#44: Barack Obama Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Barack Obama
1. Not only did Barack’s father have 4 wives but he was married to some of them At The Same Time! Lordy! “He failed to tell her that he had a wife in Kenya with a son and another child on the way. (Nor did he tell his friends.) He lied to Ann, telling her he was divorced. In the years that followed, he carried on overlapping relationships and marriages. If Obama felt any guilt about his cavalier attitude toward his wives and children, he concealed it” (p. 53). To be fair, this bigotry was not unusual in Kenya. “Kezia [his first wife] told a Kenyan reporter that she did not object to her husband taking a second wife, that it was not out of keeping with Luo customs, and that ‘he used to send me gifts, money, and clothes through the post office. Many people envied me’” (p. 53-54).
2. Ann’s (Barack’s mother) real first name was actually Stanley. “She was unapologetic about her odd name, a relic of her father’s initial disappointment at failing to sire a son. During her childhood and adolescence, as the family moved from state to state, she introduced herself to new friends, saying, ‘Hi, I’m Stanley. My dad wanted a boy.’ It would take a while before friends started calling her Ann” (p. 45).
3. Barack was the first African-American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review. “The news of Obama’s historic election—he was the first African-American president of the Law Review—was picked up the news media all over the world” (p. 207).
4. Obama won his very first primary due to illegal petition practices, such as roundtabling, from his Democratic opponents. “Palmer’s [also running for the state senate] volunteers had had only a few days to collect signatures, increasing the likelihood that they had accumulated ‘bad names’: signatures that were either fakes, had addresses outside the district, or were not from registered voters. Some were printed rather than written in cursive script, as required. In campaigns were signatures were a problem, it was common Chicago practice to ‘roundtable the sheets’—meaning that volunteers would get together in a closed room, sit around a table with a telephone directory, scour the book for potential names and addresses, and forge the signatures they needed. On the day after Christmas, the Obama campaign filed challenges against all his opponents: Palmer, Askia, Ewell, and Ulmer D. Lynch Jr, a retired laborer and precinct captain who had been trying, without success, to win a spot on the City Council for decades. Ron Davis went by train to Springfield, where all petitions had to be filed. He brought back copies of Palmer’s petition lists and everyone could see that they were especially slipshod, containing names like Superman, Batman, Squirt, Katmandu, Pookie, and Slim” (p. 291).
5. Obama almost got in a fistfight on the Illinois Senate floor. One day, a fellow senator, Rickey Hendon, called out Obama about his voting record. “After Obama attempted, in vain, to have his voted changed, he angrily walked toward Hendon’s seat on Leaders Row. As Hendon recalls it, Obama ‘stuck his jagged, strained face into my space’ and told him, ‘You embarrassed me on the Senate floor and if you ever do it again I will kick your ass!’ ‘What?’ ‘You heard me,’ Obama said, ‘and if you come back here by the telephones, where the press can’t see it, I will kick your ass right now!’ The two men walked off the floor of the Senate to a small antechamber in the back…Terry Link and Denny Jacobs say that Hendon hyped the incident—that Obama never cursed at Hendon and that no blows were exchanged—but no one denies it was an emotional schoolyard confrontation that could have gotten out of hand” (p. 340.)
6. The 2008 presidential Democratic primaries were fraught with firsts. “The Obama-Clinton race was historic for reasons of both race and gender, but, while Obama was able to adopt the language, cadences, imagery, and memories of the civil-rights movement and graft it onto his campaign, giving it the sense of something larger, a movement, Clinton never did the same with the struggle for women’s rights” (p. 493).
7. This is probably overkill but, nevertheless, I must mention it: Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States.
8. Obama is the first president to place, not only three women on the Supreme Court, also a Hispanic-American. “Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court” (p. 582).
9. I think this is pretty neat: Obama presided over the U.N. Security Council on September 24, 2009.

Overall, I really enjoyed this work on Barack Obama. Not that I’ve read any others, mind you, but I’ll say this: Remnick knows detail. Details about Obama, that is. And trust me, these details are quite fascinating. For instance, I really enjoyed the convoluted saga of Obama’s ancestral history, not only from the Kenyan perspective, but also through the focus on Kansas. Also, Remnick begins the book with a hefty prologue, detailing civil rights history, which I also found completely absorbing. Don’t laugh! I’m currently reading The Help so it all started to make sense.

Probably my favorite part of the book was the peek into Chicago politics. Politics in Chicago, while seemingly anachronistic, is also very people-oriented and I find that enchanting. It’s unlike anywhere else in our country and partly for that reason, this oddity blew my mind.

On the whole, I thought that Remnick was very conscientious about showing us the good and bad sides of Obama. If I had to say what I disliked about the book (other than the entire last chapter focusing on race), I would have to say that it’s also the extreme amount of detail in this book. Normally when I read 600 page biographies, they usually encompass the whole life of the president, including all the presidential stuff. Considering the fact that Obama is a sitting president, this obviously had to end early but still…600 pages!?! Sheesh.

I also have to admit that, after reading his bio, I really grew to like Obama, as a person. After reading about his family’s incredible history and then about growing up in the racially-charged atmosphere of the 60s and 70s, I experienced a strange empathy for our president. Surely, no other history of a president was quite like this one. Obama felt very real and while I don’t agree with all of his political ideas, I certainly feel connected to him on the human level.

#44: Barack Obama (1961- )

Sidenote: So the official blog is below but I must first offer you my heartfelt apologies for being so slack in getting this thing out. I really don’t know why it’s taken me so long to simply sit down and write but here I am, two months after finishing the damn book, without anything to show for it. And I know that you, loyal readers, are like “What the hell, V!?!” I’ve tried to analyze my reluctance to work on the Obama bio and it appears that I’m actually quite sad that this is the end of my Presidential Reading Project. I really think that I'm going to miss it...sniff. I know that you are all shocked at my closet nerdiness but, as I was recently accused by my cousin, I’m “addicted!” Don’t judge. In fact, I’m thinking of extended my PRP to include British PMs. Or what about VPs??? Or, or... Ha! Anyways, I’m sorry for the long, much-anticipated wait for Barack Obama. Please read on.

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Oh. My. Goodness. I can’t believe that this is the final book (and president!) Little did I foresee two years ago that this would turn into such an interesting—and, yes, sometimes tedious—project and yet, here I am, wrapping it up. In fact, I’m a little stunned that I actually followed through with it all (I’m more of a starter than a finisher, if you know what I mean.) If you recall, two years and a half years ago I began my Presidential Reading Project as a means of making it through my Fiction Fast and of learning something in the process. Although the Fiction Fast has long since gone by the wayside, I really have enjoyed this time with my United States Presidents and all that I’ve learned about them and about American History in general. Whew--what a journey!

Now here we are with the 44th President of the United States and since he’s currently a sitting president, it was not exactly easy to find a comprehensive biography, which included all his most recent presidential moments. Making due, I read The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2010) and then consulted a couple web sites (www.barackobama.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama) to fill out the final years. What’s slightly ironic about the whole thing is that though Obama is our current president, I know very little about him personally. I look forward with relish to not only finishing my PRP, but also to discovering the person behind the president.

Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama Senior and Ann Dunham. What was interesting (and frowned upon at the time) about this particular union was that it was biracial. Barack Sr. was from Nairobi but currently studying at the University of Hawaii when he met and married Ann. Barack Sr. did not stick around long, however, leaving his

family in 1962 to attend Harvard Law School and from thence, he returned to Africa. Barack and Ann were divorced in 1964. Barack Sr. would eventually have 4 wives, would end up a heavy drinker/smoker, and would only see his son, Barack Jr., on one more occasion. “The reality was grimmer. Obama, Sr., not only married four times and had many affairs; he didn’t seem to care with any consistency about any of his wives or children” (p. 62).

“Barack Obama’s family, broadly defined, is vast. It’s multi-confessional, multiracial, and multicontinental. He has a Kenyan step-grandmother in a village near Lake Victoria who speaks only Luo and Swahili; a biracial half brother who speaks fluent Mandarian and trades in southern China; a cousin-by-marriage who is an African-American rabbi in Chicago determined to forge closer relations among Jews, Muslims, and Christians on the South Side. As Obama has put it, he has some relatives who look like Bernie Mac and some who look like Margaret Thatcher. He has relatives who have been educated in the finest universities in the world, others who live in remote Kenyan towns, another who has lived in a Nairobi slum, yet another, an African half sister, who would up in a Boston housing-project with immigration problems. The Obama family tree is as vast and intricate as one of those ancient banyan trees near the beach at Waikiki. As a politician, Obama would make use of that family, asking voters to imagine it—and him—as a metaphor for American diversity” (p. 69).

Meanwhile Ann was completely responsible for raising Barack Jr or “Barry”, as he was known as back then. She tried going to school at the University of Washington but soon moved back to Hawaii to live with her parents and attend the college there. In 1965, she married another fellow University of Hawaii student, Lolo Soetro and because he was Indonesian, they moved to Jakarta two years later. “Just as Ann was Barry’s teacher in high-minded matters—liberal, humanist values; the need to remember that they, and not the Indonesians, were the ‘foreigners’; the beauty of Mahalia Jackson’s singing and Martin Luther King’s preaching—Lolo was his instructor in the rude and practical skills of middle-class Indonesian life. Lolo taught him how farm animals were killed for eating; how to box and defend himself, just in case; how to treat servants; how to ignore street beggars and keep enough for yourself; how the weak perish and the strong survive” (p. 59).

