How George Got His Groove

Tom Dickey ducked into George W. Bush's office and found his boss in a rare pensive mood. It was the spring of 1986 in the West Texas town of Midland, and Dickey, a young geologist at Bush's oil-exploration company, Spectrum 7, had come looking for some optimism--usually a good bet from Bush. After all, Bush was that lean, kinetic, glass-half-full kind of guy who loved edgy verbal sparring and dumb nicknames (he called Dickey "Total Depth," a drilling term that matched his initials). But this time Bush was fresh out of optimism. With his cowboy boots propped up on his desk, he was leaning back in his chair, gazing out the window at the parched and desolate landscape of Midland, 50 miles from the New Mexico border. The financial capital of America's largest oil-producing area, Midland was a boomtown going bust.

Since January, the price of oil had been dropping like a stone, from $25 to $9 per bbl. Independent oilmen like Bush were going under every day, dragging with them six of Midland's banks and its real estate, oil-services and retail industries. From the Rolls-Royce dealership on down, the whole town was getting shuttered. "I don't know, Dickey," Bush said. He was about to turn 40. He had been telling his employees that the hard times would last a few months, that they would just ride 'em out. But he let down his guard. "I don't know where the hell this is all going," he said, watching a helicopter touch down at the bigger, still successful operation across the way. "Dickey," he said suddenly, "you need to get out of here. You need to go where there's some action."

Bush might have been talking about himself. Normally, he liked to plow ahead, come what may. "The Bombastic Bushkin," as his friends called him, had never had a life's plan, never needed one. But now he was feeling stuck, restless, more than a little bored. He wasn't making money or having fun. He didn't have to worry about putting food on the table (Bushes never worried about that), but money was a way to keep score, and he was losing the competition, courting failure in the same business--the same town--where his father, the Vice President, had struck it rich 30 years before. Spectrum 7 was bleeding to death. He would either have to sell out or shut down.

He had other issues, as well. Booze was one. He drank too much--never during the day and not enough to count as bingeing but so much that his wife Laura and at least one colleague had urged him to quit. God was also on his mind. Bush had been opening up to his faith, reading the Bible seriously for the first time in his life. "I believe my spiritual awakening started well before the price of oil went to $9 per bbl.," Bush says today. But he acknowledges that 1986 was a watershed year in his life, "a year of change, when I look back on it." He pauses. "I really never have connected all the dots that way."