28 "The deficit isn't the worst": Reeves, President Reagan, 92.

29 "You can't expect them to accept": Dubose and Bernstein, Vice, 53.

30 regular participant in a secret program: Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 13845.

31 "the most effective and impressive witness": Dubose and Bernstein, Vice, 78.

32 wrote a book, Kings of the Hill: Cheney and Cheney, Kings of the Hill.

33 "Dick, what in the hell": Meyer interview.

34 "Go get George": Former aide, author interview.

35 "How do we know we can trust": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 4344.

36 "If someone throws a grenade": Ibid.

37 "planted a seed in my heart": Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr., "Bush's Life-Changing Year," Washington Post, July 25, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072599.htm. Some have cast doubt on this story. Jacob Weisberg points out that there is not much of a beach on the rocky shore at Walker's Point and notes that an earlier account did not mention a walk on the beach, only a discussion in the house. See Bush Tragedy, 7578.

38 "I want to talk to you": Arthur Blessitt, "The Day I Prayed With George W. Bush to Receive Jesus!" from his diary, April 3, 1984, http://www.blessitt.com/Inspiration_Witness/PrayingWithGeorgeWBush/Praying_With_Bush_Page1.html.

39 "I'm all name and no money": Robert Reinhold, "In Troubled Oil Business, It Matters Little If Your Name Is Bush, Sons Find," New York Times, April 30, 1986.

40 gave him $600,000 in shares: Minutaglio, First Son, 207.

41 "You no good fucking sonofabitch": Ibid., 2089. After Minutaglio asked about the incident during research for his book years later, Bush called Hunt to apologize.

42 "Can you remember the last day": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 1.

43 repeated the same toast: Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart, 118.

44 "We made a little noise in the dining room": O'Neill interview.

45 "It's either Jim Beam or me": Laura Bush, Spoken from the Heart, 118.

46 "He said one day I might be": O'Neill interview.

47 "He was a big, booming personality": Debra Dunn, author interview.

48 driver named Payne was nicknamed: Steve Atkiss, author interview.

49 He learned that by showing: Woodward, Bush at War, 235.

50 "Yeah, I killed them in Atlanta": Richard Ben Cramer, author interview.

51 "You've heard the rumors": Un-bylined "Periscope" item in Newsweek by Howard Fineman, "Bush and the 'Big A Question,' " June 29, 1987.

52 "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor' ": Margaret Warner, Newsweek, October 19, 1987.

53 Bush was "red hot": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 4344.

54 gotten over his "self-pity": George W. Bush said this in a 1986 interview with Walt Harrington, a staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine who at the time was writing a profile of Bush's father. The quotation did not make the piece, but Harrington later provided it to his Post colleagues Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr. for their enduring 1999 biographical series on the younger Bush. They cited it in "Bush: So-So Student but a Campus Mover," Washington Post, July 27, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072799.htm.

55 "If there was any sort of": Lois Romano and George Lardner Jr., "Bush's Move Up to the Majors," Washington Post, July 31, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush073199.htm.

56 "I got married and gave up": Dick Cheney, In My Time, 15258.

57 "My instinct is to cut him off": Woodward, Commanders, 4447.

58 "General Welch was freelancing": Dick Cheney, news conference, Pentagon, March 24, 1989.

59 Welch "got a bit of a bum rap": Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.

60 "a stroke of genius": Ibid.

61 "a cerebral Wyoming cowboy": Powell, My American Journey, 412.

62 "That's because they're all right-wing nuts": Ibid., 526.

63 From the plane, Scowcroft: Brent Scowcroft, oral history, Miller Center, University of Virginia, November 1213, 1999. Neither Cheney nor Quayle mentioned this dispute in his memoirs. Powell wrote that Cheney was sick but that he suspected he preferred not to deal with Quayle.

64 "George, everybody likes you": Gerhart, Perfect Wife, 8384.

65 put in just $606,000 of the $86 million: Juan B. Elizondo Jr., "Bush Earns $14.9 Million from Team Sale," Associated Press, June 18, 1998.

66 "How cool is this?": Draper, Dead Certain, 4243.

67 "I can't tell you how many": Israel Hernandez, author interview.

68 went from a losing team: From 1989 to 1998, the Rangers had seven winning seasons and three losing ones. In the previous decade, the team had three winning seasons and seven losing ones. Total season attendance increased from 1,581,901 before Bush and his partners bought the team to 2,927,409 the year it was sold. (Bush and his partners sold the team in the middle of the 1998 season.) http://mlb.mlb.com/tex/history/year_by_year_results.jsp.

69 "solved my biggest political problem": Time, July 31, 1999.

70 "Did the president have the balls": Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.

71 "It sent a hell of a message": Ibid.

72 Powell later had the study destroyed: Ibid.

73 "Lawyers running a war?": Powell, My American Journey, 483.

74 "The unanimous view of those of us": Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.

75 just 148 American battle deaths: Anne Leland and Mari-Jana "M-J" Oboroceanu, "American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics," Congressional Research Service, February 26, 2010, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf. The report actually gives two different statistics, 147 and 148, on different pages. The more commonly used figure seems to be 148.

76 "simple solutionists": Powell, My American Journey, 511.

77 "Once we had rounded him up": Dick Cheney, speech to Discovery Institute, Seattle, August 14, 1992, Federal News Service transcript.

78 "I still think we made the right decision": Cheney, oral history, Miller Center.

