Revised: November 30, 2015

Word count: about 1361

Pete Willows willows@aucegypt.edu

Prudence & Pragmatism

Destiny and Power: the American Odyssey of George Herbert
Walker Bush. By Jon Meacham. 2015. 864 pps. Random
House Books. ISBN-10: 1400067650. $35.00.
George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the
United States, was the commander-in-chief before a
generational and ideological shift in the US electorate.
Biographer Jon Meacham begins our read with Bushs defeat
to Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election. The loss
genuinely hurt and confounded Bush, a decorated World War
II veteran: how could he lose re-election to a candidate he
considered a draft dodger from the Vietnam War?
Bushs approval rating had cascaded from an
unprecedented 90 per cent, after the first Gulf War, to a 62
per cent approval rating by the time of the 1992 election. As
the election slogged through the primaries, much of Bushs
own Republican Party thought him too moderate on

conservative issues. Bush was losing on both sides of the

aisle.
Bushs foreign policy accomplishments beyond the Gulf
War remained equally irrelevant to voters when it came time
for his re-election bid. He had successfully navigated the
deceptive ebbs and currents of the Soviet Unions collapse
into the harbor of a relatively stable Eastern Europe; Bush
had vociferously championed for German re-unification at a
time when Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand were
adamantly arguing against the idea. Today, a unified
Germany leads the EU economy. And Mother Russia is
struggling to re-assert herself with mixed results.
Though Bush excelled in directing foreign policy, he
displayed less lan in his stewardship of domestic issues. He
appeared out of touch with the middle class and the working
class. At the time of the 1992 presidential election, the US
was in recession; and with a massive deficit largely in place
due to the Reagan administrations supply-side economics.
Ronald Reagans fiscal policy was phrased trickle-down

economics where the benefits of tax cuts going to the rich

were expected to trickle-down to the lower classes. Clintons
campaign advisors came up with an unforgettably bourgeois
slogan to vote for a change in the executive office: Its the
economy, stupid.
George HW Bush grew up in New England as a child of
privilege in the state of Connecticut. His father was a
successful Wall Street banker and respected US Senator of
their home state. From an early age, Bush was given a
proper education and coached on the nuance of social grace:
never focus on ones accomplishments, display humility with
charm, and project an enthusiasm for ones interlocutor.
After finishing prep-school in 1942, Bush enlisted in the
navy as a bomber pilot at age 18 the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor had been the prime mover in his decision to
enlist before attending university. He was shot down in the
Pacific Theater and rescued at sea. With the end of the war,
Bush married his sweetheart and took his place in the Ivy
League at Yale University, where he was a member of the

mysterious and secretive social club, Skull and Bones. Bush,

who stood six-foot-two and threw left-handed, was captain of
the baseball team. He graduated early, Phi Beta Kappa (with
honors), and with a degree in economics. The year was
1948.
Bush was no Rockefeller Republican. He was expected to
make his own way after college. The couple drove their
wedding gift, a red two-door Studebaker, to West Texas with
the intention of entering the oil business. They rented a
small apartment with a shared bathroom. Hot, dusty,
unforgiving Texas, where the money lurks below the surface,
was a significant contrast to lush, wet, fertile New England,
with its stone mansions rising up to overlook the Atlantic
Ocean. For Bush, a lackluster career in selling oil drilling
equipment ensued, though, he later flourished by raising
capital to develop a drilling company, Zapata Oil, in 1953. He
was a self-made millionaire by age forty.
Bush held no interest in the zeitgeist, which was a
martini at lunch, and then off to the country club. He needed

dynamics, motions and machinations around him. In 1966

Bush won a seat in Congress, representing his district in
Texas. At that time, the Vietnam War was in full swing and
fellow Republican President Nixon was soon to speak of the
silent majority whom, he maintained, was supportive of
the enduring and unpopular war.
Nixon, aware of Bushs potential, appointed Bush as
Ambassador to the United Nations. By 1973, Nixon was to
succumb to the Watergate Scandal, which engendered the
distinction of becoming the only president to resign office.
Gerald Ford took over as president. By this time, Bush was
chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Bushs name had been short-listed as a potential vice
president to Ford, but Meacham portrays then White House
Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld as having blocked Bushs
ascension, touching off a decades-long rivalry between Bush
and Rumsfeld. Bush was instead sent to China as special
envoy. A Rockefeller Republican, Nelson Rockefeller, became

Fords vice president for the remainder of Nixons unfinished

term.
In 1976, Ford brought Bush back from China and
appointed him CIA director, an appointment which, Meacham
portrays as yet another manipulation by Rumsfeld to keep
Bush off Fords re-election ticket. It wouldnt have mattered
Ford lost the 1976 election because the electorate was ready
for change after the colossal embarrassment of the
Watergate Scandal. Ford was just too closely associated with
Nixon. And America wanted to forget Nixon.
With Democrat Jimmy Carter in the White House, Bush
moved into academia first, at Rice University; and then, to
the Council on Foreign Relations. By the end of Carters
difficult first term in office, Bush was running for nomination
on the 1980 Republican ticket, and openly mocking Ronald
Reagans proposed fiscal policy as Voodoo Economics. The
irony of Bush being absorbed by the charismatic Ronald
Reagan as his two-term vice president is not lost on this
reader. It was that very same economic policy Bush later had

to endorse, and too, that very same economic policy that

contributed to Bushs defeat in 1992 against Clinton.
All very interesting.
But what new information does Meachams biography on
Bush the Elder bring us? The revelations come at the end of
this long book many years after his son, George W. Bush,
had left office. Bush Sr. had never once offered advice. If
Bush Jr. would have had asked, his father would have said,
Send for your advisors. They have better access to
information than I do.
Bush Jr. was expected to have been his own president, and
to have made his own way. Stylistically, the two Bush
presidents could not have been more different: the father
believed in pragmatism, prudence and diplomacy; the son
held a brash and confident preference for eliminating threats
before they arose. Action v. Reaction.
What we also didnt know until this book came out, was
Bush Sr.s nagging dislike for the aggressive rhetoric of his
sons administration. The Axis of Evil, for example,
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sounded too bombastic. Bush Sr. also held great disdain for
his sons Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld whom, Bush
Sr. saw as having complete disregard for diplomacy, being
unreflective, possessing no humility, and too, being an
arrogant fellow, self-assured [and] with swagger.
Given Bush Sr.s past with Rumsfeld, this did not come out
of left field. But what few expected was Bush Sr.s dislike for
then Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney had been the
reasonable and restrained Secretary of Defense during the
Gulf War, when Bush Sr. saw no value in removing Saddam
Hussein from power. Bush Sr. found Vice President Cheney
unrecognizable during his sons administration. As vice
president, Cheney held too much sway, with his own
national security team of advisors.
Bush Sr. has too much respect for the office of the
president of the United States to criticize his sons
presidency, and what father would criticize his son? Bush Sr.
does say, though, that Bush Jr. was culpable for allowing
Cheney to assert so much power without reigning him in.

Bush Jr. had had no idea, when he read his fathers

revelations, saying his father never indicated anything of the
sort. And too, that Bush Jr. had wanted Cheney to manage
national security issues. When Meacham showed his
manuscript of Bush Sr.s interview to Cheney, Cheney is said
to have quietly read it, and then chuckled.

Pete Willows is a contributing writer to The Egyptian

Gazette, and its weekly magazine version, The Egyptian
Mail. He can be reached at willows@aucegypt.edu