The Saga of George W. Bush 63
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ZSE 1 /2003 61 ABHANDLUNGEN Views from Abroad: The Saga of George W.Bush – a Political Leader and His Times by Bert A. Rockman This article draws a profile of the current presidency in the United States by assessing, if tentatively, the political personality of George W. Bush, and intertwining that assessment with the conditions that have provided him with critical choices both domestically and inter- nationally. President George W. Bush prefers to govern exclusively through his party on the domestic side and by unilateral fiat on the international side, distinguishing him from his two immediate predecessors, Clinton and his father, George H. W. Bush, while drawing com- parison to the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. Bush’s Presidency has been shaped by extra- ordinary contextual influences – the protracted 2000 electoral stalemate, the deepening of party polarization, and, especially, the war on terror post-11 September 2001. Although these conditions may beg for a non-partisan style of governing, Bush has instead governed as a strong partisan. The war on terror also has produced a demand for strong leadership from which Bush has benefited. In contrast to some of his predecessors, Bush has shown himself capable of making decisions, their judiciousness and prudence being what is in doubt. Die nachfolgende Abhandlung analysiert das Profil der gegenwärtigen US-Präsidentschaft als Ergebnis von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen George W. Bushs sowie jener nationalen und interna- tionalen Kontextbedingungen, die seine bisherige Amtszeit prägten. Im Unterschied zu seinen unmittelbaren Vorgängern, Bill Clinton und seinem Vater, George H. W. Bush, stützt sich der amtierende Präsident innenpolitisch weitestgehend auf die eigene Partei, außenpolitische Ent- scheidungen fällt er nach Möglichkeit ohne Rücksprache mit Bündnispartnern. Sein Füh- rungsstil ähnelt somit demjenigen Ronald Reagans. Allerdings wird Bushs Verhalten auch durch die besonderen Rahmenbedingungen seiner Präsidentschaft geprägt – den knappen Wahlsieg 2000, eine verschärfte parteipolitische Polarisierung sowie insbesondere den „Krieg gegen den Terrorismus“ nach dem 11.September 2001, der eine starke Nachfrage nach poli- tischer Führung erzeugte. Bush konnte davon profitieren, zeigte sich in der Folgezeit außer- gewöhnlich entscheidungsstark; die Qualität seiner Entscheidungen hingegen bleibt um- stritten. All political leaders are creatures of their contexts, and all are shaped by the particulars of the situations they confront. Such ideas are hardly novel, but they are fundamental. And they are fundamental precisely because it is only from an understanding of these shaping factors, derived from political context and situa- tion, that we can grapple with how the choices made by any individual leader could have been different from the ones that were made. The counterfactual, in https://doi.org/10.1515/zfse.1.1.61 Generiert durch IP '170.106.202.226', am 28.09.2021, 12:04:32. Das Erstellen und Weitergeben von Kopien dieses PDFs ist nicht zulässig. 62 Bert A. Rockman ABHANDLUNGEN other words, derives from the possibility that someone else would have acted differently under the same circumstances. I should also note the obvious: any assessment of an individual currently holding office is inevitably tentative. An assessment from afar of any incumbent leader is a work still very much in progress and may be affected by hear-say as we cannot know the contemporaneous decision-making process other than through accounts leaked by “interested” parties. Judgments of an incumbent leader also are influenced by the current course of events, the outcomes of which are still uncertain. It is extremely difficult as well to assess policies and bargaining strategies that are still in play and have yet to be consummated. Can we know, for example, that Bush is committed to a war strategy against Iraq or merely a war threat as part of a hard-headed bargaining strategy to force the Saddam Hussein regime to comply with the weapons inspections that had been suspended four years previous? The fact is that we do not know that. It is certainly possible, even plausible, that the decision-making process itself, and the influence of actors involved in this process, may have induced learning and subtly changed strategy in ways of which the President – or any other leader under like conditions – might not be fully aware. What we believe is a policy strategy, in other words, is less likely to be axiomatic and deductive and more likely to be continuous and incremental, and to be shaped and reshaped by streams of events and actors whose presence or absence has elements of chance about it. As Herbert Simon once noted, there is no “the decision”.1 There are outcomes, of course. But we cannot yet know how many of these will turn