The Presidency of George Bush

by John Robert Greene

How could a president have won a war and lost a reelection? For George Bush, being Commander in Chief during Desert Storm was not enough. Domestic issues, personality factors, and the vagaries of the 1992 campaign confined his presidency to a single term. John Robert Greene helps us understand why.

This first comprehensive history of George Bush's administration paints a striking portrait of a "positive moderate" whose accomplishments are often underrated. Greene's is the first book to make use of the entire range of literature on the forty-first president--including the Bush Papers at the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University--and draws on key interviews with members of his administration and with George Bush himself.

Greene sets Bush's presidency in the context of the Reagan years and reviews not only his foreign policy successes--notably the war with Iraq and an improved relationship with Russia--but also key domestic issues: economic recession, the much maligned "Read My Lips" tax hike, Clarence Thomas's controversial Supreme Court appointment, and the enactment of bills that protected the environment and improved the lives of disabled Americans. Greene also offers an insightful analysis of Bush's bid for reelection, describing a campaign that saw conservatives abandoning Bush in droves while early signs of an economic upturn did little to defuse the Democrats' advantage.

Greene is particularly insightful on Bush the person, depicting the president as a man of patience and prudence who placed great value on loyalty and who was better at managing crises than he was the day-to-day demands of the presidency. He shows us the sense of humor and love of the outdoors in a man often branded an elitist or a wimp, who ultimately was never able to manipulate his public image to his advantage.

This book takes into account the many facets of the Bush administration, from the spirited optimism of a thousand points of light to the unsettling vagueness of "the vision thing," and shows us a man whose careful stewardship set the tone for post-Cold War foreign policy. As Greene notes, while Bush had his critics, it was on his watch that the Cold War ended and America reasserted its military might.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

John Robert Greene is an American historian who is the Paul J. Schupf Professor, History and Humanities, the director of the Social Science Program, and the College Archivist, at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, New York.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just read "Dutch" and Edmund Morris is as tough act for this author to follow as was Reagan for George Bush. I was never a fan of Reagan, but he certainly had and still has a loyal following. Both Bush and this book were a bit less inspiring. I was amazed to read in the Acknowledgements that Greene spent ten years researching and writing this 186 page book. Foote had published the first 2000 pages of his Civil War opus in that amount of time. The book is a quick read (a Sunday afternoon will do) and does have some interesting tidbits. For example, I had forgotten or never knew how the military controlled the news reporting from Desert Storm. The repeated TV images like that of the smart bomb inserted into a building's airshaft left me with memories of ultra-precise bombing, but apparently that was less than candid information. Nearly 1/2 missed their targets completely. 23% of the dead American soldiers were killed by "friendly fire". I suspect that a better bio of Bush has been written, but I doubt if the subject is worth the bother.

[Jerry Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for the most part -- I spotted a couple of errors, but otherwise a fair assessment of the Bush Sr. presidency.