Due to the Dunham family influence, Barry was accepted at the most elite Hawaiian academy, Punahou, for the fifth grade. “Barry Obama was never the top student in his class or the hardest worker—a pattern that persisted from the fifth grade to the end of high school” (p. 75-6). However, Barry was pretty much a favorite on campus during these years. “Barry was known on campus as a smart, engaging, friendly kid, an obsessive basketball player, tight with the jocks, friendly with the artier types, able to negotiate just about any clique. Unlike some adolescents, he bore his confusions privately, without self-dramatizing. To most kids, he was cheerful—and game. He wrote poems for Ka Wai Ola, the campus literary magazine. He sang in the chorus” (p. 77).

In 1971, Barack Sr finally visited Hawaii but his sporadic appearance severely disappointed his son. “By now, he [Barry] was aware that he could expect nothing from his father. He was there to check in, to salve his conscience, perhaps, but soon he was gone. He never saw his son again” (p. 74). Barack Sr died eleven years later. “On the night of November 24, 1982, during Obama’s first semester of his senior year at Columbia, his father got behind the wheel of his car after a night of drinking at an old colonial bar in Nairobi, ran off the road, and crashed into the stump of a gum tree. He died instantly” (p. 115).

In 1979, Barry was accepted to Occidential College near Los Angeles. He only stayed a few years, just enough to transfer to Columbia University in New York. Obama stated that, “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious” (p. 113) which is exactly what he did. He studied hard, got decent grades and did not go out much. “At Columbia, Obama was a serious, if unspectacular, student. He majored in political science with a concentration in international relations and the Soviet Union” (p. 116).

After graduation, Barack (he went by Barack now) was a little at a loss of what to do. He wanted to engage in a selfless occupation but he didn’t really know where to start so he took a job at Business International Corporation in NYC. “Frustrated and broke, he interviewed for a job, in late summer of 1983, with Business International Corporation, a publishing and consulting group that collected data on international business and finance and issued various newsletters and reports for its corporate clients and organized government roundtables on trade” (p. 118). He only stayed at this job one year before he became employed at NY Public Interest Research Group, which “promotes consumer, environmental, and government reform” (p.121). But even this was not what he was looking for in a career. That’s when he stumbled upon an available community organizer position. He moved to Chicago in June, 1985.

“Most of Obama’s days were pure frustration. It was the norm to work for years on a project—a battle against the expansion of dangerous toxic-waste dumps, for example—and head toward a seeming victory, only to have it all be forgotten on some bureaucrat’s desk downtown. But Obama was getting an education: political, racial, sentimental. He met all kinds of people he had never encountered in Hawaii or in college: young black nationalists, full of pride, but also too willing to listen to conspiracy theories about Koreans funding the Klan and Jewish doctors injected black babies with AIDS. He met teachers full of idealism and compassion, but also exhausted by the chaos of their classrooms. He met government officials, preachers, single mothers and their children, school principals, small-business people, all of them telling Obama their fears and frustrations. He had learned a lot from books, but there was something far more immediate, visceral, and lasting about the education he was getting now” (p. 163).

This job, to be honest, was not quite what he expected either and he knew that he needed to continue to move forward with his life. With this goal in mind, he applied to and was accepted at his father’s alma mater, Harvard Law School. In 1988, Barack moved to Massachusetts and began to settle into the world of academia once more. He was elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review (editing Vol. 104) and during the summers, worked on internships at law offices in various cities. In the summer of 1989, as he was interning at the law firm of Sidley-Austin in Chicago, he met a fellow co-worker, named Michelle Robinson. They began to date (soon they were engaged) and it was just another reason why he would return to Chicago after he graduated from Harvard.

In 1991, he took a job at Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland, a firm which specialized in civil rights law. “The firm, with around a dozen lawyers, had its offices in a brick town house on West Erie Street, north of the Loop; the concentration was on voting rights, tenant rights, employment rights, anti-trust, whistleblower cases—a classic liberal ‘good guy’ firm” (p. 219). Obama also worked part-time at the University of Chicago’s law school teaching basic law classes. On top of all that, he headed Project Vote, which was a huge success, and worked on writing a book, eventually known as Dreams of My Father. “Obama’s memoir is a mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention, and artful shaping” (p. 231).

On October 3, 1992 Barack and Michelle were married and Barack’s social world considerably expanded.

“They were intelligent, attractive, eager and ambitious, and they entered many worlds at once: the liberal, integrated world of Hyde Park; the intellectual world of the University of Chicago; the boards of charitable foundations; the growing post-civil-rights world of African-Americans who went to prestigious universities and were making their fortunes and ready to exert political influence” (p. 269). He remained an associate at Davis Miner from 1992-95 and then from 97-2004 he became counsel. He also continued to teach at the University of Chicago: “At Chicago, the constitutional-law curriculum is divided into separate courses on structural questions and individual rights. Obama taught the latter, focusing on such issues as equal protection, voting rights, and privacy, rather than on such questions as the separation of powers” (p. 262-63).

In 1995, his mother passed away from cancer and it was also around this time that Barack decided to get more involved with politics. He ran for the state senate and won in 1996. Soon he was playing an increasingly important role in the state senate, sponsoring bills and reforming laws. “’We attained the majority in the seventh year and I passed twenty-six bills in a row,’ Obama told me [Remnick]. ‘In one year, we reformed the death penalty in Illinois, expanded health care for kids, set up a state earned-income tax credit’” (p. 350).

2004 was a key year for Obama. Not only did he run, and win, a seat in the US Senate but he was asked to give the keynote address at the Democratic Convention. Obama did such a good job with this speech that it single-handedly propelled him into national recognition. “The cable anchors all praised Obama and the networks scurried to get video for their late broadcasts and morning shows. Almost instantly, Obama’s team was getting invitations to appear on network television…For the rest of the week in Boston, as Obama went from the Convention floor to various interview appointments, people circled around him asking for autographs, urging him to run for President” (p. 401). He then signed a 3-book deal with Crown Publishing.

Barack was an instant celebrity as he arrived in Washington DC to take up his new Senate position. Though a rookie senator, Obama was placed on loads of awesome committees: Committee for the Environment, Public Works, Veterans Affairs, Foreign Relations. He butted heads with John McCain over lobbyist reform and he even got to travel: “In August 2005, as a member of a congressional delegation that also included Lugar, Obama went to Russian, Ukraine and Azerbaijan to meet with officials and inspect various weapons-storage facilities” (p. 428). He also visited New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and he went back to Africa. “Obama could justify the trip—to Kenya, Djibouti, Chad and South Africa—as an important fact-finding mission for a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and of the subcommittee on Africa…Obama knew that the two-week journey would provoke an emotional reaction in Kenya and in the American press, not least among African-Americans who had not yet learned much about Obama. They did not realize the extent of the reaction: the huge crowds, people watching from balconies, children perched in the branches of trees” (p. 446).

His second book, The Audacity of Hope, appeared in 2006 and was pretty-much the soap box for his yet-unannounced presidential campaign. But primary season was just around the corner and there was no doubt that it was a good time to be a Democrat. “Events like the insurgency in Iraq and the revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib prison, the faltering economy, and the mismanagement of the rescue and reconstruction efforts on the Gulf Coast would make life very difficult for any Republican in 2008; what was more, although Hilary Clinton would enter a primary season bolstered by a well-financed, experienced campaign machine, she would be weighed down by the voters’ overall weariness with familiar politicians. Clinton was far from a sure thing” (p. 443).

“Still, for an African-American, no matter how skilled, no matter how intelligent and popular, a run for the Presidency was a weighty thing to consider” (p. 452). On February 10, 2007, Barack announced his candidacy and immediately moved into the thick of the primary season, defeating Edwards and then Clinton. He was proclaimed the Democratic nominee, moving on to face McCain in the general election of 2008 and won that too! Obama hit the presidency with an avalanche of support and goodwill, sweeping along all in its path. That is…until… “It was hard to imagine that any President would have remained as popular for long in a time of terrible unemployment, record deficits, and political rancor” (p. 581-82).

Although, domestically, the United States seemed to be in a shambles, Obama began his term well by winning the Nobel Peace Prize. “’It was not helpful to us politically,’ Obama told me [Remnick] in an interview at the Oval Office in mid-January, 2010. ‘Although Axelrod and I joke about it, the one thing we didn’t anticipate this year was having to apologize for having won the Nobel Peace Prize” (p. 583). [I really couldn’t remember hearing a good reason for Obama having won this prestigious prize so I looked it up on www.nobelprize.org. Here’s what they say about it: The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 was awarded to Barack H. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".]

He then proceeded to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” while trying to stimulate the economy and lessen unemployment through a $787 billion stimulus package. He bailed out the automobile industry and passed the Budget Control Act of 2011 to aid in limiting the national debt. Obamacare, otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was passed in 2009 which I think was an effort to give more Americans a chance at affordable healthcare but, in some people’s minds, was too close to socialization. Most recently he had to deal with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the resulting legislation. On the foreign front, Osama bin Laden was finally found and killed by Navy Seals on May 2, 2011. Obama also committed US troops to aid in the Libya revolt against Gaddafi and he ended the War in Iraq on December 15, 2011 (although he increased troops to Afghanistan).

