Destiny and Power
The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
by Jon Meacham
Random House, 864 pp., $35
This massive new biography of George H. W. Bush serves as both a portrait of the man and a sort of quasi-confessional for him. Bush is a decidedly reticent man about his own accomplishments, which Meacham ascribes to his traditional Yankee upbringing; but he allowed the author unfettered access to his diaries, submitted to countless hours of frank interviews, and encouraged his family and associates to open up to Meacham. What emerges is an often-moving life story of what the New York Times once called a “serious, able and likable man,” and a sweeping summary of his accomplishments as a dedicated and selfless public servant. What is less convincing is Meacham’s analysis and presentation of the political context in which Bush operated and which, ultimately, will largely define his place in history.
Jon Meacham is one of the most assiduous practitioners of popular history in the United States, along with a pantheon of others who appear on the back cover to praise this work: David McCullough, Michael Beschloss, Doris Kearns Goodwin. In a certain sense, they perform a service in writing compelling narratives about American (sometimes more global) history and fill a vacuum left by academic historians. Too often the latter delve into narrow and politically correct arenas of the past, of little interest to the general reader or student.
The newer breed of popular historians are more straightforward in their approach, and reach huge audiences which otherwise would be left to wonder what happened to the story of American democracy and leadership in the world, economic growth and innovation, and related themes. In contrast to France or Great Britain, where trained historians familiar with the vast array of learning on specific periods—Fernand Braudel, Martin Gilbert, Robert Skidelsky, Niall Ferguson—turn to popular history, few professional scholars in America can escape from their ideological blinders to reach a larger audience.
Sometimes, however, what is gained in clarity from the new historians is lost in rigor. Meacham has skillfully exploited the huge trove of records modern technology (and, let’s face it, the vanity of political actors) now affords historians. The personal records, diaries, oral histories, public records, and interviews used by Meacham offer an opportunity for understanding that historians of, say, Napoleon or George Washington can only dream about. Meacham uses 84 archives, interviews with 106 relevant actors, and 170 pages of notes.
Meacham’s overarching focus is on the family background that so influenced the character formation of George Bush, and how the resulting competitiveness, combined with modesty and good judgment, created the measured man who mastered both business and politics. The “destiny” of Meacham’s Bush is, indeed, his character as an exemplary product of the Eastern establishment culture, born in business success for many generations and refined through a form of noblesse oblige that was drilled into him from an early age. So much does Meacham insist on this as the driving force in Bush’s life that it becomes a sort of genealogical determinism. The competitive spirit and sense of duty and fair play, he argues, “never could end, except at the summit of American life: either great riches in business, or, in politics, with the Presidency.”
Such formation is, perhaps, a necessary condition for reaching the pinnacle, but hardly sufficient. The drive, intelligence, and judgment of Bush comprise the leitmotif for the narrative of his dazzling series of successes that are nicely captured by Meacham’s strong and unaffected prose. And these characteristics resulted in the crowning achievements of his political life: the deft management of the fall of the Soviet empire and the Kuwaiti crisis of 1990-91.
Meacham’s portrait of Bush is enriched by copious excerpts from his diaries and by personal revelations, especially in exploring his rich and caring family and social life. But character and drive cannot explain all the successes along the way, and Meacham’s account of the transitional points in Bush’s life—such as the move to Texas, and his success in national electoral politics after two defeats as a Senate candidate—are not especially persuasive.
Meacham, like most contemporary popular historians, tends to underestimate and misunderstand some of the larger forces in the political world in which Bush operated, whose currents help explain his rise to power. The best examples come from Meacham’s abbreviated account of the 1980 presidential election and the Reagan presidency. While we get a full account of the “inside” politics that led to Bush’s selection as Reagan’s running mate, the contours of the political battleground, and the policies of Ronald Reagan, are viewed from a decidedly unsympathetic and formulaic viewpoint, which follows the consensus, left-of-center perspective.
Not once does the phrase “misery index,” or some sustained statistical analysis of the dismal state of the economy in the late Carter years, appear in Meacham’s narrative. He dismisses supply-side economics largely as a failure because of the rise in federal deficits during the Reagan years, with no reference to the economic resurgence that was, at least partly, a result of Reagan’s policies.
Nor does Meacham explore the costly military build-up of those years (supported by a broad spectrum of political actors), prompted by Soviet adventurism and Iranian terrorism, or the difficulties of reaching consensus on spending with a divided Congress. These problems certainly contributed to the budget gridlock, which, Meacham concludes, could only be addressed by Bush’s breaking of his “read-my-lips” pledge on taxes. Meacham also fails to mention Reagan’s boldest attempt at arms control, at the Reykjavik summit. George Bush’s ascent to the presidency owed much to the success of the economic and foreign policies of the Reagan years, which of course he loyally supported.
Meacham’s project to establish the historical record is evident, as well, in his treatment of Newt Gingrich and the conservative political movement that emerged in the 1970s: “By 1979-80,” he writes, “the movement conservatives were driven by God, Mammon, and an absolutist view that American strategy toward the Soviet Union should be rollback, not détente.” He blames the rise of uncompromising, “ugly” partisanship in American politics squarely, and exclusively, on the right, especially on Newt Gingrich. Meacham illustrates the transition from the collegial Congress of the 1960s (in which Bush served) with the downfall of the venal and corrupt speaker Jim Wright. No mention is made of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s brutal personal attack on Judge Robert Bork when Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Meacham’s ultimate judgment of Bush’s record rightly emphasizes his deft foreign policy in guiding the world to a safe transition from the Cold War, and in standing up to Saddam Hussein. But his view of Bush as a counterweight to conservatism—”the forty-first President represented the twilight of a tradition of public service in America—a tradition embodied by FDR, by Eisenhower, and by George H. W. Bush”—is inconsistent with what Bush himself always expressed. This probably explains Meacham’s lengthy discussion of Bush’s life after his 1992 reelection defeat, where the focus is on well-publicized assertions about the influence of Bush’s longtime rival Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, on the presidency of George W. Bush.
The message is obvious: a partisan narrative about the Republican party’s gallop toward supply-side economics and hardline foreign policies since the middle way of George H. W. Bush. But of course, Bush himself is more “conservative,” as he records in his diaries, than Jon Meacham would like to believe—and for the Bush story to be fully told, conservatives will have to do the same hard work Meacham has done in mining the rich trove of records now available and framing the narrative for future generations.
Thomas J. Duesterberg was assistant secretary of commerce for international economic policy in the George H.W. Bush administration.
