Tuesday, July 14, 2020

ecce homines, pars XIV

Concluding my three-volumes-at-a-time survey of the American Presidents series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. This installment covers the presidencies of 1989-2009.

This series was conceived during the residency of W., and was planned to conclude with him; if an Obama volume has subsequently been commissioned, it hasn't been announced. These presidents are all so recent that there's no longer any consideration of remembering them; they're just straightforward journalistic accounts. (Naftali has an academic background, but the other two authors are journalists.) All three revert to the Truman/Ike template of cramming the early life into a brief space to allow more room for the presidency; each concludes chapter 2 with the subject's first election.

Timothy Naftali on George H.W. Bush presents a chameleon, a politician eager to reshape himself in the image of whoever was leading the Republican Party at the moment, whether it be Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, or Reagan. As a result, when he finally got to be president himself he wasn't quite sure what his own image was to be. But when he did decide to take firm charge he was decisive, brushing aside any advice he disagreed with. And on such issues as reuniting Germany and Gulf War I his decisions were, Naftali says, well-mooted and sagacious. (I don't really disagree.) But especially in his last year as president he often fumbled or waffled on issues, and worse yet he apologized for earlier decisive actions that were disliked in right-wing circles, which made him look weaker even as he tried to project strength. Nevertheless, Naftali counts Bush as a successful president, especially compared with the Bush to come.

Michael Tomasky on Bill Clinton is one of the entries that openly acknowledges major flaws in its subject, but sees his antagonists as the real source of his difficulties. Tomasky is pretty scorching on Ken Starr, Newt Gingrich, and the media for untruths and distortions. Still, he can't resist the gravitational attraction of the biggie, and devotes the better part of three chapters to the Lewinsky affair and the impeachment. Stretches of description of the investigations and revelations here are interspersed with ones of Clinton simultaneously being the president, especially with foreign affairs. The surreal effect of this juxtaposition is evidently intentional. Elsewhere, we see Clinton studying issues intently, but so intent on a consensus solution as to accept bad proposals. And then he'd do something stupid again, spanning from Nannygate to the Marc Rich pardon. Talented, but exasperating.

James Mann on George W. Bush depicts a man well-seasoned in the political process by the time he becomes president, but weak on policy. He figures he'll just pick wise advisors and do what they say. But he's unprepared for their disagreements and for advice which on deeper consideration would be revealed as unwise, which is what got us into the biggest policy disaster in recent US history, the Iraq war. Mann is carefully analytical on the shifting rationales for the war and the unexpressed undercurrents that lay behind them; he lays out explanations for much that puzzled me (but apparently nobody else) at the time. Gradually, aided by changes to more congenial advisors, Bush learned to make his own decisions and in his later years improved markedly in his handling of foreign affairs. But early-Bush style waffling over whether to bail out failing companies made the 2008 financial crash worse. Bush had his successes, but no, he wasn't a good president.

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