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That was 16 months ago. Today Bush is surfing along at 60%-plus public- approval ratings, and much of the credit falls to Sununu. His White House displays almost none of the backbiting and leaking that roiled the Reagan Administration. He adroitly appeases fellow right-wing Republicans who have never much trusted Bush. On the other flank, Sununu exuberantly baits environmentalists and others into blaming him, rather than the President, when the Administration backslides from Bush's gauzy promises. Though he possesses no more "vision" than Bush does, Sununu has substituted a quiet and canny strategy to attain the President's paramount goal: re-election in 1992.
In fact, Sununu has emerged as Bush's most inspired choice for any senior post. Amid the bland Washington-retread Wasps with whom Bush has peopled much of his Cabinet and staff, Sununu adds both spice and balance. His brisk certainty and willingness to take bold stands complement his risk-averse boss.
The two play off each other like a wrestling tag team on late-night cable: Gentleman George and Snarlin' Sununu; the King of Kind and Gentle and his Dark Prince. Bush may call himself the Environmental President and the Education President, but he has Sununu to make sure that this rhetoric stays relatively cheap.
Their slap-and-stroke routine extends to Oval Office meetings, where Bush is unfailingly gracious, whether with earnest junior staffers or craven special pleaders. It is Sununu's role to wring useful information out of unctuous presentations and rebut one-sided arguments, and he delights in it. Bush clearly relishes the edge and the rigor that Sununu provides. "He has made a lot of friends for our Administration," Bush says, "on the basis of competence, sheer competence."
But as the President knows, Sununu has also made plenty of enemies through sheer insolence. He slammed down the phone during a foreign policy argument with Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma. He shouted obscenities at Senate Republican leader Bob Dole's press secretary over a routine news release. He berated House Republican leader Bob Michel for not supporting the President with sufficient enthusiasm, moving Michel to note that "sometimes we have to remind Governor Sununu that this is not the New Hampshire legislature." Democratic Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado says what many Washington insiders feel: Sununu "thinks he's the only smart guy in town. He shows little respect for anyone else's intelligence or point of view."
Nor is Sununu above using double-dealing and deception to achieve the President's goals. In March he told Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden that Bush would veto the clean-air bill the Senate was debating if it included an expensive amendment. Meanwhile, he privately told Idaho Republican Steve Symms just the opposite. Symms had favored the amendment because he hoped it would trigger a veto of the bill, which Symms opposed as too tough on polluting industries. Sununu led Symms to believe the amendment would only make things worse because Bush was inclined to sign the clean-air bill with or without it. Both Senators voted against the amendment, and it was dropped from the bill -- precisely what the President wanted.