Jeb Bush to staff: Just read it

For the governor, A Message to Garcia imparts an important message to his troops.

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 21, 2000

'A Message to Garcia'

TALLAHASSEE -- The day he became governor, Jeb Bush signed the inside of a small hardback book and presented it to his new No. 2 man.

Slim and barely bigger than a checkbook, the copy of A Message to Garcia now sits on an end table in the office of Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan. Bush wrote four words above his signature: "You are a messenger!"

Brogan, it turns out, is one of many messengers in the Bush administration.

For months, staffers in the governor's press office signed a sheet of paper tacked to a wall asking for the names of everyone who had read A Message to Garcia. By spring of this year the sheet was full.

"I gave it to all of the folks that started out with us at the beginning of the administration," Bush said recently in response to an e-mail.

"I look for people who will take the message to Garcia to be part of our team. People of determination and integrity that don't need too much adult supervision are the ones that can change the world!"

A Message to Garcia is an essay, really, 24 paragraphs simply bound and covered, the way a devotional might be.

Originally published in 1899, A Message to Garcia recounts the intrepid sojourn Lt. Andrew Summers Rowan undertook into the hills of Cuba in 1898. The United States would soon be at war with Spain, and President William McKinley sent Rowan to find Gen. Calixto Garcia, leader of insurgent Cuban forces fighting Spanish control.

Without asking how or where he might find Garcia, Rowan set off. He found him, and Garcia returned to Washington to inform McKinley of the strength and position of the rebels and the Spaniards. The information was crucial on the eve of war.

Newspapers celebrated the unlikely mission. Rowan became famous.

Inspired by the story, a printer in upstate New York wrote an essay that, in its day, became one of the best-selling publications in the world: motivational material for a generation of employers and, a century later, something of a creed for Bush and his young Republican staff.

The printer and essayist, Elbert Hubbard, wrote:

"The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?' By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.

"It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing -- "Carry a message to Garcia!' "

They do not chant the phrase like a fight song, but, Bush communications director Justin Sayfie said, "Everyone in the press office was required to read (the essay). It's a good guiding principle that I always use: Don't get bogged down in the obstacles to your task. Accomplish the task and do so using self-reliance. All senior staff have read it."

A handful of senior staff declined to discuss the book on the record -- some laughed out loud when asked about it -- but all said they had read it.

"Once in a while," Sayfie said, "I'll say to my staff, "I need you to send a message to Garcia.' I'll give them the task and I won't say anything else."

Hubbard's ode to just doing it leans heavily on the side of those giving orders: that poor employee work ethic, not the quality of management, is usually what hinders productivity. The essay is not without critics.

Dexter Douglass, who was general counsel for the late Gov. Lawton Chiles and remembers reading A Message to Garcia long ago, says the essay implies that employees should not second-guess their employers, which he thinks can be dangerous.

"One of the things that I think (Chiles) missed sometimes was not having people who would question him," Douglass said.

A spokesman for the AFL-CIO labor union in Florida said Bush should give his staff raises, not self-help books.

Bush said he has not given the book to his brother, George W. Bush, but he may pass it on to his own 24-year-old son, George Prescott Bush, who has been helping with the Texas governor's campaign for president. "That's my lesson for him, that and humility," Jeb Bush said. "I worry more about my son than my brother. He can handle himself."

And how did Jeb Bush come to read A Message to Garcia?

Ken Wright, an Orlando attorney who has worked on campaigns for Bush and his former-president father, gave him a copy during his 1998 campaign for governor.

Wright interprets the essay this way: "Whining isn't allowed. That's my ethic: You got a job to do, do the job." He remembers exactly the conversation he had with the candidate when he recommended the book:

"I gave it to Jeb and Jeb says, "I'm really not into this new age stuff.' "

"I said "Jeb, read the book. It will take you a cup of coffee to read this book. This is not new age stuff. This is older than the hills.'

"When I ran into him next he had read it. His reaction was the same as I would have expected it be: "That book was awesome. It says it all.' "

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