He has announced his decision to seek a second term as president of the United States.

#43 George W. Bush Part 2

<-------(This has got to be the sauciest picture of a president and his staff that I have ever seen!)
Really Cool Stuff about George W. Bush
1. George W. was the first governor of Texas to be elected twice in a row! “He unexpectedly won a political contest against a popular incumbent and became the first Texas governor to be elected to two consecutive terms” (p. xiv).
2. George W., like his father, attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. “It is the oldest incorporated boarding school in the nation with an endowment larger than many colleges. It was founded in 1778, a place where George Washington sought to enroll his nephews” (p. 24).
3. Many do not know this but George was actually engaged before he met Laura. “The betrothal of George W. Bush to Cathy Lee Wolfman was announced in the Houston Chronicle’s society page. They had planned to marry before their senior year in college, but they postponed the wedding. Time apart led their relationship to cool, and they called off their plans, parting as friends” (p. 29).
4. Being a history major myself, I am pleased to tell you that George W. is as well! “Following his completion of a degree in history at Yale, George W. Bush faced the same issue as any other young man ready to start his life: deciding what to do with it” (p. 33). Although I, alas, did not attend Yale, I admit that I also was faced with such a dilemma after graduation.
5. I think it’s cute when the progeny of our presidents date each other. “George’s friends all knew who his father was and were rightfully impressed when a special government plane landed at their base to shuttle their comrade to Washington DC. George was answering a request to serve as a one-time dinner date for President Nixon’s daughter, Tricia” (p. 36).
6. I’m not sure what this proves about George W. but it’s an interesting statistic. “As governor, Bush oversaw more executions than any governor in modern history. In all, 153 executions were scheduled, and Bush commuted only one” (p. 62).
7. Dick Cheney, Bush’s veep, was a remarkable man in his own right. “Cheney would become one of Bush’s most trusted advisers and the most powerful vice president in U.S. history” (p. 70).
8. Bush’s contested victory in the 2000 election generated a good deal of anger and resentment. “The 36-day postelection battle had left the country weary and many Democrats angry. The Secret Service was so concerned about the safety of the incoming president that, for the first time in US history, the presidential inauguration was declared a ‘National Special Security Event,’ requiring anyone wishing to attend the inauguration to have permission from the government. The event spawned the biggest inaugural protest in Washington, D.C. since the Vietnam War, despite the wet and icy conditions” (p. 79).
9. The war in Iraq was the first preemptive war in American history. “The two speeches together provided Bush’s justification for preemptive war, something the United States have never undertaken” (p. 109).
10. Hurricane Katrina, in general, broke a lot of records. “Unfortunately, Brown took the job just before the most destructive natural disaster in American history” (p. 139). “All told, the Coast Guard rescued and evacuated more than 33,000 people from New Orleans, FEMA Urban Search and Rescue teams saved another 6,500 and the Department of Transportation assembled 1,100 buses to evacuate New Orleans residents to several states and the District of Columbia. The Department of Defense mounted the largest civilian airlift on American soil in US history” (p. 141).
11. The recession that began during Bush’s presidency was the worst in decades. “Just over one year before Bush finished his second term in office in December 2007, the worst recession in 70 years began” (p. 151).
12. George W. almost left office without vetoing a single piece of legislation. “In July 2006, he finally decided to veto his first bill—taking longer than any president since John Quincy Adams to do so” (p. 157).
13. Summary: “Whatever his legacy, Bush will be considered a consequential president. He was at the helm when the United States suffered its worst attack in history. He used controversial extensions of executive authority in attempting to thwart additional attacks, potentially creating a precedent for those who follow him. He initiated two major wars, one of which is now the longest US war in history. He was also at the helm when the worst recession in 70 years hit the nation” (p. 179).


For a juvenile-type book, George W. Bush: A Biography was remarkably informative and well-written. Kudos, Mr. Roundtree. The author didn’t beat around the bush (haha!) either when it came to discussing some of George W.’s more entertaining episodes and his decision-making processes. I really enjoyed this straightforward approach to 43’s presidency; it was a nice, comprehensive account of pretty much everything George W. did up to the present (including a truly interesting and amazingly detailed portrait about the Bush family tree. Even though I was familiar with this story thanks to George H.W., I was still fascinated at the information provided). In fact, after reading Dead Certain, it just confirmed my good opinion of Clark Roundtree and all that he managed to get across in under 200 pages.

So what do I think about George W.? Honestly, I really don’t think he was the worst president of all time but it’s true—he did make some truly heinous decisions as president. The reason that he did so, I feel, can be laid at the door of his personal loyalty to his friends and staff. It appears that loyalty was, in Bush’s world, the highest accolade you could say of someone and once he had admitted you to his inner circle, you were included and defended by him For-EV-ER (picture the kid from The Sandlot saying it). I’m thinking of a good many people who showed loyalty to the president but who were really not worth his loyalty in return, i.e. Michael Brown of FEMA, George Tenet of the CIA, Donald Rumsfeld of the DOD, Paul Bremer of the CPA, etc. But the problem was not the people surrounding Bush but his blind loyalty to them in return. When I read his bios, I got the impression that once Bush liked someone, he simply let them go to the task at hand without much direction or accountability. He was obviously not a micromanager but I really felt like he could have asked more pointed questions to these people he put in charge of important shit. Roundtree comments on this flaw. “But more troubling than blind loyalty was Bush’s failure to ask tough questions and demand unvarnished answers from those who served him” (p. 176-77). In other words, Bush was more of a LBJ rather than a JFK, if you know what I mean. Ha!

In the end, though, I felt like everything Bush was as a person and everything he did throughout his lifetime was a product of his family background. I don’t want to go all psychological on you but it’s hard not to see how his place in his family led to all the good, and bad, things in his life. It’s obvious (to me and to the biographers that I read) that, perhaps without meaning

to, George Sr. and Barbara hurt their eldest son by preferring Jeb over him. Jeb was the smart one, the one who did everything right and since he wasn’t the oldest, he was allowed to go his own way. George W., on the other hand, was the eldest and thus had to follow in his father’s footsteps. What hurt was that George Sr. was so adept at everything. It’s no surprise then that George W. did the exact opposite in a sort of rebellion—he didn’t try too hard at academic stuff, he didn’t do as well at sports, and he couldn’t seem to find his own path in life. In my earlier blog on George W, I asked whether it was a coincidence or not that George W. decided to run for governor at the exact moment that Jeb did. Frankly, I don’t think it was. It was a time for George W. to put his father and mother’s feelings to the test and what it proved was very hurtful. “Following the telephone call, George told his aunt Nancy: ‘It sounds like Dad’s only heard that Jeb lost, not that I’ve won.’ Poppy [George H.W.] told the news media: ‘The joy is in Texas, but our hearts are in Florida’” (p. 56).

Personally, I feel like it was due to this treatment by his parents that George W. worked so hard to be elected president in the first place. If he had been unconditionally loved, like his brother, maybe he would have been secure in just being governor and nothing more. What do you think? Did George W’s insecurity lead to his road to the White House? Did he need to be president to prove to his father he was better, in the long run, than Jeb? I love family drama (just not my own, of course).

#43 George W. Bush (1946- )

Almost done, folks. That’s right—I’m almost done with my very loooonng Presidential Reading Project. I really can’t believe that it’s been exactly two years since I decided to do this and the fact that I’ve kept with it…well…I’m floored. I’ve never shown such resolve before. Maybe you all are witnessing a new me. Ha!

Anyways, it was time for George W. Bush, a president that I was very, relatively speaking, familiar with and whom I had looked forward to reading about. I also want you to note that I watched my third (third!!) Oliver Stone-directed presidential movie. I watched JFK when I read about JFK; I watched Nixon when I read about Nixon and recently I watched W. when I read about George W. I’ll just say this about the movie, W.: 1.) It does a pretty good job with characterization and is fairly accurate about quotes and dates and such and, 2.) I can really tell that Oliver Stone does not care for George W. Just saying.

Bookwise, things just weren’t as easy as finding a popular movie. There aren’t any comprehensive biographies on George W. yet so I decided to read two books. I didn’t want to, mind you, but the circumstances demanded it. First of all, I checked out a juvenile biography because it was extremely current and I wanted at least one book to include everything. Secondly, I turned to a specialty book on Bush’s presidential years to make sure I got, in detail, a handle on all that occurred then. Thus I read, in order, George W. Bush: A Biography by Clarke Roundtree (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011) and Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W Bush by Robert Draper (New York: Free Press, 2007). For the most part, all the quotes that I use are from Roundtree while I mainly used Draper for background info.

George Walker Bush was the first born son of George H.W. and Barbara Bush. He was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, CT but at the age of four he was living in Midland, TX. In 1953, his sister, Robin, died of leukemia and her death would seriously affect her older brother. “This tragedy would haunt him for years. He began having nightmares” (p. 18). George was a rambunctious child and often acted out in school. He loved all sports, especially baseball and was middle-of-the-road in academics.

