41

Michael Nelson and Barbara A. Perry (Editors)

Description

Although it lasted only a single term, the presidency of George H. W. Bush was an unusually eventful one, encompassing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf War, and contentious confirmation hearings over Clarence Thomas and John Tower. Bush has said that to understand the history of his presidency, while "the documentary record is vital," interviews with members of his administration "add the human side that those papers can never capture."This book draws on interviews with senior White House and Cabinet officials conducted under the auspices of the Bush Oral History Project (a cooperative effort of the University of Virginia's Miller Center and the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation) to provide a multidimensional portrait of the first President Bush and his administration. Typically, interviews explored officials' memories of their service with President Bush and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history.The contributors to 41-all seasoned observers of American politics, foreign policy, and government institutions-examine how George H. W. Bush organized and staffed his administration, operated on the international stage, followed his own brand of Republican conservatism, handled legislative affairs, and made judicial appointments. A scrupulously objective analysis of oral history, primary documents, and previous studies, 41 deepens the historical record of the forty-first president and offers fresh insights into the rise of the "new world order" and its challenges.Contributors: Henry J. Abraham, University of Virginia; Jeffrey A. Engel, Southern Methodist University; Hugh Heclo, George Mason University; Sidney M. Milkis, University of Virginia; Michael Nelson, Rhodes College and University of Virginia; Barbara A. Perry, University of Virginia; Russell L. Riley, University of Virginia; Barbara Sinclair, University of California, Los Angeles; Bartholomew Sparrow, University of Texas at Austin; Robert A. Strong, Washington and Lee University; Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• History of the Americas
• Central

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801470820
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

41

41 InsidethePresidency of George H. W. Bush

EditedbyMichaelNelson and Barbara A. Perry

CORNELLUNIVERSITYPRESSNODNAANDLOITHAC

PUBLISHEDINASSOCIATIONWITHTHEUNIVERSITYOFVIRGINIA’S MILLER CENTER

Frontispiece: President Bush in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, DC. Courtesy of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Chapter 3 is reprinted with permission fromThe Strategistby Bartholomew Sparrow.AvailablefromPublicAffairs,animprintofThePerseusBooksGroup. Copyright © 2014.

Copyright © 2014 by Cornell University

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2014 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2014 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data 41 (Nelson and Perry)  41 : inside the presidency of George H.W. Bush / edited by Michael Nelson and Barbara A. Perry.  pages cm  “Published in association with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.”  Papers originally presented at a conference held in fall 2011 at the University of Virginia, White Burkett Miller Center.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801452635 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9780801479274 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Bush, George, 1924– —Congresses. 2. United States—Politics and government—1989–1993—Congresses. I. Nelson, Michael, 1949– editor of compilation. II. Perry, Barbara A. (Barbara Ann), 1956– editor of compilation. III. Nelson, Michael, 1949– George Bush. Contains (work): IV. White Burkett MillerVI. Title: Fortyone.V. Title. Center, sponsoring body.  E881.A13 2014  973.928092—dc23 2013033237

CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentallyresponsiblesuppliersand materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Par t I

Foreword Philip Zelikow Preface Michael Nelson and Barbara A. Perry GeorgeH.W.Bush’sRoadtotheWhiteHouse

Introduction:HistoryandGeorgeBush

Russell L. Riley

AMERICAN CONSERVATISM 1.  George Bush: Texan, Conservative Michael Nelson 2.  George Bush and American Conservatism Hugh Heclo

Par t II WAR AND STATECRAFT 3.  Organizing Security: How the Bush Presidency Made Decisions on War and Peace Bartholomew Sparrow 4.  When George Bush Believed the Cold War Ended and Why That Mattered Jeffrey A. Engel 5.  Character and Consequence: The John Tower Confirmation Battle Robert A. Strong

Par t III DOMESTIC POLITICS AND POLICY 6.  The Offered Hand and the Veto Fist: George Bush, Congress, and Domestic Policy Making Barbara Sinclair 7.  From Oral History to Oral Argument: George Bush’s Supreme Court Appointments Barbara A. Perry and Henry J. Abraham Conclusion:NavigatingtheCrosswindsofModern Politics and Policy Sidney M. Milkis Appendix1:IntervieweesfortheGeorgeH.W.Bush Oral History Project

vii xiii xvii

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viCONTENTS

Appendix2:InterviewersfortheGeorgeH.W.Bush Oral History Project Notes ListofContributors Index

215 217 247 249

Foreword

PhilipZelikow

ThepopularimageofGeorgeH.W.Bush,whichhasrecentlybeenreinforcedby an HBO documentary produced by Jerry Weintraub and other Bush friends, is the portrait of an accomplished, goodnatured, selfdeprecating gentleman and sportsman. All this is true enough. Indeed, Bush seems highly qualified to be the president of any community’s Rotary Club. Thisdoesleaveus,however,withafewpuzzles. First,whywasthisamiablefellowbothsosuccessfulandsounsuccessfulasa politician? It is interesting that Bush’s abilities in winning people over at the per sonal level, which was abundantly in evidence in foreign capitals and on Capitol Hill, translated so poorly into abilities at the level of mass retail politics. Perhapshewasnotreallyallthatoutstandinglysuccessful,exceptinthequali ties that recommended him to Ronald Reagan in 1980 as an appropriate vice president. And then that pairing led to other things. The oral histories compiled by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the perceptive essays in this vol ume that use them provide insightful conjectures. They portray Bush as a politi cian who was really, in some sense, outside of his time, an anachronism within his party and perhaps even in the world of American politics. Second,althoughBushpracticallyhadtheword“prudent”tattooedtohis forehead—in purple letters, not scarlet—there is little evidence that he was an especially analytical person in any formal sense of the term. He did read and listen. But his temperament was restless, constantly looking for something to do. He was a deeply emotional person—instinctive, intuitive in his reactions to peo ple and situations. I believe one source of his characteristic inability to express

