The American ODYSSY of George Herbert Walker Bush Destiny and Power By Jon Meachham

Category: Biography & Autobiography - Presidents; History - United States - 20th Century; Biography & Autobiography - Political

Format: Hardcover
Pub Date: November 2015


ISBN: 978-1-4000-6765-7 (1-4000-6765-0)
Pages: 864
 


In this brilliant biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush. Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.

Former President George H. W. Bush emotionally recounts how five presidents called him after his wife, Barbara Bush, had open-heart surgery in March 2009.

At a July 6, 1999, speech to the Southern Baptist Convention, former President George H. W. Bush tearfully recalls the moments leading up to the start of the air war against Iraq.

  

Seventy years ago this very day, Barbara Pierce of Rye, NY made me the happiest, and luckiest, man on earth.

His was one of the great American lives. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and at age twenty was shot down on a combat mission over the Pacific. He married young, started a family, and resisted pressure to go to Wall Street, striking out for the adventurous world of Texas oil. Over the course of three decades, Bush would rise from the chairmanship of his county Republican Party to serve as congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, head of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of Central Intelligence, vice president under Ronald Reagan, and, finally, president of the United States. In retirement he became the first president since John Adams to see his son win the ultimate prize in American politics.

With access not only to the Bush diaries but, through extensive interviews, to the former president himself, Meacham presents Bush’s candid assessments of many of the critical figures of the age, ranging from Richard Nixon to Nancy Reagan; Mao to Mikhail Gorbachev; Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld; Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton. Here is high politics as it really is but as we rarely see it.

From the Pacific to the presidency, Destiny and Power charts the vicissitudes of the life of this quietly compelling American original. Meacham sheds new light on the rise of the right wing in the Republican Party, a shift that signaled the beginning of the end of the center in American politics. Destiny and Power is an affecting portrait of a man who, driven by destiny and by duty, forever sought, ultimately, to put the country first.

Praise for Destiny and Power
“Should be required reading—if not for every presidential candidate, then for every president-elect.”—The Washington Post

“Reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating biography of the forty-first president.”—The Dallas Morning News

“When we rank, reconsider, laud, or denounce past Presidents, living or dead, we are taking stock of our own times. In that sense, the vindication of George H. W. Bush is a reflection of what we know we’ve lost. Jon Meacham’s new biography of Bush, Destiny and Power, makes that plain from its very first pages.”—The New Yorker

“The story of the forty-first man to hold the office sheds light not only on the country we were, but the one we’ve become.”—Los Angeles Times

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Like its subject, George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power is polite and thorough. Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, put an enormous amount of work into this volume: nine years of interviews, full access to the diaries of George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and an open door to family members and friends.
Add to this Meacham’s balanced journalism and smooth writing, and you have a fascinating biography of the 41st president.
The Bush presidency was, writes Meacham, “refreshing, even quaint.” It was reminiscent of an earlier era; the Bush White House had more in common with Dwight Eisenhower’s administration than with what we see in Washington today. But it was during Bush’s tenure, notes Meacham, that “the old politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity.”
Meacham understands Bush, describing “his public reticence; his old-fashioned dignity; his tendency to find a middle course between extremes.” Bush, observes Meacham, “was driven less by ideas about politics than by an ideal of service and an ambition — a consuming one — to win.”
Bush’s temperament was perfect for some of the challenges he faced. In early 1989, a few months after he took office, he orchestrated a reduction of Western and Soviet troops in Europe, and this allowed the superpowers to cut their stockpiles of short-range nuclear missiles. A few months later, he reacted calmly as the Berlin Wall was opened. Shortly thereafter he told Mikhail Gorbachev: “I have conducted myself in ways not to complicate your life. That’s why I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.” Gorbachev responded, “We have seen that and appreciate that.” This was the way the Cold War was brought to a close.
Bush told his diary in 1990: “I like wrestling with the foreign policy agenda. I don’t like the negotiations on the budget.” Meacham’s detailed description of those budget negotiations, which resulted in Bush breaking his “read my lips” pledge not to increase taxes, provides fascinating insight into the limits of presidential power and the bruising realities of politics.
When Bush returned to wrestling with foreign policy, he was in his element. After Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait, Bush patiently built a coalition that included the Soviet Union, China and Arab nations to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi rule. Bush felt so strongly that using military force was appropriate that he risked the wrath of Congress, which he feared might impeach him if the war turned out badly.
The ground war lasted only a hundred hours, and much of Iraq’s army was destroyed. Bush was under pressure to finish the job by chasing Saddam and ending his regime. But as Bush wrote some years later, “To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero.”
Bush added that this would have resulted in U.S. troops becoming engaged in “an unwinnable guerrilla war” and would “plunge that part of the world into even greater instability and destroy the credibility we were working so hard to re-establish.” The wisdom of that analysis lingers.
Bush didn’t care much for campaigning. He lost two U.S. Senate races in Texas and was defeated by Ronald Reagan for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. When Bush finally won the presidency in 1988, it soon became clear that his “discomfort with the rhetorical requirements of his office was one of his cardinal weaknesses as president,” writes Meacham, adding that perhaps he was “intimidated by the Reagan rhetorical legacy.”
When he had run against an inept Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bush was able to prevail, but in 1992, with the post-Reagan economy a mess, the combination of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot was too much for him to overcome. In a town-hall-format debate, one questioner asked, “How can you help us if you don’t know what we’re feeling?” Bush struggled to answer, but Clinton seized upon it.
After Bush’s defeat, former House Speaker Tip O’Neill told him, “You ran the worst campaign I ever saw, but you’re going out a beloved figure.” As time passed, the calm reasonableness of the Bush presidency became more appealing. And there were more Bushes to watch. George H.W. was the first president since John Adams to see his son become the nation’s chief executive.
In Destiny and Power, Meacham tells the story of a family that has long believed in “the principle that privilege entailed  service.” During that service, the scene was not always serene. The Bush diaries reveal his anger about Vice President Dan Quayle undercutting him with the Republican right, and Bush had harsh words for his son’s vice president, Dick Cheney, telling Meacham that Cheney “had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer.” (George W. differed with his father about this, telling Meacham, “I disagree with his characterization of what was going on.”)
Such disagreements have been rare. Loyalty and affection within this family have always been intense, and in Meacham’s skillful telling they add an enviable dimension to a remarkable political life.
Philip Seib is a vice dean and professor at the University of Southern California.

http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/books/20151106-2.ece


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