In 1959, the family moved to Houston, uprooting George from his friends in Midland. The move had been deemed necessary to aid Poppy’s (George H.W.) political rise and George W. jumped right into the fray for his dad. He helped campaign for his father and was devastated when Poppy lost that election. “George W. Bush cried the night his father lost. He had worked hard on his father’s campaign, taping a 30-second spot in Spanish to reach Hispanic voters, riding on the campaign bus, delivering signs, compiling briefing books, and running errands” (p. 23).

At this time, Bush was shipped off to his father’s old boarding school in Massachusetts—Phillips Academy. Even though he disliked being away from Texas, he threw himself into the experience by joining the Spanish club, engaged in JV sports, and became the head cheerleader. During the summers, he held jobs in a law firm and on a ranch. He did not do well academically in this environment. However, much to everyone’s surprise (even though he was a legacy), Bush was accepted to Yale University and began attending there in 1964 where he encountered more challenges in the classroom. “George’s academic work at Yale fell far short of his father’s Phi Beta Kappa achievement. He finished his freshmen year in the bottom 20 percent of his class and graduated with a C average” (p. 27). However, Bush was a popular man around campus, earning a coveted spot in Skull and Bones and becoming president of Delta Kappa Epsilon. He was also known for his pranks and was arrested once for trying to tear down the uprights at Princeton.

He graduated in 1968 and immediately joined the Air National Guard to ensure that he would be kept away from Vietnam. He was signed to a six year program and then made a first lieutenant. Other than that, though, Bush was rather at a loose end, dating around and drinking a lot. He helped his father campaign again in 1970 for a Senate seat which Poppy would also lose. “He [George W.] traveled around the state, sometimes speaking on behalf of his father” (p. 37). His father went to great effort to find his oldest son some gainful employment so George W. ended up working as a fertilizer salesman, for Project PULL (Professional United Leadership League, an inner-city program) and on an oil rig.

“George’s weak performance in school, his National Guard commitment, his indirection, and his failure to find the right woman was making his younger brother a much better prospect to carry on the family tradition of business success followed by political service” (p. 39). As you might expect, there was some sibling rivalry in the Bush family (after all, the Bushes were hypercompetitive people.) Inevitably Jeb, the married, steady one, just looked like the better brother and this rankled George W. In retaliation, George W. applied and was accepted to Harvard Business School where he eventually received a Masters in Business Administration by 1975.

That same year he returned to Texas and became a landsman for various oilmen, traveling throughout the state searching for potential oil. His personal life was still very unsteady during this time and in fact, he was arrested for drunk driving in 1976 with this 17-year-old sister, Dorothy, in the car. “But George also began participating in community and civic life in Midland, attending First Presbyterian Church regularly, teaching Sunday school, volunteering to run the United Way campaign, playing touch football, and coming out for the Midland Angels AA baseball games” (p. 41). In 1977, Bush began to see a political future for himself and so ran for Congress. He lost but that same year he met Laura Welch at a party (she was a librarian) and was smitten. They were married on November 5, 1977 and three years later, they were blessed with a set of twin girls they named after both grandmothers: Jenna and Barbara.

Bush formed a company called Bush Exploration, which eventually became Arbusto Energy. After several years (and before the company became insolvent), he sold it to become a consultant, making a good bit of money in the process (also in the grand Bush tradition). In this way, George was in a perfect position to move to Washington DC in 1987 to lead his father’s campaign for the presidency. Because of his increased responsibilities, George W. realized that it was time to stop drinking so that he wouldn’t embarrass Poppy or hurt his father’s chances in the national election. He also recommitted his life to God and became a self-professed born-again Christian. “George’s new sobriety and his new passion for Christianity made him an ideal choice to reach out to the conservative religious movement that had supported Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980” (p. 46).

Thanks largely to George W.’s handling of the campaign, Poppy Bush became the 41st President of the United States. Unsure what to do with himself, George and Laura (and the girls) headed back to Texas where George was able to combine his love of baseball with a lucrative job offer: he became a co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Even though Bush contributed relatively little in the way of cash, he was a vibrant force of good for the franchise. “But Bush’s greatest contribution was in helping the team get a new ballpark to replace the small and aging Arlington Stadium” (p. 50). Bush’s worst move as co-owner? No doubt it was trading Sammie Sosa to Chicago.

Bush loved his job but politics was still calling his name. So, in 1994, he decided to run for governor of the state of Texas against the highly-favored Democratic incumbent, Ann Richards. Was it a coincidence that Jeb had also recently announced his campaign for the governor of Florida? Hmm. To become electable, George began to amass a variety of savvy people around him, including Karl Rove, a brilliant political adviser. “Rove recommended focusing the campaign on four conservative ideas: increasing school accountability, limiting civil lawsuits, toughening laws for crimes by juveniles, and reforming welfare” (Roundtree, p. 54). Surprisingly, Bush won and so the whole family moved to Austin. While in office, he took on tort and literacy reform and education, advocating vouchers. He was re-elected governor in 1998.

“By this point, Bush had a fairly well-developed philosophy of the role of government and a list of national problems that he believed needed to be tackled” (Roundtree, p. 64). It was time to announce that George was ready for the big stage so he entered the 2000 Republican primaries where he bested John McCain and capturing the nomination. George chose Dick Cheney (his father’s Secretary of Defense) as his vice presidential running mate and geared up to battle Al Gore, the Democratic nominee. The election results were not immediately clear however due to antiquated balloting techniques in Florida. The contested election results were sent to the Supreme Court in Bush vs Gore where it was eventually decided that George W. Bush was the winner and thus the 43rd President of the United States.

“As the news media reported, several factors snatched victory from Gore. Perhaps the most publicized was the infamous butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County. The Democrat in charge of elections there was trying to cram all the candidates’ names on a one-page ballot and split the page into a butterfly form, with names on either side of the punch holes in the center. This made it harder to identify which punch holes were meant for which candidates. Thousands of elderly Jewish voters left the polls complaining that they weren’t sure whether they had punched the correct hole for Gore…In Seminole and Martin counties, the GOP had mailed absentee ballots to their constituents and accidently left off required voter identification numbers. When the voters failed to add this information, Republican staffers got permission from a local Republican official to correct these ballots, in plain violation of Florida state law. Secretary of State Katherine Harris waived requirements that overseas ballots—most coming from members of the armed services—include postmarks as required by law, and these votes heavily favored Bush. Finally, Ralph Nader, the liberal consumer advocate who made a third-party run as the Green Party candidate, was the third-highest vote getter in Florida. Although he won just under 100,000 votes statewide, he peeled off thousands of votes from Gore, which would have easily won him the election” (p. 77)

Bush took over the presidency without a clear public mandate but that fact did not deter him from promoting his social conservative agenda. He tackled issues such as euthanasia abortion, stem cell research, education (NCLB), and tax breaks across the board (“He also relied on a supply-side argument from economics, that if you give money back to Americans, they will spend it or invest it and grow the economy faster” (p. 82)). He began the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, dealt with Enron and expanded Medicare while Cheney, unusual for a VP, became very involved in all environmental policy, including an Energy Task Force.

However, the quotidian existence of Bush’s presidential life drastically changed on September 11, 2001, barely nine months into his presidency. It is clear that Bush and his administration were aware of Al-Qaeda and the threat it posed to the US at least a month beforehand but Bush was assured that investigations into it were pending. “A week later, on September 11, 2001, a plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. (EST)…He [Cheney] turned on the news to see the coverage of the aftermath in time to see a second plane crash into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on live television at 9:03 (EST). At that minute, Bush was entering the elementary school to begin his visit [in Sarasota, FL]. The president was introduced to the elementary school students and was about to begin reading a book, My Pet Goat, with the class when his chief of staff, Andy Card, whispered in his ear: ‘A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack’” (p. 89-91). The reason Bush was criticized at this moment is due to the fact that he allowed the students to continue reading (he didn’t want to upset them) before he left and held a press conference outside. Later on, Bush was removed to Louisiana, then Nebraska before he was rerouted to Washington DC. In the end, there would be four downed planes: 2 went into the World Trade Centers, 1 destroyed a good bit of the Pentagon, and 1 was taken down by its own passengers, crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. “Bush’s blood was boiling. He was already over the shock of the attack and ready to deliver some Texas justice to the terrorists” (p. 92).

Then there was an Anthrax scare. To combat the growing terror, Bush pushed the USA Patriot Act through Congress, along with a Terrorist Survey Program, and created the newest cabinet position, the Department of Homeland Security. Bush then announced the War on Terror which was to he began by wiping out the Al-Qaeda forces housed in Afghanistan. “A confluence of personal and practical factors would shape Bush’s approach to fighting this war in a way that would make him one of the most controversial presidents in recent history” (p. 101).

The war in Afghanistan (otherwise known as Operation Enduring Freedom) began on October 7, 2001 with bombings of the two biggest (only?) cities there. “In consultation with Cheney, Bush made one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency: He would treat those captured in the war on terrorism as ‘enemy combatants,’ denying them access to the courts, trying them (if at all) in military commissions, and holding them indefinitely without charge if necessary” (p. 107-108). Afghanistan could not hold up against this kind of war and promptly surrendered.

