Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/060892/0608unk.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 6KB | 117 lines

                                                                                THE PRESIDENCY, Page  46

"There's a Little Extra Gray"


By Hugh Sidey


    George Bush truns 68 on June 12. A ripe age -- though he
does not yet seem to be a senior citizen, or even a Gray
Panther. He's fighting it. "I don't feel old," he says. "I feel
young. I feel competitive. I'm ready to charge. I still go to
work at 5 a.m. and stay late. I don't get a lot of sleep. I'm
not slowing down. Once in a while I get grumpy, but no more
than usual."

    By G.O.P. nomination time in August, he will be the fifth
oldest of the 40 men who have been U.S. Presidents, passing the
luckless William Henry Harrison, who was 68 when he got chilled
at his Inauguration, caught pneumonia and expired after only 31
days on the job. Some said he deserved it: his speech ran an
hour and 45 minutes.

    Midway into his second term -- if he is re-elected -- Bush
will have charged by other golden oldies, Andrew Jackson and
James Buchanan, both 69, and Dwight Eisenhower, 70. That would
leave Bush second only to Ronald Reagan, who retired to
California at age 77. Bush's thyroid problem, his doctor's
public concerns about job stress and his televised throwing up
into the lap of Japan's Prime Minister have underscored
persistent questions about the President's health. There was
even the wild media speculation earlier this year that Bush
would cite health reasons to make a dramatic exit from his
re-election bid, opening the contest to the cadre of younger
Republicans waiting in the wings.

    Yet the statistics that emerge from the frequent medical
probings of the presidential physique suggest robust health. The
greater question is, How does Bush really feel? Energy level and
mood, which are not on the charts, are as important as blood
pressure. John Kennedy's nagging backache surely encouraged his
dark and fatal mood in the grim summer of 1961 and made him
think a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union lay ahead. Lyndon
Johnson's downer after his gall-bladder operation may have
resigned him to war in Vietnam. Actually, Bush confesses a few
tiny signs of his age -- but mighty few.

    "There's a little extra gray these days," he says,
describing the guy that he sees in his shaving mirror each
morning. "It's on the sides and filters through the top. But I
don't notice wrinkles. The aging process is pretty gentle. I'm
sure I'm different than what I looked like before. But I don't
feel it."

    His elixir is exercise. "It is euphoric; it releases me,"
he claims. "I run two miles three times a week at about 9 1/2
minutes a mile. I play tennis, golf and horseshoes. Keeps you
human, keeps you going. Take fishing. It is not competitive, but
it is totally relaxing. I concentrate on where the cast is
going. I can get my mind free of other things.

    "I don't feel any pain while I'm exercising," Bush
insists. "The only aches I get are after I'm done. Sometimes at
night, after I've run for three days, my hips bother me. And
when I run on hard surfaces, my knees can bother me. I thought
about it, and I asked the doctor about a replacement hip. But
he said no. I take a little pain-killer now and then." No food
or drink is off limits, Bush says. "Peppers? I love peppers, and
I love hot sauce. I splash Tabasco all over."

    Bush, like other Presidents before him, recognizes the
danger of fatigue, which can affect judgment in mysterious ways.
"Going out in the evenings over and over in the same week, I
find, makes you tired the next day. Too much travel can make you
tired," he says, a tacit admission that sometimes he went too
far too fast. "You must watch that you don't get cumulatively
tired. Long meetings -- yeah, they affect you, but it depends
on the subject. I don't associate any degree of tiredness or
enervation with any particular controversy. But there is a big
adrenaline factor in this business. I know in an important
speech there is a euphoric feeling right afterward, a little bit
of a high; then you kind of get tired afterward. Like sports
again. It builds to something, and then it is down."

    Bush has another special potion that he takes in one form
or another each day: family. "The grandkids come running into
the Oval Office or upstairs. It is marvelous. And there is that
little swing out behind that I can see out of the office
window, down toward the southwest gate. I can see them swinging
and hear them yelling. Little Marshall, Marvin's daughter, was
over the other day, and she has this big, unruly golden
retriever. The dog was pulling her towel, and it ran away with
one little girl's bathing suit, and they were trying to tackle
the dog. I loved it all. I just sat and watched."

    His upper-body strength is largely intact, Bush insists.
"I can still lift the grandkids like before." But in one
physical test this spring, his left arm faltered. "My fast ball
was a slow ball this year," says the former Yale first baseman,
a lefty. "They clocked it at 39 m.p.h. over in Baltimore. It
was a little embarrassing."

    Even in that experience, Bush squeezes out a lesson valid
for all seasons. "It is doing things that is important," he
claims. "It is getting ready for whatever comes, staying up with
it and getting ready to charge downstairs and compete."

    So what might he do on the day that the big six-eight
actually arrives? "If I'm off somewhere," the President answers,
"I'll probably run a mile."