President Richard Nixon shaking hands with George Herbert Walker Bush. As a one-term congressman, Bush angled to become Nixon's running mate in 1968. After Bush gave up his House seat to fight a second losing campaign for the Senate in Texas in 1970, Nixon launched him on his career as a presidential appointee. Bush said about his first politcal mentor: "[H]e appointed me to the United Nations and he saw me as a man with prospects in the Republican Party."