Free When I Stop Talking You by Jerry Weintraub, Rich Cohen Page A

has been in my life. He opened the world to me, took me everywhere and showed me everything. I love the man as you love a father or a brother, and appreciate everything he has done for me, and does for me still, which, most of all, is the gift of his friendship. Had I not met George and Barbara, my life would have been totally different. He changed the scope of everything. I was put into a world I never could have experienced in a million years. To be a close friend of the president of the United States is an awesome, awesome position. You have to know how to handle it. You can't go to him with nonsense and silly things. I never did. I went to him with some very important things, and he helped because he felt they were right. But I didn't bother him on a day-to-day basis. And yet we had an open relationship where I could tell him when I thought he was right and when I thought he was wrong. Very few people have that access to the most powerful man in the world. I stayed in the White House a lot. I stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom and the Queen's Bedroom. It was inspiring, for a kid from the Bronx, to be befriended by the president, and for him to open this oyster for me and have me at state dinners, to have me there when Gorbachev came and other world leaders came, introducing me to them, and to be very close to his whole cabinet… to Jim Baker, secretary of state, to Nick Brady, secretary of the treasury, to Bob Mosbacher, secretary of commerce, to John Sununu, his chief of staff, etc., etc. Bush made sure I was in the center of his universe. He opened me up to a network of people around the world. Everybody knew we were close. Everybody knew that I was embraced by this man. He made it very public; he didn't hide it. And he was very supportive when I had troubles. He was a great friend.
    One night, years ago, when Bush was a congressman, we went for a walk in Washington, D.C., after the Alfalfa dinner. We passed the White House, which was all lit up, and I said, "I think you're going to live in that house someday."
    "Don't be silly," he said.
    But I knew it. I could see it in the way the other politicians gathered around him at the dinner-he was a natural leader.
    In 1980, on the night that he was elected vice president, Bush was at my house in Beverly Hills, in my living room. He brought about twenty-five of his advisors. They had just come off the campaign trail and were exhausted. The election was over, and they had flown to California to see Reagan. I showed a film. (In it, Walter Matthau played the chief of the CIA, which I thought was appropriate, as Bush had had that same job.) James Baker fell asleep on the couch. We drank champagne and celebrated. It was a great honor for me, but Bush didn't look at it that way. To him, it was just a night at a friend's house. Later, when he became president, he used to take me to state dinners, meetings, everything. He had me to lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev, just the three of us, me, the president, and the premier. I did not stay in a hotel when I went to Washington. I stayed in the White House. (What a thrill, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom, with the Gettysburg Address under glass!) He took me behind the scenes, showed me how the world is wired at its highest reaches. How did it happen that this beautifully educated, perfectly bred, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant from New England became so friendly with this mutt from the Bronx? It's a question I've often asked myself. I think it's because he trusts me, and knows that I trust him. I'm not going to be one way with him, another way with someone else. For better or worse, I am still the same kid who ran away from the Bronx. Life is strange-you travel so far, do so much, but the people you look for at the end are often the same people you looked for at the beginning.
    Over the years, Bush and I have played a lot of tennis and golf. Our friendship started on that court in Maine, and tennis and golf have been a continuing theme. One day,