DESTINY AND POWER: THE AMERICAN ODYSSEY OF GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH
Jon Meacham
Random House
836 pages; $35
George H W Bush is unusual among modern American presidents in that after he left the White House in 1993 he never produced his own full-scale autobiography. It is a measure of Mr Bush's shrewdness that he cooperated so extensively with Jon Meacham on Destiny and Power , allowing his biographer not just access to his diaries and family members but sitting for a series of interviews from 2006 to 2015.
Mr Meacham - an executive editor at Random House, a former editor of Newsweek and the author of American Lion , an account of Andrew Jackson's presidency that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 - amply rewards his subject's trust by producing a deeply empathetic, often moving book about Mr Bush and what he calls the L-word, his legacy.
Mr Meacham's admiration leads him to glide quickly over some of Mr Bush's more controversial decisions, like his nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. Mr Meacham is toughest on Mr Bush for insisting in 1987 that he had been "not in the loop" on the Reagan administration's arms-for-hostages deal, a lie that clearly appals the author. But even then Mr Meacham writes more in sorrow than anger, describing the incident as "unworthy of his essential character."
Mr Bush has never been accused of eloquence, and on two occasions when he did utter memorable phrases, they backfired. The description of Mr Reagan's tax proposals as "voodoo economics" during the 1980 Republican primary campaign nearly wrecked his chances of becoming Mr Reagan's running mate that year. His pledge at the 1988 Republican convention, "Read my lips: No new taxes," may have helped him into the White House, but when the threat of a government shutdown two years later forced him to backtrack, the reversal cost him dearly.
Yet one time his choice of words set the course for the singular achievement of his presidency, and it was unscripted. After Saddam Hussein overran Kuwait in August 1990, the administration and its allies were at a loss on how to react. Options were still being bandied about when Mr Bush, frustrated by the diplomatic shilly-shallying, announced to reporters: "This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait." Such an adamant statement shocked even his closest advisers.
This was Mr Bush at his best: decisive, in charge, imbued with a mission. Can you be a born leader but not an effective president? That is the central question of the one-term presidency of Mr Bush, and Mr Meacham tiptoes around a definitive answer. The flagging economy did not interest Mr Bush as much as foreign policy did, and his hatred for campaigning to win a second term culminated in a disastrous presidential debate performance against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, in which he stumbled over answers and looked at his watch. Mr Meacham makes a persuasive case that Mr Bush's persistent health problems contributed to his defeat, sapping his energy on the trail and making him snappish and cranky.
Mr Bush took the loss hard. But what also stung was who he lost to: A man he considered a "draft dodger" for avoiding service during the Vietnam War, an observation Mr Meacham is too polite to say would dog Mr Bush's own son.
History has a way of making what happens look predictable in hindsight, but given Mr Bush's decisive drubbing by Mr Clinton in 1992, it remains remarkable that eight years later Mr Bush would become, as Mr Meacham puts it, "the only president since John Adams to see his son also win the ultimate prize in American politics." Nearly all of Mr Bush's friends thought the more studious Jeb Bush had a better shot at the Oval Office than George W ; even James A Baker, the secretary of state, had once jokingly described the older son as a "juvenile delinquent, damn near."
Mr George Bush junior's two-term presidency is the subject for a different book, but Mr Meacham deftly sketches what the son learned from his father's tenure, which included maintaining his conservative and religious base and above all projecting a vision. Mr Meacham explores in depth how some of these lessons shaped Mr Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, including how much he consulted his dad and that contrary to some reports there was no daylight between the two men on the decision to oust Saddam Hussein militarily.
Where Mr Meacham breaks startling ground is reporting how needlessly harsh Mr Bush senior thought the rhetoric was, including Mr George Bush's characterisation in 2002 of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." And for that tone Mr Bush largely blames Dick Cheney, defence secretary during his own administration and a man Mr Bush believed had grown more hawkish over time.
Mr Cheney "had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer," Mr Bush says. "The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own state department. I think they overdid that. But it's not Cheney's fault, it's the president's fault."
The younger Mr Bush seems more taken aback by the comments than Mr Cheney, insisting that his father "would never say to me, 'Hey, you need to rein in Cheney. He's ruining your administration.' It would be out of character for him to do that." It is hard to tell how stung Mr George Bush is by these remarks, since he quickly adds that "in any event, I disagree with his characterisation." Yet Mr Meacham wisely points out that by the second term Mr George Bush had clipped Mr Cheney's wings and become less bellicose. "Though they never spoke of it, then, Mr Bush and Mr George Bush may have been more in sync all along than even they knew."
