. He will have to do more than serve up the safe and the obvious. The real dilemma of his vice-presidential silence is that George Bush still must prove he has something to say.