Flush with victory, Bush began suspiciously eyeing Iraq. George W. hated Saddam Hussein, as did his father, but whereas Bush #41 didn’t feel he had enough support to take out Saddam in the nineties, George W. did. He claimed (on false evidence) that Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that a “coalition” needed to take care of this before it got worse…or before Saddam gave these WMDs to the terrorists. Thus, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003 by bombing Baghdad and overrunning the country. Less than a month later, Baghdad fell but the Bush administration was not quite ready to handle the care of a nation of leaderless Iraqis. And, in a way, Bush, himself, promulgated this problem. “Bush’s tendency to delegate, to avoid asking probing questions and digging into details, and to stop the destructive infighting among his departments contributed to a lack of coherency and effectiveness in the postwar operation” (p. 119).

The situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, making the American occupiers look really bad. “Predictably, the lack of security, frequent electricity outages, little progress on handing over authority to Iraquis, and widespread unemployment exacerbated by Bremer’s [U.S. Administrator heading the Coalition Provisional Authority] policies led to growing discontent in the Iraqi population” (p. 123). This discontent then spawned a number of suicide bombings which, in turn, only provoked Bush into increasing troop numbers to Iraq. “But the hopes for success were hindered by what became a chicken-and-egg problem: On the one hand, the United States could not win the support of the Iraqi people so long as unemployment remained high, basic services such as electricity and water was spotty, and the security situation remained dangerous. On the other hand, with mounting attacks, it was difficult to bring in civilian workers to fix sewers, electrical grids, and the like, or to free up already-strapped American forces to undertake some of those tasks” (p. 125). It didn’t help either that Bush’s motivation for invasion (i.e. the WMDs) was a complete fabrication and therefore no evidence was ever found in Iraq.

Several scandals occurred during this time, including the Valerie Plame affair (when someone in the government—Rove—leaked her cover to the press in retaliation against her husband’s anger against the WMD idea) and the Abu Ghraib scandal (in which pictures, posted on the internet, were taken by American military personnel depicting naked Iraqi prisoners in various humiliating positions).

Then just like that—it was time for another presidential election. For the 2004 campaign, Bush was again nominated by the Republicans while his opponent became John Kerry. Bush won, though not by a great amount, and immediately waded into the congressional fray to tackle the politically-lethal issue, Social Security reform. Even though Bush threw the entire weight of his office behind it, this issue singlehandedly solidified Democratic opposition, turning it into one huge legislative failure. It didn’t help Bush’s ratings either that the US was starting to feel the effects of a housing crisis and it was apparent that a major recession was brewing in the wings. Add all that to the on-going war in Iraq and Bush’s approval rating plummeted.

Just as the War on Terror seemed to take over Bush’s first term, Hurricane Katrina would provide the same suffocating effect on his second term. In August 2005, a Category 3 hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, slamming cities from Florida all the way to Texas. Unfortunately, the city of New Orleans bore the brunt of the storm and, though many people had already evacuated, many others did not and were caught in a truly awful situation. The levees broke, flooding the city and killing thousands. Elsewhere, people sought refuge at the Superdome but were left there without food, water, and other necessities. In the end, most people blamed the problems with FEMA and its inept director, Mike Brown (who was fired a couple months later.) The government’s poor response to this natural disaster would ultimately reflect negatively on Bush himself. “The Hurricane Katrina debacle left Bush hobbled for the rest of his presidency. With three years left to go, he began resembling a lame duck, incapable of mustering the kind of support he had enjoyed in his first term” (p. 143).

Bush also had to deal with the Terri Shiavo issue (whether or not to withdraw the feeding tube which would allow her to die) and immigration policy (supposedly there was to be a fence built!?!) He also raised quite a bit of money to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. “Bush is credited with helping to save tens of millions of Africans suffering from HIV/AIDS” (p. 158). In January 2009, Bush handed over the reins of government to the new president, Barack Obama.

The Bushes retired to Preston Hollow, an area in Dallas, TX where Bush wrote Decision Points, was a speaker in the Get Motivated series and also got involved with the Clinton Bush Haiti fund. George W. can be seen at some sporting events and just last year, broke ground at Southern Methodist University (Laura’s alma mater) for his presidential library. For the most part, though, Bush has kept a low profile, allowing his predecessor to have plenty of time, alone, in the national spotlight.

#42 Bill Clinton Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Bill Clinton
1. In a macabrely-quirky irony, Bill’s father lived through World War II, as a soldier, only to die, back in the US, when driving home to his wife. “Bill Blythe had set out the previous afternoon from Chicago, where, just out of the army, he had landed a job selling heavy equipment. He’d intended to drive all night to Hope [AR] to pick up his pregnant wife and bring her back up north. But three miles outside of Sikeston, Missouri, a front tire blew out, and the Buick spun out of control. Rescuers searched for the driver for two hours before finding him in a drainage ditch.” And the greatest irony of all… “He had escaped the overturned car only to drown in three feet of water” (Michael Takiff, p. 9).
2. Bill’s list of friends was legendary and it was well-known that once you were his friend, then you were in for keeps. For instance, “Thomas F. ‘Mack’ McLarty III attended kindergarten with Bill. He would be Bill’s first White House chief of staff” (Michael Takiff, p. 14).
3. Bill was so good at playing the saxophone that he received a full scholarship to LSU. “He was offered, unsolicited, a music scholarship to Louisiana State University. At that point he had already decided to go to Georgetown” (Carolyn Staley, p. 29-30).
4. Bill was, at the time, the youngest governor in the country. “In January 1979, thirty-two-year-old Bill Clinton took office as the nation’s youngest governor” (Michael Takiff, p. 52).
5. Clinton was actually allergic to wine. “Also, the sipping wine [alleged by Gennifer Flowers] didn’t seem very realistic since Bill Clinton is allergic to wine and breaks out in hives anytime he drinks wine” (Jack Moseley, p. 109).
6. I love Chicken George! “Bush didn’t want to debate [during the 1992 campaign]. There was this guy in Michigan who got a chicken costume and started going around Michigan saying ‘Where’s Chicken George? How come he won’t debate?’ Local TV picked up on it. Our [Clinton’s team] state director says, ‘I’ve got to find this guy.’ So she hunts him down, and she says, ‘Look, Bush is coming into the state. Will you show up at the event?’ And he’s like, ‘Sure I’d love to.’ We sent a local news package to all the national reporters: ‘Here’s Chicken George, he’ll be at the event.’ So he gets there, they all find him, they all take footage of Chicken George, Chicken George shows up on the national news. We then take that and say, ‘Okay, Chicken George is now in every state.’ We instructed all our staff, ‘Go out and rent a chicken suit. When George Bush comes into your state, you’re going to have the chicken man at every event, no matter where he goes.’ It made Bush crazy, to the point that in Ohio, later in the campaign, Bush is speaking off the back of a train, there’s a chicken costume, Bush speaks to the chicken. At that point we knew we had won. If Bush is out there talking to a guy in a chicken suit, our message got across. And then he crumbled and decided to debate”(Craig Smith, p. 141.) Classic!
7. It was no secret that the economy, under the Clinton administration, was booming. “Whether or not Bill’s reintroduction of federal fiscal discipline made the difference, he would preside over the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history” (Michael Takiff, p. 177).
8. Clinton was the first president to visit Northern Ireland. “Tens of thousands, Catholic and Protestants, came to cheer the first sitting American president to visit Northern Ireland” (Michael Takiff, p. 282).
9. I’m pretty sure that Clinton is the only sitting president to be held in contempt of court. “In April 1999, two months after the impeachment ordeal ended with Bill’s acquittal by the Senate, Judge Susan Webber Wright would issue a thirty-two page ruling in which she held Bill in contempt of court for his testimony in the Jones deposition” (Michael Takiff, p. 336).
10. Let’s not forget that this was merely the second ever impeachment trial for a president (Remember the first? Andrew Johnson #17). “On the morning of January 7, 1999, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist swore the one hundred senators to ‘do impartial justice.’ The second impeachment trial in the history of the American presidency had begun” (Michael Takiff, p. 375).

As you may recall, I was rather wary about reading a book like this. I was worried, among other things, of blatant bias on the author’s part and of a disjointed narrative due to the oral nature of this biography. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. First of all, the book was easy to read and I was surprised at the amount of pertinent information included. In other words, I didn’t feel like I had to read another biography of Clinton in order to garner the important points. Secondly, I rather liked this truly odd style of biography. The author gave introductions and wrote narrative when necessary but for the most part, allowed the actors to have the floor. Trust me, at this stage of the game, I am desperate for interesting, out-of-the-box biographical styles to keep me hooked.

And honestly, how could I not love this author? This quote was pulled directly from the author’s introduction and when I read it, I remember thinking, “Ha!” “For all his accomplishments as president, Bill Clinton is stuck, fairly or unfairly, with the image of a sex-crazed dude who loves to party, an incorrigible lech who can’t resist a piece of ass no matter how awkward or inappropriate or dangerous the circumstances. (In fact, the titter factor forced a change from the original subtitle of this book: An Oral Biography of Bill Clinton)” (Takiff, p. 3). My estimate of Michael Takiff just shot straight up. This book contained tons of fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits which made my job, as reader, especially awesome. Also Takiff unusually ended the book by including a “Closing Arguments” section which dealt with some of the various people quoted throughout the book. In this section, these people give their final estimates of Bill Clinton and what he stood for in the long run. Very informative.