79 "Smart guy, arrogant, didn't know": Ibid.

80 "You know," he told Sununu: Duffy and Goodgame, Marching in Place, 12728.

81 acknowledged that he "blew it": Parmet, George Bush, 349. According to Parmet, Bush wrote in his diary at the end of the Republican National Convention week in 1988, "It was my decision, and I blew it, but I'm not about to say that I blew it."

82 "I never completely gave up on my idea": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 49.

83 "George, you can't win": Ibid., 5253.

84 "I thought she was unbeatable": Younger interview.

85 "born with a silver foot": Ann Richards, keynote address, Democratic National Convention, July 18, 1988, http://gos.sbc.edu/r/richards.html. For video, go to http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/27252-1.

86 "I'm not running against her": Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, e-mail exchange with author. See also Gail Sheehy, "The Accidental Matter," Vanity Fair, October 2000, http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2000/10/bush200010.

87 "This is going to be rough": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 54.

88 "He just flat outworked": O'Neill interview.

89 "Why do you feel bad": Schweizer and Schweizer, Bushes, xii.

90 "disappointed, even hurt": Powell, My American Journey, 554. Asked about that during his Miller Center oral history, Cheney said, "I didn't want to go around and throw my arms around people and say, 'Gee, it's been great.' "

91 "beating the water as hard": Sean O'Keefe, author interview.

92 "I just decided I didn't want to do this": Williams interview.

93 "You have to first be able to visualize": Stephen Hadley, author interview.

94 told a Wyoming newspaper: Hayes, Cheney, 26869.

95 "I see you have solved": Bill Thomson, author interview.

96 opposing unilateral sanctions: While at Halliburton, Cheney was an active supporter of a bipartisan group called USA Engage that generally resisted unilateral sanctions. In a speech, Cheney called the sanctions issue "my favorite hobbyhorse" and argued that while he was not opposed to all sanctions, the times they should be used "are relatively rare" and generally when they are multilateral, citing Iraq as an example. Unilateral sanctions, he said, "almost never work" and were "the cheap, easy thing to do" to look like action. "I think it is important for us to recognize as a nation the enormous value of having American businesses engaged around the world." Richard B. Cheney, "Defending Liberty in a Global Economy," Cato Institute, June 23, 1998, http://www.cato.org/speeches/sp-dc062398.html.

97 bought Dresser for $7.7 billion: Peter Elkind, "The Truth About Halliburton," Fortune, April 18, 2005, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/04/18/8257012/index.htm.

98 would expand to an $11.9 billion giant: David J. Lesar, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Halliburton, "Letter to Our Shareholders," Halliburton Company 2000 Annual Report. http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/67/67605/reports/company/letter_index_01.html.

99 "an irascible, crazy old Texas politician": Sandy Kress, author interview.

100 "Governor, on this I'm going to": Dave McNeely, "Missing Bullock's Unvarnished Advice," Austin American-Statesman, September 9, 1999. See also McNeely and Henderson, Bob Bullock, 26263; and George W. Bush, Decision Points, 57.

101 "What do you think about us?": Draper, Dead Certain, 5052. Draper tracked down the teenager, Johnny Demon Baulkmon, in 2006. He had become an adult petty criminal and was serving time in prison. Draper asked him what he thought of Bush. "He doesn't care about anything but himself," Baulkmon said. "He's complete trash, a horrible evil person."

102 "I didn't have an answer": Kuo, Tempting Faith, 114.

103 "I just don't know if I can": Ibid., 11112.

104 "I'll never again be able to": Hughes, Ten Minutes from Normal, 45.

105 received a check for $14.9 million: Elizondo, "Bush Earns $14.9 Million from Team Sale."

106 "I'm not going to run": Wead, All the Presidents' Children, 45.

CHAPTER 3: "THE FIRE HORSE AND THE BELL".

1 "I feel like a cork": Dan Balz, e-mail exchange with author. The visiting journalists were Balz and David S. Broder, both of the Washington Post. See also Von Drehle, Deadlock, 8.

2 There were not many times: John Ellis, author interview.

3 "We have the opportunity": George W. Bush, Decision Points, 6061.

4 "He is talking to you": Ibid. This story changed slightly in the retelling. In his campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep, ghostwritten by Karen Hughes, Bush described his mother saying this after the service and in the past tense: "He was talking to you."

5 "I feel as if God were talking": Schweizer and Schweizer, Bushes, 438.

6 "Are you nuts?": Ibid., 458.

7 "who makes the Energizer Bunny": Cannon, Dubose and Reid, Boy Genius, 267.

8 "Huge amounts of charisma": Ibid., 14.

9 "I need your help": Richard Perle, author interview.

10 "It was very much like": Marvin Olasky, author interview.

11 "inherited half of his friends": George W. Bush, "The First Son," P.O.V., June 1999. This essay honoring his father on his seventy-fifth birthday was republished a decade later by the Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/06/11/happy-birthday-dad.html.

12 "Rove let me know that": Novak, Prince of Darkness, 562.

13 "We had to be the back-of-the-bus": Ron Kaufman, author interview.

14 Shultz gave him the blessing: Draper, Dead Certain, 5354.

15 "This is your candidate": David Von Drehle, "In Iowa, Bush Hits Rhetorical Notes, Trail," Washington Post, June 13, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush061399.htm.

16 "the only thing we haven't done": Milbank, Smashmouth, 63.

17 "Look, I'm really committed": Hayes, Cheney, 27677.