out, nor will we know for well into the future the factors that may have been decisive in influencing the outcomes. My perspective, therefore, I stress, is tentative. Nevertheless, a profile of the Bush 43 presidency (so enumerated to distinguish his presidency from that of his father, George H. W. Bush, now known as Bush 41) and of George W. Bush as president has begun to take shape. I expect my understanding of the Bush 43 presidency to not be devoid of controversy. But all of our understandings are at this point incomplete and based on inferences from the public record. No doubt it is possible to draw a range of plausible inferences at this early stage, less about the record of the Bush 43 administration than about the man in whose name the record is being created. My effort in this essay is to assess and intertwine the political personality of George W. Bush with the conditions that have defined his presidency and provided him with critical choices on both the domestic and international scene. 1 Simon, H. A.: Administrative Behavior, 3rd ed., New York, 1975. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfse.1.1.61 Generiert durch IP '170.106.202.226', am 28.09.2021, 12:04:32. Das Erstellen und Weitergeben von Kopien dieses PDFs ist nicht zulässig. ZSE 1 /2003 Views from Abroad: The Saga of George W. Bush 63 I. Who is George W. Bush? Ordinarily, the element that we need to know about last is the political person- ality of a leader. For it is only once we have a grasp of the events, contexts, and conditions of the leader’s exercise of power that we can see how much and in what ways the uniqueness of any leader’s personality has influenced the decisions to be made, how they were made, and of increasing importance how they were sold. I choose in this case to talk about George W. Bush as a political personality because it will help to link the events of his coming to political power with the policies with which he has identified his administration and, above all, with his so-far remarkable success as a politician. 1. The Bush Dynasty and Political Change Bush is not only the son of a recent sitting U.S. president; he is also a brother of the governor of the 4th largest state in the United States (Florida), and the grand- son of a former U.S. Senator, Prescott Bush. By virtually any standard, the Bush family, without ever having caught the imagination of the media as a political dynasty, unlike, for example, the Kennedy family, has nonetheless become one of the foremost political dynasties in American history. Especially notable is that across the generations George W. Bush reflects the culmination of changing mores of American politics and the changing geography and appeals of the Repu- blican party whose standard bearer he is. The President’s grandfather, Senator Bush, represented the state of Connecticut in the 1950s and early 60s. The northeastern quadrant of the U.S. was then firm Republican territory. (It is now about the most solidly Democratic in the U.S.) Senator Prescott Bush adhered to the more formal and self-effacing political styles of the day. Politically, he was close to the Eisenhower administration and was associated with Eisenhower’s effort to move the Republican party from isolationism to international engage- ment. Prescott’s son, President George H. W. Bush (Bush 41) and the current President’s father, represented the transition of Republican party politics from the northeast to the west, southwest, and south. The son (Bush 41), as a young adult, moved his family to Texas to enter the energy business from which he then began to build a political career. In fact, George H.W. Bush had, at best, mixed success in electoral politics; he became best known for the positions to which he was appointed as United Nations Ambassa- dor, Director of Central Intelligence, Chair of the Republican National Com- mittee, Ambassador to China, and then the Vice-Presidential nominee on the https://doi.org/10.1515/zfse.1.1.61 Generiert durch IP '170.106.202.226', am 28.09.2021, 12:04:32. Das Erstellen und Weitergeben von Kopien dieses PDFs ist nicht zulässig. 64 Bert A. Rockman ABHANDLUNGEN Reagan ticket. Bush 41 had become a professional at government, but his electoral magnetism was relatively weak, and his election to the presidency was mainly the result of there being little reason to upset the status quo that had become identified with Reagan. Part of Bush 41’s lackluster political appeal was that he was a transition figure (between Connecticut and Texas) who had not fully escaped the embrace of his low key and reticent Connecticut Yankee father and the more taciturn Yankee culture. Bush 41 had skills for the politics of governing but fewer for electoral politics as the style of electoral politics has emerged in the United States. Bush 41 could not stay scripted. He had difficulty identifying a message, and did not particularly like the clamor of electoral politics.