One Amazing Story by One Amazing Individual by Craig Fuller

One of the best lessons I learned during my eight years on the White House staff was the importance of two factors: how one spends their time; and, who they spend it with.

A President and Vice President have the opportunity to meet with pretty much anyone with whom they wish visit. Hence, I always thought one of my most important responsibilities as chief of staff to Vice President George Bush was to make the best use of his time and to insure he had opportunities with the best informed, clear and honest experts on critical issues.

In the mid-1980s, one of those issues was HIV/AIDS and there was no one better suited to help senior officials understand a disease spreading throughout the population than Dr. Tony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He did not have the rank of a cabinet officer, nor did he run the National Institutes of Health (NIH). What he did have was total dedication to ridding us of, or reducing the threat from HIV/AIDS for millions of people throughout the world.

Having learned about his role, it seemed the best way for then Vice President Bush to understand the battle that Dr. Fauci and his team were waging would be to go to him for a briefing at NIAID in Bethesda, MD. While it broke with some protocol, the visit proved fateful. What the Vice President saw and heard left a strong impression. However, the most important part of the visit, I thought at the time, was that Bush found someone he could trust on the most challenging of health care matter.

After reading Dr. Tony Fauci’s book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, I came to realize how incredibly important Dr. Fauci’s work has been to millions of people around the world. I also came to appreciate how that successful first briefing proved vital to providing Dr. Fauci with the support he would need to wage the battle.

Years later, Dr. Fauci would say in an interview something that makes this point so much better than I can. In a Miller Center interview, Dr. Fauci said about President George H.W. Bush,

Although he had a strong conservative base, he was driven much more by doing the right thing regardless of ideology. When he first came to the NIH as Vice President, that’s when I developed my relationship, the early part of my relationship with him. I was asked to show him around because I was the AIDS person here. We developed a good friendship that has lasted even up to today. 

As President, he kept on asking me to come down to the White House and explain to him the need for this and the need for that. He became very sympathetic and actually increased the budget a fair amount.

This relationship with President Bush would continue in significant ways with all the Presidents who would follow.

And, it’s his perspective that makes Dr. Fauci’s book so compelling. He committed himself in his twenties to fight infectious diseases and then did just that for five decades. The diseases and epidemics are familiar to us all. What is revealed about the work behind the scenes to save lives reads like any of our great mystery novels.

The take aways from Fauci’s “public service journey” are also compelling. His ability to build relationships and create collaborations across national boundaries and with people vocally opposed to him, and to do it all cheerfully and optimistically provides lessons for us all, especially to those who commit themselves to public service.

I have said many times that Dr. Tony Fauci is a national treasure. Anyone who reads his story will be, in my view, compelled to agree.

You can find more about the book by CLICKING HERE.

Craig Fuller served four years in the White House as assistant to President Reagan for Cabinet Affairs, followed by four years as chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush. Having been engaged in five presidential campaigns and running public affairs firms and associations in Washington, D.C., he now resides on the Eastern Shore and publishes DECADE SEVEN on Substack.