I like how Takiff really set the stage for Bill Clinton and showed us just how mesmerizing he could be. Clinton was a great listener, very empathetic and I could understand how this young governor of a small state managed to take the entire United States by storm. Not only by storm, but really, by illusion. As I read all I kept thinking about was how on earth Clinton was elected after all the shit that came out about him in that first campaign: draft-dodging, marijuana, Gennifer Flowers. Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s press secretary, said it best, “There was this remarkable dual track that people, I’m particularly thinking of reporters, were proceeding along: How could this guy be such a shit and be so compelling at the same time” (p. 122)? Any other politician would have been considered non-existent politically (or otherwise) after all that but not Bill Clinton. If I didn’t know better, I would say that his campaign practically thrived under constant media duress. Weird.

What’s even weirder is that Clinton made this whole United States presidency-thing look incredibly easy. In fact, Paul Begala, Clinton’s political consultant, singlehandedly credits Clinton’s ease as president for the presidency of George W. Bush. “Hillary used to say to Bill Clinton while he was president, ‘Your problem is, you make it look so easy.’ In that sense, Clinton might have caused Bush. I think Bush sat there in Texas, very modestly talented, and watched Clinton and thought, ‘I can do that.’ It’s the same way I can watch LeBron James and think, ‘I can do that.’ But then I go out in the driveway and I make a fool of myself” (p. 430). Takiff takes that idea and really goes on to slam George W which really quite annoyed me. If this is supposed to be a scholarly work on Bill Clinton then the author’s personal feelings do not apply here. I also found it annoying when the author tried to get cutesy with his words. Here he quotes Clinton and then adds a little playfulness of his own. “Recognizing that your work has received an excellent grade is one of the most important rewards in life,’ wrote the former Leader of the Free World whose middle name is Jefferson” (Takiff, p. 412.) Argh!

On the whole, I enjoyed this particular work, not only because I felt like I intimately got to know Bill (which was the author’s purpose, after all) but also because I really liked this oral-style of biography. As to Bill Clinton and what I think about him…well…I’m going to steal a quote from the author in summation. “Principled battler for the common good? You bet. Shameless opportunist? Yup. Authoritative commander in chief? Affirmative. Feckless commander in chief? Indeed. Brilliant pragmatist? Yes. Inveterate compromiser, willing to sell out millions to get a deal? Right. A man of rare empathy? Obviously. Self-interested son-of-a-bitch? Certainly. Liberal? Conservative? Centrist? Check, check, check. One of the smartest people on the planet? No doubt. An unbelievable dope? And how. And the question: Who is Bill Clinton? This book presents the argument over this complex, compelling, confounding American. It will not settle that argument” (p. 6).

#42 Bill Clinton (1946- )

“Bill Clinton did not come to the White House empty-handed: Among the assets he brought were a dazzling intellect, unmatched people skills, a passion for good governance, an insatiable curiosity” (Michael Takiff, p. 1)

I actually got to hear Bill Clinton give a speech once. Granted I was one of thousands but it was really cool nonetheless. Actually it was really hot because it was an outdoor commencement ceremony for the US Naval Academy’s graduation class and President Clinton was on speech rotation that year. I can’t remember the date (I’ll have to look it up in my diaries) but I’m guessing that it was either 1998 or 1999 because those were the summers that I worked up in Maryland. My grandmother got us tickets (she knows everybody) and so I sweltered in the bleachers at the Naval Academy’s stadium, trying not to burn and to pay attention to the president’s speech. After all these years I can only remember the gist of that speech but I do recall that it dealt primarily with terrorism. What’s ironic is that I dismissed the terrorism speech entirely because I thought that Clinton was jumping at nothing. Little did I realize that we were dealing with terrorism at that time and that it would become an even greater issue just a few years hence.

Oddly, I had a good amount of trouble finding a good biography. Would you believe it but I already had taken out two other biographies from the library before I settled for this one?? The reasons I discarded the other two were a.) one was simply about his years growing up, and b.) the other only dealt with his presidential time period. For obvious reasons, these two did not work for my purposes which led me to A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him Best by Michael Takiff(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). Initially I had overlooked this book because it seemed too biased. After all, quoting 150 different people about Clinton seemed awfully crazy but when my original books fell through, I needed to expand my search. When I read more about A Complicated Man, I saw that the author researched not only people who knew and liked Clinton but also people who knew and didn’t like Clinton. Because of Takiff’s assiduity in creating a fair portrait of this man, I decided to take the plunge and use it as my main biography.

William Jefferson Blythe III was born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, AR. Bill’s father died before he was born and since his mother left shortly after his birth to go to nursing school in New Orleans, young Bill was raised by his grandparents. Through careful tutoring by his grandmother, Bill could read by the age of three. A couple years later, Virginia, Bill’s mother, returned to Arkansas as a certified anesthesiologist and married Roger Clinton on June 19, 1950.

In 1953, the Clintons moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, a large multicultural city. Paul Root (Bill’s teacher) said, “I don’t know of any other place in Arkansas where Bill Clinton could have grown up with the attitudes he came out of Hot Springs with: a broad sense of what a lot of different kinds of people do and think and how they live” (p. 18). However, the marriage between Bill’s mom and Roger was a rocky one—Roger was an alcoholic and would sometimes hit Virginia. She divorced him in 1956 but they would remarry three months later. Roger eventually died of cancer in 1967.

Bill, growing up, was a good student and very active in extracurricular activities. “All-State Band, Student Council, Key Club, Mu Alpha Theta, Beta Club, Junior Classical League, Band Key Club, Trojan Pep Band, Starlight Dance Band, Trojan Marching Band, Junior Class President, Boys State, and Boys Nation. He was a very visible student” (Lonnie Luebben, p. 28). During Boys Nation (mentioned above), Bill was sent to Washington DC as a representative from Arkansas and where he met JFK. It was also around this time that Bill started playing the saxophone. “Bill’s saxophone was as important to him as his classwork. He and two fellow students formed a jazz trio, the 3 Kings, that entertained at various school functions” (Takiff, p. 29).

By 1964, Bill was accepted to Georgetown University. He did well there and became president of his class. During the summers, he worked at Senator Fullbright’s office in Little Rock, garnering political knowledge to use later. After Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in April 1968, there were riots throughout Washington DC and so Bill decided to volunteer at the Red Cross. “There was glass everywhere, bricks in the middle of the street and the sidewalks, bashed-in windows where looting had taken place, some buildings completely burned to the ground. We were the only souls—it was like there had been a nuclear explosion and we were the only two people left on earth. It was eerily quiet. We got out [of the car]. He [Bill] wanted to walk and breathe and feel and have firsthand knowledge” (Carolyn Staley, p. 36). That same year, he graduated from Georgetown.

Bill won the Rhodes Scholarship and in October 1968, he began studying in England. He was doing well there, if something of a slacker, but the very next year, he was drafted into the army for Vietnam. To get out of the draft, he, instead, joined the ROTC in Arkansas but when Nixon started reducing the number of drafted men, Bill quit the ROTC before even arriving there. He finished up his studies in England and arrived back in the US to study law at Yale in 1970. “Bill barely showed up for class the first couple of months he was enrolled at Yale Law, in the fall of 1970. Instead, he worked on the campaign of Joe Duffey to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate” (Takiff, p. 41).

After graduation in 1973, Bill headed back to Arkansas to work as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. “In three years as a law professor, 1973-1976, Bill would teach antitrust, admiralty, and constitutional law, among other subjects” (Takiff, p. 42). In 1974, he ran for Congress and eventually lost the race but his signature political style was cemented. “He gets close to you, he touches, he establishes a physical connection—an arm on a shoulder, a handshake. He looks you in your eye, and for a short period of time makes you think that you’re the only person in the room. And he quickly finds the common foundation—hometown, knows your cousin, knows somebody who went to the school you went to, knows your boss. And the other thing he can do, which is the real trick, is file it away and have near total recall of it at some point way in the future” (Max Brantley, p. 46).

In order to have a greater chance of winning the next race he would enter, Bill invited his girlfriend from Yale, Hillary Rodham, to Arkansas with him. Unlike the gently-bred Southern gals in Arkansas, Hilary was quite different. “I was floored. It couldn’t have been a bigger surprise if she had been a Martian in a spacesuit.
She had brown crinkled hair, no makeup, glasses that were six inches thick, she wore granny dresses—we call is ‘frumpy’ in the South, to put it mildly. And her shoes and everything…We were in shock. This is Bill’s girlfriend? That from the southern perspective of one who at the time looked like Dolly Parton…But we were big-old-hair girls, and we thought that Hillary should aspire to be like us” (Martha Whetstone, p. 47). Bill and Hillary were married on October 11, 1975 and she helped him get elected to the State Attorney General’s office in 1976.

