George H. W. Bush (American Presidents Series)

by Timothy Naftali, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Editor), Sean Wilentz (Editor)

Overview

The judicious statesman who won victories abroad but suffered defeat at home, whose wisdom and demeanor served America well at a critical time

George Bush was a throwback to a different era. A patrician figure not known for eloquence, Bush dismissed ideology as "the vision thing." Yet, as Timothy Naftali argues, no one of his generation was better prepared for the challenges facing the United States as the Cold War ended. Bush wisely encouraged the liberalization of the Soviet system and skillfully orchestrated the reunification of Germany. And following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he united the global community to defeat Saddam Hussein. At home, Bush reasserted fiscal discipline after the excesses of the Reagan years.

It was ultimately his political awkwardness that cost Bush a second term. His toughest decisions widened fractures in the Republican Party, and with his party divided, Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992. In a final irony, the conservatives who scorned him would return to power eight years later, under his son and namesake, with the result that the elder George Bush would see his reputation soar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805069662
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/10/2007
Series:	American Presidents Series
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Timothy Naftali is the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, having previously served as director of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia. He is the coauthor of Khrushchev’s Cold War and One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Kennedy, Castro, and the Cuban Missile Crisis 1958-1964, and the author of Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. He lives in Los Angeles.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000.

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of several books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Editor's Note     xv
Introduction     1
Poppy     5
The Understudy     34
Cleaning Up Reagan's Mess     65
Unexpected Greatness     84
Commander in Chief     101
The Collapse     130
Paterfamilias     150
Milestones     177
Selected Bibliography     181
Acknowledgments     187
Index     191

Editorial Reviews

Latest title in the American Presidents Series spotlights the elder Bush's uneven one-term presidency, riding Reagan's coattails and navigating the "new world order."Son of a Republican senator from Connecticut, educated at Phillips Academy and Yale, a naval aviator during World War II, George Herbert Walker Bush forged a path unique from his father's by moving to West Texas with wife Barbara to grow rich as an oil man. He lost Senate runs in 1964 and 1970, his mixture of social liberalism and economic conservatism doomed by compromises on key issues. Expedient and tactical, pragmatic and emotional, Bush won a congressional election in 1966 thanks to his friend James A. Baker III. Briefly considered as Nixon's running mate, he was instead offered a job as United Nations representative, then chairman of the Republican National Committee. After a stint as UN representative to China and head of the CIA under Gerald Ford, Bush ran for president against Ronald Reagan and was again sidelined as an understudy. Vice President Bush was Reagan's loyal soldier and crisis manager, a key participant in the controversial Iran-Contra scandal and coverup. His political adaptability was often taken as a sign of weakness. "Fighting the Wimp Factor" became his presidential campaign's rallying cry against Bob Dole and Michael Dukakis. Cleaning up Reagan's mess marked the beginning of his presidency, which was plagued by the budget deficit, the savings-and-loan debacle, the intransigence of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. However, the unraveling of the Soviet bloc allowed Bush moments of greatness. These did not protect him from becoming an object of public scornand being roundly defeated in 1992 by Democrat Bill Clinton. Naftali (Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism, 2005, etc.) offers a soft-pedaling, well-paced glimpse at the career highlights of a man whose presidency still remains murky and out-of-focus.

Kirkus Reviews