vii

viiiFOREWORD

himself very well in public settings is that a longingrained filter was in place habitually blocking the facile expression of these impulses. My hypothesis is of a person who forced himself, had seemingly always had to force himself, to pause and reflect. He would then make some big calls, yet do so in a way that seemed so diffident and unhistrionic that their importance might pass without notice. So,third,wehavethepublicimageofBushthecautious,Bushtheprudent, Bush the risk averse. Against that we have the reality of some of the most radical moves any president has overseen in modern times. Part of this is just the empow erment of skillful subordinates in a true administration team—Scowcroft, Baker, Zoellick, the Nick Brady of the important “Brady plan,” Cheney, Sununu, Dar man, and others. But some of the biggest calls were very much Bush’s own. Contrarytomuchofthehistoriography,theendoftheColdWarfeatured some breathtaking gambles. Bush and most (not all) of his advisors threw aside initial hesitations about how to make sense of the changes about two months into the new administration, toward the end of March 1989. I was a direct witness to this. Bush and his team (notably Baker and Scowcroft) called for a rollback of Soviet power—eventually to extend to a rollback to borders the Russian empire had not known since the eighteenth century. Throughout human history changes on this scale have happened only as the corollary of bloodily catastrophic war. BushunequivocallygambledonanalloutpushforGermanunificationand did so publicly—much noticed among world leaders—weeks before the Berlin Wall came down. He presided over the largest change in the U.S. force posture in Europe since the 1950s and the most ambitious nuclear and conventional arms control agreements ever signed before or since. If his agenda is compared to what foreign leaders privately wanted or expected or what public pundits such as Henry Kissinger and George Kennan were advocating in leading newspapers at the time, Bush’s agenda was indeed extreme. IntheimmediateaftermathofIraq’sAugust1990invasionofKuwait,whoin America envisioned or called for the dispatch of 500,000 American soldiers to the sands of Saudi Arabia who were prepared to reverse it? And then seek to do so with full UN support, seizing on the end of the Cold War as its embers were still glowing to revive for the first time since 1945 the longlatent dream of Franklin Roosevelt to make the UN Security Council a body of highminded “policemen” (FDR’s term)? Allthiswasafirewithpoliticalcontroversy(theresolutionauthorizingthe use of force passed the Senate by only five votes; his son’s 2002 Iraq vote would pass by fifty). That was the context in which, barely a week before the 1990 mid term elections, Bush decided to double the U.S. troop commitment, including reserve callups that could touch every American community. The war plan of the theater commander was junked, and Joint Staff stepped in to help craft a far

FOREWORD ix

bolder plan, backed by a blank check of presidential commitment. Bob Gates’s recollection of the October 30, 1990, meeting, preserved in his oral history inter view, still echoes astonishment even twenty years later. Bush knew what he was doing. A week earlier, Baker and Colin Powell had privately conferred about where all this was going. Both men were uneasy, with Powell clearly wondering whether Bush was really “all in” and then being assured that he was. I believe from that day—October 30—forward, Colin Powell was George H. W. Bush’s man, proud to count himself among a band of brothers. Howeveronecharacterizesallthis,“prudent”doesnotdothejob.Thepictures of the frenetic golfer or fisherman, the selfdeprecating, genial but rather hapless toastmaster, do not do the job. And future scholars will want to keep in mind that almost all of the American academic commentators who wrote about George H. W. Bush in the twentieth century can be presumed to have voted against him, based on what they thought they knew at the time. Nordosuchdepictionsdothejobforthe1990budgetagreement,whichturned out to be the first and most important of three budget deals struck between 1990 and 1996 that produced a balanced budget by the end of the decade for the first time since the Nixon administration. This book amply describes what this cost Bush. That this came as the country was quietly staggering from an enormous, dimly understood American financial crisis (the socalled savings and loan crisis that began toward the end of the Reagan administration) makes the issue more interesting still. That the budget deficit became the signature issue for the strange and ultimately quite significant thirdparty candidacy of that eccentric, vengeful snakeoil salesman Ross Perot, only redoubles the historical irony. Ifpuzzleslikethesepiqueyourcuriosity,makeyouwanttotakeanotherlook at this rather peculiar oneterm president, read on. And then read the oral his tories, which are available at http://millercenter.org/president/bush/oralhistory. Inweighingthevalueoftheseoralhistories,considerthatthereareonlytwo kinds of primary sources about the past. There are the material remnants of what happened—documents, coins, statues. Then there are the preserved recollections of the human observers. Some of these recollections take the form of formal memoirs. Fromthetimeitwasfoundedinthemid1970s,theUniversityofVirginia’s Miller Center placed the study of the American presidency close to the center of its work. From the point of view of basic research into primary evidence, the most obvious way to supplement the work of the National Archives and Records Administration was to organize good oral history projects to set down the recol lections of participants before they passed on. A modest effort of this kind was undertaken for the Ford presidency; a better one (helped by James Sterling Young’s involvement) was conducted for the Carter administration. Then Young went on