©2015 The New York Times News Service
Jon Meacham
Random House
836 pages; $35
George H W Bush is unusual among modern American presidents in that after he left the White House in 1993 he never produced his own full-scale autobiography. It is a measure of Mr Bush's shrewdness that he cooperated so extensively with Jon Meacham on Destiny and Power , allowing his biographer not just access to his diaries and family members but sitting for a series of interviews from 2006 to 2015.
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Mr Meacham - an executive editor at Random House, a former editor of Newsweek and the author of American Lion , an account of Andrew Jackson's presidency that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 - amply rewards his subject's trust by producing a deeply empathetic, often moving book about Mr Bush and what he calls the L-word, his legacy.
Mr Meacham's admiration leads him to glide quickly over some of Mr Bush's more controversial decisions, like his nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. Mr Meacham is toughest on Mr Bush for insisting in 1987 that he had been "not in the loop" on the Reagan administration's arms-for-hostages deal, a lie that clearly appals the author. But even then Mr Meacham writes more in sorrow than anger, describing the incident as "unworthy of his essential character."
Mr Bush has never been accused of eloquence, and on two occasions when he did utter memorable phrases, they backfired. The description of Mr Reagan's tax proposals as "voodoo economics" during the 1980 Republican primary campaign nearly wrecked his chances of becoming Mr Reagan's running mate that year. His pledge at the 1988 Republican convention, "Read my lips: No new taxes," may have helped him into the White House, but when the threat of a government shutdown two years later forced him to backtrack, the reversal cost him dearly.
Yet one time his choice of words set the course for the singular achievement of his presidency, and it was unscripted. After Saddam Hussein overran Kuwait in August 1990, the administration and its allies were at a loss on how to react. Options were still being bandied about when Mr Bush, frustrated by the diplomatic shilly-shallying, announced to reporters: "This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait." Such an adamant statement shocked even his closest advisers.
This was Mr Bush at his best: decisive, in charge, imbued with a mission. Can you be a born leader but not an effective president? That is the central question of the one-term presidency of Mr Bush, and Mr Meacham tiptoes around a definitive answer. The flagging economy did not interest Mr Bush as much as foreign policy did, and his hatred for campaigning to win a second term culminated in a disastrous presidential debate performance against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, in which he stumbled over answers and looked at his watch. Mr Meacham makes a persuasive case that Mr Bush's persistent health problems contributed to his defeat, sapping his energy on the trail and making him snappish and cranky.
Mr Bush took the loss hard. But what also stung was who he lost to: A man he considered a "draft dodger" for avoiding service during the Vietnam War, an observation Mr Meacham is too polite to say would dog Mr Bush's own son.
History has a way of making what happens look predictable in hindsight, but given Mr Bush's decisive drubbing by Mr Clinton in 1992, it remains remarkable that eight years later Mr Bush would become, as Mr Meacham puts it, "the only president since John Adams to see his son also win the ultimate prize in American politics." Nearly all of Mr Bush's friends thought the more studious Jeb Bush had a better shot at the Oval Office than George W ; even James A Baker, the secretary of state, had once jokingly described the older son as a "juvenile delinquent, damn near."
Mr George Bush junior's two-term presidency is the subject for a different book, but Mr Meacham deftly sketches what the son learned from his father's tenure, which included maintaining his conservative and religious base and above all projecting a vision. Mr Meacham explores in depth how some of these lessons shaped Mr Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, including how much he consulted his dad and that contrary to some reports there was no daylight between the two men on the decision to oust Saddam Hussein militarily.
Where Mr Meacham breaks startling ground is reporting how needlessly harsh Mr Bush senior thought the rhetoric was, including Mr George Bush's characterisation in 2002 of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." And for that tone Mr Bush largely blames Dick Cheney, defence secretary during his own administration and a man Mr Bush believed had grown more hawkish over time.
Mr Cheney "had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer," Mr Bush says. "The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own state department. I think they overdid that. But it's not Cheney's fault, it's the president's fault."
The younger Mr Bush seems more taken aback by the comments than Mr Cheney, insisting that his father "would never say to me, 'Hey, you need to rein in Cheney. He's ruining your administration.' It would be out of character for him to do that." It is hard to tell how stung Mr George Bush is by these remarks, since he quickly adds that "in any event, I disagree with his characterisation." Yet Mr Meacham wisely points out that by the second term Mr George Bush had clipped Mr Cheney's wings and become less bellicose. "Though they never spoke of it, then, Mr Bush and Mr George Bush may have been more in sync all along than even they knew."
©2015 The New York Times News Service