She Remembers Father

Doro Bush Koch joins President Bush and their father, George H.W. Bush, at the christening of the USS George H.W. Bush, in Newport News, Va., this month. (By Ash Severe -- U.s. Navy Via Associated Press)

My Father, My President:

A Personal Account of the Life of George H.W. Bush

By Doro Bush Koch

Warner Books, 586 pp. $29.99

George H.W. Bush has long said that he will never write a personal memoir but will instead let history speak for itself. He never promised his family would sit tight.

It may be that the next best thing to hearing from Bush is reading his story through the eyes of his sixth child and only surviving daughter, Doro Bush Koch. At her father's request, Koch, 47, pulled together a warm and, not surprisingly, favorable look at Bush's eventful life, as relayed to her by many of his friends and political associates, his diaries and letters, and conversations with Dad.

Indisputably told through the lens of an adoring daughter, "My Father, My President" breaks no new ground and presents no neutral judgments. But it does offer an intimate look into one of America's political dynasties, and subtly conveys the hope of an 82-year-old man to have some say in how the story is told -- even if he doesn't want to tell it himself.

For instance, Koch gives her father plenty of space to distance himself from the Watergate scandal, which he weathered from the unenviable perch of chairman of the Republican National Committee. As the government was unraveling around him, Bush -- ever loyal -- said nothing about President Richard M. Nixon publicly but found plenty to share with his family, and his diary, thoughts first published in this book.

"The gloom in the White House is unimaginable, difficult to describe," he wrote in 1974. "It is brought dramatically home that this president is a liar, a total liar and we cannot face up to it in fairness, in the nation's interest, in any other way. . . . "

Bush admits to his daughter: "I always felt Nixon thought I wasn't tough enough. I lacked the kind of bull-doze-'em approach that some of his lieutenants had. Nixon liked the tough guy. . . . "

Koch cast a wide net in researching the book, writing hundreds of letters to her father's friends and political adversaries, as well as to world leaders, asking for impressions and anecdotes. The book takes on the feel of an oral history when she prints long portions of interviews or e-mails about specific events. She also relies on thoughtful correspondences from her father to family members and friends that confirm what many already know about Bush: that he is a decent, gracious and sentimental man.

It is refreshing to learn that despite the power and the pedigree, the Bush clan faced the same comic mishaps of any other large family -- and didn't always do everything according to Emily Post. When Jeb Bush insisted on marrying his 19-year-old girlfriend in 1974, brother Marvin-- an amateur photographer -- offered to take the official pictures to save money. The high school student, who rolled his own film spools, discovered in the darkroom that he had shot the wedding over images of a Frank Zappa concert. "Every single photo of the Bush and Garnica families had either a photo of Frank Zappa and/or members of . . . the Mothers of Invention, superimposed onto their own images," Marvin recalls. Koch further tells us that her dad did not meet Jeb's fiancee (now wife), Columba, until the rehearsal dinner.