Two years later, Bill ran for governor of Arkansas and won! However this first term did not go smoothly for Bill and he made some major political errors in office, including his handling of the Cuban refugee situation and an increase in the car tag tax. “The car tags were his biggest political issue, but there were others. We had managed to alienate doctors with a rural health program. We had alienated the utilities because of some regulatory issues. We had alienated the timber industry over clear-cutting issues. We had alienated the poultry and the trucking industry over the licensing issues. So all of a sudden, there were all these strong interest groups that were mad at Bill Clinton and the administration” (Rudy Moore, p. 57). Due to Clinton’s apparent arrogance and lack of loyalty, he lost the governorship to Frank White in 1980. Then Chelsea was born.

Even though Clinton went right back to practicing law, he did not intend to stay there long. When the next election rolled around for governor in 1982, he ran again and won…again. In fact, this second term was much more laid-back than the first. “He raised some taxes and there were some significant improvements in education. He did a very modest highway program, and toward the end, in his last session of the legislature—maybe his best—he got a bit more done. But it was a very modest, modestly progressive regime” (Ernest Dumas, p. 66-67). He even appointed a significant amount of African-Americans to major positions in the administration, which was unusual for the time. Plus he tried to stay active in national politics as well by being Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council from 1990-91 and he gave the nominating speech for Dukakis in 1988. In the end, Clinton did so well as governor that he was re-elected in 1984, 1986, and 1990.

In January 1992, Clinton announced his candidacy for the presidential race. Unfortunately this announcement opened up a media frenzy of Clinton-related scandals beginning with the Gennifer Flowers episode. Flowers claimed that she had had an affair with Clinton while he was governor but Clinton, attempting to diffuse the situation, went on a special airing of 60 Minutes (after the Super Bowl) and made a heartfelt appeal to the American people. “The amazing thing to me was that Gennifer Flowers actually helped him the short term. It made him a nationally known figure” (Gene Lyons, p. 111). Next, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that alleged that Clinton tried to dodge the draft by staying in England and getting into the ROTC (only to get out of it again) but the Clinton team countered these accusations by publishing a letter Clinton had written to a general around that time. The letter stated that while Clinton was not trying to get out of going to Vietnam, he sincerely did not believe in that war. Most Americans could understand this sentiment. Finally, there was the marijuana use. Clinton made the heinous decision to claim that he did not inhale marijuana in his youth and whether or not this claim was true was beside the point—it caught the fancy of the entire nation. Regardless of all this, Clinton won the Democratic National nomination and he chose Al Gore as his vice president.

The 1992 campaign not only was one of the dirtiest in history but it also had a third party candidate in Ross Perot. In the end, Perot, even though he came in third, won a good bit of the vote, helping Clinton win over the Republican candidate, George Bush. Almost immediately, Clinton was faced with a tough issue: gays in the military. His solution? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell requires that people live a lie. It’s a construct that was designed to look like it was fair, and it wasn’t” (Chuck Robb, p. 154). “The effect of the flap on gay servicemembers is debatable. The effect on Bill is not: Added to his draft history it complicated his relations with the uniformed military as he embarked on his presidency” (Takiff, p. 155). Plus it was time to fix the economy. In 1993, Clinton put forth the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act in an attempt to stem the heinous results of Reagan’s supply-side economics. “Clinton balanced the budget, he ran surpluses, he paid down the national debt. No president in my lifetime had a record like that. More important than that, though, the record on growth, job creation, lifting people out of poverty, income growth across the board, every sector, was unsurpassed, unprecedented. He had an extraordinary overall economic record” (Roger Altman, p. 171).

There were quite a few foreign policy issues occurring around this time. Clinton had to deal with the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, the Bosnian War and ethnic cleansing, NAFTA (which was ratified on January 1, 1994), the massacres in Rwanda, and possible peace between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In November 1995, Rabin, Israel’s Prime Minister, was assassinated and the Yugoslavian Dayton Accords were signed. Clinton also took a trip to Europe, starting with Ireland, in ’95 as well.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s name would become most closely associated with his domestic problems, beginning with his healthcare plan. Healthcare has always been a potentially explosive issue in the United States and the words “universal healthcare” even more so. Clinton caught a lot of flak for not only promoting universal healthcare in the first place but giving the First Lady, Hillary, charge of it. The whole thing seemed doomed to fail. “Neither house of the 103rd Congress even voted on Bill and Hillary’s plan—nor on any plan prescribing comprehensive health care reform. Bill’s effort to remake America’s system of health care began as his most ambitious aspiration. It ended as his most spectacular failure” (Michael Takiff, p. 196). And then along came Whitewater and the Vince Foster suicide. “At the root of the story lay the 1978 investment of $200,000 by Bill and Hillary, and friends Susan and Jim McDougal, in the purchase of 230 acres of woodland in northern Arkansas. The partners planned to subdivide the grounds and sell lots to retirees…March 1992 to the end of Bill’s presidency, no one would prove any illegality by either Bill or Hillary relating to the ill-starred scheme to turn a buck by luring senior citizens to come to Arkansas and fish” (Michael Takiff, p. 221-22). What gave the story an added twist was when, on July 20, 1993, Vince Foster, the deputy White House counsel and old friend to Bill, committed suicide in a park. Immediately, there was a media frenzy speculating on the Clinton’s role in the suicide (murder?) and if Foster knew anything incriminating about the Whitewater deal.

Before the presidential election of 1996, Clinton spent time on welfare reform and also comforting the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombings. He ended up winning the election against Bob Dole, Senator from Kansas, by the barest majority. Almost immediately thereafter, the Clinton administration came under scrutiny over campaign fundraising. Then came the sexual accusations of Paula Jones, an Arkansas staffer, against the president, leading him to lie in the deposition (this would come back to haunt him later.) It was also a nice preface to the incipient media shitstorm, courtesy of Monica Lewinsky.

Ironically it was the government shutdown in late 1995 (which made Clinton look good)
that threw together the president and a young intern, Monica Lewinsky. “The shutdown was odd in many ways. You were not allowed to set foot on the campus unless you were deemed essential…And that was exactly where Monica came from, because the interns were running the show. Because they weren’t paid, they could show up and answer phones and staff the functions” (Mike McCurry, p. 269). “The president and the intern would enjoy ten sexual encounters over sixteen months. Only the last two times would Bill allow himself to reach ‘completion’; in so doing he spilled his DNA on his partner’s blue dress, which she’d bought at the Gap. In 1998 that DNA would have a story to tell” (Michael Takiff, p. 270).

To get away and do some good on the international front, Clinton took some trips. He went to Africa, where he was feted and adulated, and then to Ireland again to witness the Good Friday Agreement, signed on April 10, 1998 (this lead to peace in Northern Ireland between the Catholics and the Protestants.) He traveled to Palestine and then had to deal with several terrorist threats, including the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (BTW, this is the first time we all learned about Al-Qaeda.) Clinton also was still dealing with the mess in the former Yugoslavian Baltic states and due to increased ethnic cleansing, began bombing in that area in 1999. “On March 24 some four hundred NATO aircraft, along with missile launchers on several warships in or near the Adriatic Sea, commenced the bombing of Serb assets with attacks on army barracks, air-defense installations, and airports, among other targets” (Michael Takiff, p. 381). Several months later, Serbian President Milosevic surrendered.

While Clinton was very busy overseas, his influence was practically nil in the United States. Between Whitewater, the fundraising scandal, draft dodging, pot smoking, and all the sexual accusations from various women, the country was in a gossip-loving shame spiral and Clinton appeared impotent before it. The Supreme Court appointed Kenneth Starr to ferret out the truth of the Whitewater implications, which soon led him straight into the Monica Lewinsky maelstrom. Clinton’s grand jury testimony, conducted by Starr and reproduced for television, instigated impeachment proceedings in the House on December 19, 1998. “The single most embarrassing day in the history of the American presidency was the day the grand jury testimony aired on national television. Here was the president discussing the most intimate sexual details on national television. The president of the United States, talking about whether he touched a woman’s vagina. It was unthinkable” (Jonathan Alter, p. 350). The House voted to impeach the president and the trial was then sent to the Senate where Clinton was acquitted in February 1999. From that moment forth, however, Clinton hovered near lame-duck status until the end of his term.

In January 2000, he handed over the government to George W Bush and retired to Westchester County, NY with his wife, the newest Senator from NY. Don’t worry there were still some final Clintonian scandals. For instance, nobody could believe it when Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a guy who had already given up his US citizenship, and then there were accusations of vandalism, when it was claimed that the Clinton administration left the White House a wreck. Clinton also put to rest the Lewinsky/Whitewater saga. “In exchange for Ray’s [Starr’s replacement] giving up the possibility of indicting Bill on any charge connected to the Lewinsky matter, Bill finally copped to lying under oath in the Jones deposition—‘certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewsinsky were false’—relinquished his license to practice law for five years, paid a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas Bar Association, and pledged that he would not seek reimbursement of his legal fees necessitated by the Lewinsky investigation, even though, because he had not been indicted, he was permitted to do so under the independent counsel statute” (Michael Takiff, p. 400).

