(8 of 12)
When he got to town, Junior, as he was known there, joined an election effort ruled by committee and split between warring factions: Atwater's campaign team vs. the Office of the Vice President--"the clerks," as Atwater and Bush took to calling them. The Lee-Junior relationship began as a mutually exploitative one. Junior saw Atwater as a talented hired gun; Atwater saw Junior as a job-insurance policy and a hot line to the candidate, someone who could help sway the Vice President to do what had to be done to win. "Pretty soon Lee and Junior were basically colluding to manipulate Bush," says a colleague. "You'd hear George say, 'I can't ask him to do that,' and then Lee say, 'Goddammit, you have to!'"
George W. weighed in on strategy but showed less interest in policy; no one took him for a candidate in waiting. (For a man who likes to appear transparent, he sure was hard to read.) He and Atwater became jogging buddies and friends. "They were more alike than either had imagined--energetic, flippant, irreverent," says someone who was close to Atwater. Both were reformed drinkers, with Bush firmly in recovery and Atwater limiting himself to the occasional beer, with cigarettes on Fridays. (Atwater, stricken with brain cancer in 1990, began a spiritual quest in his final days. Bush read the Bible at his bedside.)
The young Bush threw his weight around as necessary, serving as "loyalty thermometer" and blunt instrument, coming down hard on leakers, loose cannons and snarky reporters, mediating staff disputes from a generic office, where he chewed an unlighted cigar and spat bits of tobacco leaf in the general direction of a foam coffee cup. He recruited key staff members like press secretary Pete Teeley, traveled the country as a surrogate speaker and sauntered around the campaign office in his Texas boots, cracking jokes in his tequila-sharp twang and earning a reputation for temper. "We had more than a few yelling matches," says Teeley, "and sometimes you'd just have to leave him alone and come back at him later."
His swagger masked insecurities. In private, a friend says, "he'd say things like 'People are only coming to see me because of who my dad is.'" As he developed a reputation as an enforcer, Bush turned it into a joke. "Am I Maureen Reagan?" he'd ask, referring to the President's daughter, the second most feared member of the Reagan family. "People think I'm Maureen, don't they?"
Those insecurities fell away as his relationship with his father deepened. This was the first time the two had worked together closely as adults, and Big George came to appreciate his son's political instincts. "It was a wonderful experience for both of us," the former President told TIME. "He was very helpful to me, and I think it toughened him for the real world." From Midland, Bush's friend O'Neill saw the change. "George went up there as Sonny Corleone and came back as Michael," he says, using an analogy from The Godfather--meaning Bush went from hothead to heir apparent.