If you have read this blog before, you've probably guessed that I am not a fan of the eight years of Bush 43. While I think it dangerous to assume how history will judge any contemporary events, I believe that it is difficult to envision a scenario in which the Bush years are seen as positive ones for our nation.
Leaders tend to be evaluated in one of two ways: what they accomplished, or what they didn't. The former can be seen positively or negatively (as witness the continued controversy over the contributions of FDR), the latter almost always negatively. Hoover is considered one of our worst presidents because of his laissez-faire attitude toward the financial crisis that became the Great Depression; oddly enough, his approach was actually not all that odd, even by today's standards, as we like to let the market work itself out.
Bush 43 will be unusual in that he will be evaluated in both ways. His primary "accomplishment" has been the Iraq war, along with the associated spending, lack of diplomacy, and so forth. But I also think he will be remembered for what he hasn't done: he turned a blind eye toward climate change, toward a historic shift in the relationship of business to citizen, toward the very nature of science itself. Long-term, Bush's legacy may well be seen more for the many things that didn't get accomplished than those that did, badly.
It is typical for writers to try to figure out what motivates a president, to solve the problem of how someone who achieves the highest office in the land got there, and from where their actions in that office derive. And so we have attempts at what's been termed psychobiography; usually this is analysis from afar, as a writer, often with dubious psychological credentials, tries to impute a president's inner mind from what he says or does. (Interestingly enough, Freud himself wrote such a book, with William C. Bullitt, about Woodrow Wilson.) These books are usually pretty interesting, sometimes enlightening, sometimes questionable.
Jacob Weisberg, the editor in chief of Slate magazine, has written such a book in The Bush Tragedy. Whether you will find this book revelatory or humdrum will depend on how much reading you've already done about Bush, his family, and his public life. For me, there was not a lot here that was new, but it is presented in clear prose without psychological jargon.
Weisberg's essential premise is that Bush 43 has embodied conflicting desires: he wants desperately to break away from his father, to be his opposite; at the same time, he wants to be a better 41, to go down the same path (but only if he can recognized as superior):
The best measure of any theory, whether in hard science or soft, is how it predicts future events. The biggest problem with this book is that it doesn't really give us a framework to help us decide what Bush 43 will do next, not that it really matters much in a lame-duck presidency. So we really can't use The Bush Tragedy as a guide, we can only use it to try to understand what has happened. This is valuable, but it might have been more useful, oh, maybe eight years ago.
Chapter 1 reaches back into the history of the Bushes and the Walkers, the two families that came together to produce the dynastic current-day Bushes. Weisberg makes a lot of the conflict between the nouveau-riche Walkers and the aristocratic Bushes, though the historical detail is far more extensively explicated in Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty. His conclusion is that Bush 43 has emulated not the reserved grandfather and senator Prescott Bush, and not the measured father and president George H. W. Bush, but the ebullient, sometimes crude great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker: "The man's a Walker, through and through" [p. 29].
The second chapter delves into the dynamic of the present-day family, at least the public part of it, George H. W., George W., and Jeb (Neil and Marvin, interesting in their own right, are mentioned only in passing, and Dorothy is almost entirely eliminated). Again, Weisberg gives us details that are pretty well-known. Jeb was considered the true hope of the family, Dubya was the screw-up. Bush 43 couldn't make a success of anything, not school, not athletics, not business. Then came the barest form of legitimacy, Bush 43's role as president of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Finally, in 1994, as part of the Republican tide, Dubya won his race for governor of Texas...and Jeb lost his.
What is interesting in this section comes at the very end, as Weisberg demonstrates how the very failings of Bush 43, the intemperate, ill-considered decision-making, the lack of deliberation, confirmed the wisdom of Bush 41. The elder Bush's reluctance to go after Saddam, seen by some (including, apparently, his oldest son) as terminal wimpiness, now looks like a prudent judgment that prevented chaos in the Middle East. One cannot say the same for the current occupant:
Chapter 3 discusses Bush's faith. Unsurprisingly, it sees George's famed conversion as, to some extent, expediency; there is also a current of how Bush has used his faith more as a personal benchmark than as a spur to Christian action. This seems obvious to many if us. The section on the coded evangelical language in speeches, much of it created by Michael Gerson, is also unremarkable (let me stress once again that, if you're a reader who hasn't been following Bush very closely, this book is an excellent summary of known facts; if you have been close to it, there just isn't a lot that's new).
The one insight I gleaned from this chapter is that, to people close to the president, his faith has actually made him less dogmatic, that he is, "more genuinely humble and less absolutist" [p. 106]. I guess we should all be grateful he found God.
The fourth chapter is all about Karl Rove's relationship with George W. Bush. What we already know is that Rove has tried to politicize every issue possible, even in the wake of 9/11, which should have remained a non-partisan matter. "Reinforcing Bush's own instinct to politicize the war against terrorism was Rove's greatest disservice, and a major contribution to the failure of the Bush presidency" [p.139]. What I didn't know was the near-contempt of the president for his "brain," the extent to which Rove was marginalized personally. It makes you wonder who exactly constitutes Bush's inner circle, as he is not very close to the subject of Chapter 5, Dick Cheney.
