The Presidency: The Grandfather in Chief

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The renaissance of grandfathering may be at hand, if George Bush has his way. With a quiet vengeance, he has spent his year of White House afterlife avoiding the lofty traditions of ex-Presidents. "Deimperializing" the presidential retirement, as he puts it. In his preferred role, Bush would be delighted to lead America's 19 million grandfathers back to the playgrounds, classrooms and fishing holes to dispense concern and love for kids.

"I really meant it when I said I want to get active with the grandchildren," he declared recently. "The big things in the world are better now. But I firmly believe that the biggest danger to us is the disintegration of the American family."

"I talked about it in the campaign," he recalls in a conversation in his unpretentious ninth-floor office on Houston's Memorial Drive. "Single biggest thing, the decline of the family. We were written off as rabid right-wingers" for saying so, Bush remembers. "Clinton goes and gives a speech in the South, a good speech, and people say, 'Ain't it wonderful he's putting focus on the family.' And I'm glad he is. But you know, as I look at society, we're far worse off in that regard."

Bush has shelved much of his political weaponry. He would grandfather the entire population if he could. He is just back from the bedside of a child dying from brain cancer. "Might brighten his life," he says. "Little guy lying there. Just broke your heart." Next he worries about a Kentucky kid who wants Bush to come for his Eagle Scout ceremony. Mail bearing these small hopes is at flood tide. He wants to tell the boy he can't be there but to keep going, keep trying. These are little things compared with the power equations at the White House, but to him they are "points of light" that answer his call for volunteerism from those old days. "It's a different kind of thing that you do here," he declares. "Make a life a little better. It isn't going to be done just by government." His 13 grandchildren claim a large slice of him. "Doro ((daughter Dorothy Koch)) brought down her Bobby ((10 months)) the other day. I was down on the floor crawling around and watching him follow me. A total joy. I mean it." So is the time he spends with his quiet 18-year-old grandson, George P. "He is a silent being. But just being there is a joy."

When Bush bought a new Boston whaler for the Maine summers, he held a naming contest and executed some grandfatherly diplomacy by giving almost every entry some award, ending with two names that were painted on the boat: Speedy Sea King and Wa-Wa's Devil, which is Bush family code for their housekeeper, Paula Rendon.

One recent day, Bush rushed to pick up Lauren, his son Neil's nine-year-old, to take her to school for a grandfather-granddaughter breakfast. He was half an hour late for a jet waiting to fly him to Mexico for a speech. Promises to grandchildren take precedence.