(2 of 12)
In an interview with TIME, he is looking back from a vantage point that's both lofty and unlikely: the polished-wood confines of the Governor's office in Austin, where he has been enjoying the life of undeclared presidential front runner. How did a man who was, as a cousin once described it, "on the road to nowhere at age 40" find the road that led him here? Even some close friends are surprised by Bush's sudden rise. Others who knew him casually years ago are astonished that he might be deemed presidential timber. "If George is elected President," says Midland geologist David Rosen, a Democrat who was once a neighbor of Bush's, "it would destroy my faith in the office. Because he is such an ordinary guy. Likable and decent? Sure. Presidential? I wouldn't say so."
The late bloomer is a rare but recognizable presidential type. Think Harry S Truman or Ulysses S. Grant. No one can say whether George W. Bush will join their ranks, but it is possible to trace how he changed his life and made such a thing possible. The answers are in West Texas in 1986, Washington in 1988 and Dallas in 1990.
Within a few months of his encounter with Dickey, Bush quit drinking. Soon after, he sold his ailing company for a miraculous profit and moved his family to Washington, where he worked on his father's 1988 presidential campaign and, he has said, "earned his spurs" in the old man's eyes. He helped put together the group that bought the Texas Rangers baseball team and plotted a run for Governor. It was as if someone had thrown a cosmic switch and his future came into focus. "Let's face it, George was not real happy [in Midland]," says oilman Joseph O'Neill, one of his closest friends. "It's the first-son syndrome. You want to live up to the very high expectations set by your father, but at the same time you want to go your own way, so you end up going kicking and screaming down the exact same path your father made. George didn't learn to channel his energy until middle age, and he didn't feel real comfortable until he went to Washington. He hated Washington, but it charged him up," says O'Neill. "Then, with the Rangers, he really hit stride. It took some hard times and big jobs to bring out the bigness in him."
1986 BOOM AND BUST