That Cheney has had a great influence on the Bush presidency is well-known, though it is clear that we will never understand the full extent. This chapter is arguably the most interesting, as we see how someone with Rasputin-like efficiency can become a major figure while standing in the shadows. Weisberg contends that Cheney understood Bush well enough to know what would appeal to him, both in style and substance; this, coupled with a remarkable belief in the necessary power of the executive branch, has made Cheney the frightening factor he is to much of the country.
Nonetheless, there are nuggets here that were new to me, most notably that the true change in the thinking of the Bush camp came, not from 9/11, but from the subsequent anthrax attacks. At this point the focus became unmistakably Iraq, which led to all that came after.
Chapter 7 explores the desire of Bush to find historical parallels to himself. To no one's surprise, this involves a misreading of history as Dubya tries to place himself with Truman, T. Roosevelt, Reagan, Lincoln, and, most notably (and wrongly), Churchill. Bush has frequently said that he doesn't care about how history will judge him, but he also says that his current approval rating is irrelevant in the face of historical judgment.
In the end, The Bush Tragedy is interesting, but only intermittently important. It is an excellent summary of what we know about the mind of George W. Bush and how it informed his actions in a job for which he seems completely unqualified, either in experience, ability to react, or temperament.
And it will bring to mind further questions, as yet unanswered. Why would very different men, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, both see this unimpressive man as the instrument to further their philosophies? One could suppose it was the look, the name, the bearing, but that seems not wholly persuasive. You will have other such questions upon reading this book, and I recommend you do so.
Leaders tend to be evaluated in one of two ways: what they accomplished, or what they didn't. The former can be seen positively or negatively (as witness the continued controversy over the contributions of FDR), the latter almost always negatively. Hoover is considered one of our worst presidents because of his laissez-faire attitude toward the financial crisis that became the Great Depression; oddly enough, his approach was actually not all that odd, even by today's standards, as we like to let the market work itself out.
Bush 43 will be unusual in that he will be evaluated in both ways. His primary "accomplishment" has been the Iraq war, along with the associated spending, lack of diplomacy, and so forth. But I also think he will be remembered for what he hasn't done: he turned a blind eye toward climate change, toward a historic shift in the relationship of business to citizen, toward the very nature of science itself. Long-term, Bush's legacy may well be seen more for the many things that didn't get accomplished than those that did, badly.
It is typical for writers to try to figure out what motivates a president, to solve the problem of how someone who achieves the highest office in the land got there, and from where their actions in that office derive. And so we have attempts at what's been termed psychobiography; usually this is analysis from afar, as a writer, often with dubious psychological credentials, tries to impute a president's inner mind from what he says or does. (Interestingly enough, Freud himself wrote such a book, with William C. Bullitt, about Woodrow Wilson.) These books are usually pretty interesting, sometimes enlightening, sometimes questionable.
Jacob Weisberg, the editor in chief of Slate magazine, has written such a book in The Bush Tragedy. Whether you will find this book revelatory or humdrum will depend on how much reading you've already done about Bush, his family, and his public life. For me, there was not a lot here that was new, but it is presented in clear prose without psychological jargon.
Weisberg's essential premise is that Bush 43 has embodied conflicting desires: he wants desperately to break away from his father, to be his opposite; at the same time, he wants to be a better 41, to go down the same path (but only if he can recognized as superior):
George W. Bush has been driven since childhood by a need to differentiate himself from his father, to challenge, surpass, and overcome him. Accompanying those motives have been their precise opposites, expressed through a lifelong effort to follow, copy, and honor his father. [p. xviii]I'm not sure that this theory is either particularly novel, nor is it unusual. Many sons, in effect, go into the family business with the express, if not fully understood, desire to beat Dad at his own game. What makes the Bush story different is the stage on which their game has been played.
The best measure of any theory, whether in hard science or soft, is how it predicts future events. The biggest problem with this book is that it doesn't really give us a framework to help us decide what Bush 43 will do next, not that it really matters much in a lame-duck presidency. So we really can't use The Bush Tragedy as a guide, we can only use it to try to understand what has happened. This is valuable, but it might have been more useful, oh, maybe eight years ago.
Chapter 1 reaches back into the history of the Bushes and the Walkers, the two families that came together to produce the dynastic current-day Bushes. Weisberg makes a lot of the conflict between the nouveau-riche Walkers and the aristocratic Bushes, though the historical detail is far more extensively explicated in Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty. His conclusion is that Bush 43 has emulated not the reserved grandfather and senator Prescott Bush, and not the measured father and president George H. W. Bush, but the ebullient, sometimes crude great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker: "The man's a Walker, through and through" [p. 29].
