Free Decision Points by George W. Bush Page B

handling tough questions from journalists, in this case mostly about our shaky pitching rotation.

    In the Rangers’ dugout with our girls. Owning a ballclub was my dream, and I was certain it was the best job I’d ever have.
    Running the Rangers sharpened my management skills. Rusty and I spent our time on the major financial and strategic issues, and left thebaseball decisions to baseball men. When people did not perform, we made changes. It wasn’t easy to ask decent folks like Bobby Valentine , a dynamic manager who had become a friend of mine, to move on. But I tried to deliver the news in a thoughtful way, and Bobby handled it like a professional. I was grateful when, years later, I heard him say, “I voted for George W. Bush, even though he fired me.”
    When Rusty and I took over, the Rangers had finished with a losing record seven of the previous nine years. The club posted a winning record four of our first five seasons. The improvements on the field brought more people to the stands. Still, the economics of baseball were tough for a small-market team. We never asked the ownership group for more capital, but we never distributed cash, either.
    Rusty and I realized the best way to increase the long-term value of the franchise was to upgrade our stadium. The Rangers were a major league team playing in a minor league ballpark. We designed a public-private financing system to fund the construction of a new stadium. I had no objection to a temporary sales tax increase to pay for the park, so long as local citizens had a chance to vote on it. They passed it by a margin of nearly two to one.
    Thanks to the leadership of Tom Schieffer —a former Democratic state representative who did such a fine job overseeing the stadium project that I later asked him to serve as ambassador to Australia and Japan—the beautiful new ballpark was ready for Opening Day 1994. Over the following years, millions of Texans came to watch games at the new venue. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to know that I had been part of the management team that made it possible. By then, though, a pennant race wasn’t the only kind I had on my mind.

    Shortly after we bought the Rangers in 1989, the campaign for the 1990 Texas gubernatorial election began. Several friends in politics suggested I run. I was flattered but never considered it seriously.
    Most of my political involvement focused on Dad. Within months of taking office as president, he was confronted with seismic shifts inthe world. With almost no warning, the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. I admired the way Dad managed the situation. He knew grandstanding could needlessly provoke the Soviets, who needed time and space to make the transition out of communism peacefully.
    Thanks to Dad’s steady diplomacy at the end of the Cold War—and his strong responses to aggression in Panama and Iraq—the country had tremendous trust in George Bush’s foreign policy judgment. But I was worried about the economy, which had started to slow in 1989. By 1990, I feared a recession could be coming. I liquidated my meager holdings and paid off the loan I had taken out to buy my share of the Rangers. I hoped any downturn would end quickly, for the country and for Dad.
    Meanwhile, Dad had to decide whether to stand for reelection. “Son, I’m not so sure I ought to run again,” he told me as we were fishing together in Maine in the summer of 1991.
    “Really?” I asked. “Why?”
    “I feel responsible for what happened to Neil,” he said.
    My brother Neil had served on the board of Silverado, a failed savings and loan in Colorado. Dad believed Neil had been subjected to harsh press attacks because he was the president’s son. I felt awful for Neil, and I could understand Dad’s anguish. But the country needed George Bush’s leadership. I was relieved when Dad told the family he had one last race in him.
    The reelection effort got off to a bad start. The first lesson in electoral