Clinton has had an active post-presidential retirement. He began the Bill Clinton Foundation, which has worked on, among other things, Third World health and development and has even teamed up with Doctors Without Borders. He has done a massive amount of public speaking, while charging astronomical prices to help pay off his legal debts and multiple houses. In 2004, he wrote his autobiography, My Life, and also had quadruple bypass surgery. Clinton was also involved in some shady international deals. In 2009, through negotiations with the North Koreans, Clinton helped free two American women and aid talks about nuclear tests. More recently, he was instrumental—in a bad way—in Hillary’s run for the presidency in 2008, which she eventually lost to Barrack Obama. “His [Clinton’s] political skills had atrophied. And he handled himself in a way not befitting a former president. Whether it was born of his feeling he owed Hillary, or his guilt or whatever, it was very disturbing. Not just to outsiders, but to his own friends and supporters” (Jonathan Alter, p. 414). He is now the husband to the current Secretary of State and they live in Washington DC.

#41 George H.W. Bush Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about George H W Bush
1. George H W Bush was, at one time, the youngest pilot in the Navy. “George Bush chose to become a naval aviator, earning his wings in June 1943 and becoming the youngest pilot in the entire US Navy” (p. 7).
2. Bush’s plane was shot down in the war. “Failing to make a clean jump, Bush hit his head on the back of the plan and ripped his chute. Tumbling 2,000 feet into the water—moving faster because of the hole in his chute—Bush nevertheless escaped major injury. He deployed a small life raft and began paddling. A pilot seeing him in distress strafed Japanese ships on their way to capture Bush. A few hours later a US submarine fished the young lieutenant out of the water. Bush was the only man of his plane to survive” (p. 8).
3. George H W was the fourth generation of his family to attend Yale. “The fourth generation of the Bush family to attend Yale, George made a conscious effort to emulate his father’s collegiate achievements and succeeded for largely the same reasons” (p. 9).
4. Bush desperately wanted to be Ford’s vice president and was disappointed when Ford chose Nelson Rockefeller instead. “No American politician had ever tried so hard to be vice president and failed” (p. 30).
5. The election of 1988 was abysmal in terms of voter turnout. “Only 50 percent of eligible American voters bothered to participate, the lowest turnout rate since World War II” (p. 63).
6. Congress decided to decline Bush’s nomination of John Tower as defense secretary, thereby making history. “These enemies sank the nomination by allowing gossip about Tower’s womanizing and drinking so cloud the matter that he became the first cabinet nominee of an incoming president to lose a confirmation vote” (p. 70).
7. Interesting fact about the Panamanian coup of 1990: “Only twenty-four US servicemen lost their lives in the largest American military operation since the end of the Vietnam War” (p. 89). This coup also allowed us to arrest Noreiga and send him to Miami for trial.
8. Not only did George H. W. suffer from the extremely rare Graves’ disease but his wife, Barbara, did as well. “(In a remarkable coincidence, Barbara Bush had already been diagnosed with this same rare disease in 1989)” (p. 130-31).
9. The end of the Soviet Union had major ramifications for the US. “By year’s end Gorbachev himself announced that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would itself be dissolved. For the first time, the United States was the world’s lone superpower” (p. 138). We weren’t alone as a superpower for that long because China nipped up behind us when we weren’t looking…
10. In 1992, Bush’s approval rating tanked. “After the Democratic convention in July, Bush’s approval rating dropped to 29 percent. Only Harry Truman during the impasse of the Korean War (23 percent), Richard Nixon in the Watergate year of 1974 (24 percent), and Jimmy Carter in 1979 (28 percent) had been more unpopular” (p. 145).
11. I lived through Hurricane Andrew in southern Florida so I’m adding this little tidbit to the list. “With estimates of $45 billion in damage, Andrew exceeded the cost of any previous natural disaster in US history” (p. 148). Even though I lived only an hour and a half north of Miami-Dade County, all we experienced was some heavy rain, a few palm fronds jogged loose from their moorings, and one day off school. That is all.
12. Here’s something else I remember: Dana Carvey playing George H. W. on SNL! “To perk up his staff and lay to rest the
rumors [that Bush would retire before Clinton was sworn in], he invited to the White House Dana Carvey, a comedian who had achieved fame impersonating Bush’s nasally halting cadence on the popular television show Saturday Night Live. Without letting the staff in on the surprise, he asked Carvey to appear as him at the start of the Christmas party” (p. 152).
13. In April 1993, Bush traveled to the Middle East in order to be honored and feted by the Kuwaiti people. Little did he know that there was an Iraqi assassination plot afoot. “The Kuwaitis arrested seventeen people, some of whom confessed to being on a mission from Baghdad. The plan was to detonate a car bomb, and, indeed, the Kuwaitis found a Toyota Land Cruiser with eighty to ninety kilograms of plastic explosives…After the FBI gather some additional corroborating information from the suspects, the Clinton administration concluded without a doubt that Saddam Hussein had authorized the assassination of George Bush. To send a message to Baghdad, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service on June 26, 1993…George Bush was the first US president, sitting or former, to be the target of a foreign assassination plot” (p. 156-57).
14. Although he was over eighty years of age, George H. W. decided, after being a guest of honor at the annual meeting of the International Parachute Association, to try the extreme sport of sky diving. “Oddly, the action that had the greatest influence on Bush’s public appeal in the second half of the 1990s involved jumping out of an airplane at 12,500 feet…Covered by newspapers and on television around the world, the jump revealed a different George Bush than the stiff and awkward man who had served as president for four years” (p. 162-63).

Well we’re getting down to the very end of this list of presidents and I’m confronted with what I know (or think I know) about these men and what is the truth. I was surprised, therefore, with how much I disliked George H.W. before he became president. And I wasn’t the only one—due to very specific word choices, I was convinced that the author, Timothy Naftali, did not like him either. The reason that I make the distinction of disliking him pre-presidency is due to the fact that I really quite liked him afterwards. It’s hard to explain but before he was elected president, I felt that George was simply a political chameleon, ready to change his mind and his stance on any issue that would reflect voter attitudes. He mirrored Nixon when those ideas were expedient and replicated Reagan when that was necessary to further his political career.

All that being said, however, I really grew to like this guy during his tenure as president and since then. I feel that the presidency really agreed with him, for the most part, and through being president, he was able to find his political identity, which he’s stood by all these years. It’s kinda cool to watch a grown man find his way during all those tricky foreign and domestic issues he faced. Also I think it couldn’t have been easy following in the hallowed footsteps of old Ronald Reagan. It just couldn’t. “Ronald Reagan was a hard act to follow…Yet the campaign of 1988, so long on patriotic symbols and so short on substance, had left only a vague impression of the incoming president, certainly nothing as powerful as the public image of Ronald Reagan, who despite Iran-Contra appeared to be departing directly from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for Mount Rushmore” (p. 65).

I have to take a moment to mention this really interesting fact but it’s about Reagan so I didn’t include it up top. It’s about the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project and I’ve seen evidence of it in Georgia. “In 1997 a nationwide Ronald Reagan Legacy Project established the goal of naming something—a bridge, a highway, a park—for Reagan in every one of the United States’ 3, 067 counties” (p. 161). Near where I live there are several things named after Ronald Reagan so I think it’s cool to finally find out why.

The author did a good job of portraying this misunderstood man and in quite a funny way too. For instance, “The weather turned horrible the next day—the worst in decades, according to the Maltese—and what was supposed to be a two-day visit of choreographed shuttling between the U.S. cruiser and the Soviet ship because a superpower struggle against seasickness” (p. 87). Here’s another example, detailing the circus surrounding the Clarence Thomas affair. “By the end, the nation had been exposed to discussions of sexual harassment, pornographic videos, and pubic hair left on a Coke can” (p. 134). I got a crack outta this next event. “In August 1991 Bush used a speech in Kiev to send a message over the heads of his Ukrainian audience to the Yugoslaves to slow the disintegration of their state, so that political will and diplomacy, not violence, would dictate the outcome…Derided at home as the ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech, because it implied a lack of support for Ukrainian self-determination, the speech captured Bush’s belief that national self-determination alone was not a guarantee that the successor states of any empire would be liberal democracies” (p. 138-39).

Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Once such instance of this phenomenon is the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent end of the Soviet Union. For something that was so serious and engulfing as the Cold War, it ended in a complete fizzle. “The last act of the nasty East German police state came in a moment of farce. At a press conference on November 9 [1989], designed to introduce new rules for travel to West Germany, the party chief in East Berlin, who was poorly briefed on the new system, mistakenly told reporters that free travel to the West would begin immediately. East Germans took him at his word and approached the Berlin controls. The police there, just as confused as the party chief, assumed it was all right to let them pass. That night thousands of Berliners jumped onto the Berlin Wall and, meeting no resistance from East German border guards, began to take sledgehammers to it. The twenty-eight-year-old wound dividing Berlin was no more” (p. 84-85). The Soviet Union would not last much longer. Ha!

Unfortunately, the end of this book was all about George W and that bothered me. I understand that it was inevitable that George W make an appearance in this book, considering he is the son of Geroge H.W., but I thought the author spent too much time and page content on the presidency of the son. This aspect of this biography annoyed me until I reached the last page in which Naftali explains his emphasis on George W. “When George W. Bush had spoken confidently in 1997 of how history would revise his father’s reputation, he had no reason to assume that it would be because of his own shortcomings as president…A decade later, as the younger Bush’s own presidency limped to an end, many missed the elder Bush’s realism, his diplomacy, his political modesty, and yes, even his prudence” (p. 176). What do you think? Did the morphing of George H. W.’s presidential reputation occur due to his son’s inanity in the White House? Discuss.