The second chapter delves into the dynamic of the present-day family, at least the public part of it, George H. W., George W., and Jeb (Neil and Marvin, interesting in their own right, are mentioned only in passing, and Dorothy is almost entirely eliminated). Again, Weisberg gives us details that are pretty well-known. Jeb was considered the true hope of the family, Dubya was the screw-up. Bush 43 couldn't make a success of anything, not school, not athletics, not business. Then came the barest form of legitimacy, Bush 43's role as president of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Finally, in 1994, as part of the Republican tide, Dubya won his race for governor of Texas...and Jeb lost his.
What is interesting in this section comes at the very end, as Weisberg demonstrates how the very failings of Bush 43, the intemperate, ill-considered decision-making, the lack of deliberation, confirmed the wisdom of Bush 41. The elder Bush's reluctance to go after Saddam, seen by some (including, apparently, his oldest son) as terminal wimpiness, now looks like a prudent judgment that prevented chaos in the Middle East. One cannot say the same for the current occupant:
A son who tried to vindicate his family by repudiating his father's policies ended up doing the opposite of what he intended. He showed the world his father's wisdom and brought shame to his name. [p. 72]A note here: I don't like to review the book that wasn't written; each author emphasizes what he or she feels is important. Chastising someone for what is omitted is easy to do. But there are times when one has to at least question what isn't there. Weisberg stakes most of his claim for the failed Bush presidency on the war in Iraq and its aftermath. As I stated above, I think there are a lot more failures across these years. While it makes for facile comparisons, Saddam and Iraq vs. Bush 41 and Bush 43, the book feels incomplete as it glides lightly across the domestic missteps of the past several years. Perhaps Weisberg has the sense that there is less distinction here, or feels that Bush 43 was not engaged with those issues, but it hurts the work somewhat.
Chapter 3 discusses Bush's faith. Unsurprisingly, it sees George's famed conversion as, to some extent, expediency; there is also a current of how Bush has used his faith more as a personal benchmark than as a spur to Christian action. This seems obvious to many if us. The section on the coded evangelical language in speeches, much of it created by Michael Gerson, is also unremarkable (let me stress once again that, if you're a reader who hasn't been following Bush very closely, this book is an excellent summary of known facts; if you have been close to it, there just isn't a lot that's new).
The one insight I gleaned from this chapter is that, to people close to the president, his faith has actually made him less dogmatic, that he is, "more genuinely humble and less absolutist" [p. 106]. I guess we should all be grateful he found God.
The fourth chapter is all about Karl Rove's relationship with George W. Bush. What we already know is that Rove has tried to politicize every issue possible, even in the wake of 9/11, which should have remained a non-partisan matter. "Reinforcing Bush's own instinct to politicize the war against terrorism was Rove's greatest disservice, and a major contribution to the failure of the Bush presidency" [p.139]. What I didn't know was the near-contempt of the president for his "brain," the extent to which Rove was marginalized personally. It makes you wonder who exactly constitutes Bush's inner circle, as he is not very close to the subject of Chapter 5, Dick Cheney.
That Cheney has had a great influence on the Bush presidency is well-known, though it is clear that we will never understand the full extent. This chapter is arguably the most interesting, as we see how someone with Rasputin-like efficiency can become a major figure while standing in the shadows. Weisberg contends that Cheney understood Bush well enough to know what would appeal to him, both in style and substance; this, coupled with a remarkable belief in the necessary power of the executive branch, has made Cheney the frightening factor he is to much of the country.
That Cheney was able to translate his instincts about the need for extraordinary presidential power so effectively into policy was not just a reflection of his bureaucratic shrewdness. It was a function of his having clear, well-developed ideas ready to fill the intellectual vacuum around the president. [p. 175]Chapter 6 takes us through the evolution of Bush's foreign policy, or the Bush Doctrine, and talks about how it has changed over the course of the two terms. What is remarkable is how a man who knew almost nothing about this subject while in Austin will forever be associated with it, largely because of events under the control of bin Laden. Weisberg moves through what he says are six distinct periods in the presidency, and, thus, six different doctrines. This evolution is more a matter of ascribing labels to somewhat arbitrary events, as he doesn't make it clear that there was conscious choice behind this movement.
Nonetheless, there are nuggets here that were new to me, most notably that the true change in the thinking of the Bush camp came, not from 9/11, but from the subsequent anthrax attacks. At this point the focus became unmistakably Iraq, which led to all that came after.
Chapter 7 explores the desire of Bush to find historical parallels to himself. To no one's surprise, this involves a misreading of history as Dubya tries to place himself with Truman, T. Roosevelt, Reagan, Lincoln, and, most notably (and wrongly), Churchill. Bush has frequently said that he doesn't care about how history will judge him, but he also says that his current approval rating is irrelevant in the face of historical judgment.
In the end, The Bush Tragedy is interesting, but only intermittently important. It is an excellent summary of what we know about the mind of George W. Bush and how it informed his actions in a job for which he seems completely unqualified, either in experience, ability to react, or temperament.
And it will bring to mind further questions, as yet unanswered. Why would very different men, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, both see this unimpressive man as the instrument to further their philosophies? One could suppose it was the look, the name, the bearing, but that seems not wholly persuasive. You will have other such questions upon reading this book, and I recommend you do so.
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