Sharp Differences Between Bush 41 and Bush 43
I've been quite critical of both Bush 41 and Bush 43, but I differ a bit from Russ in that I see very sharp differences between the two. More specifically, I see W's religiosity, his relationship with his father, and the roles of Rove and Cheney as much more than distractions.
For all his flaws, Bush 41 was a pragmatic realist (at times, a very brutal one), not an ideologue. And he hated the neocons. Brent Scowcroft, 41's best friend, saw the neocons swarming around "W" as early as '98, when Bush was still in Austin. He failed, of course, but I'm convinced he tried quite hard to stop the Iraq War--with 41's assent. That's a very real difference.
In addition, even though I believe W lied about how he was converted to Christianity (it wasn't Billy Graham who converted him, it was a guy named Arthur Blessitt), I talked to enough evangelicals (some in W's Bible study group) to take W's conversion quite seriously. Even if you don't, the Christian Right did. In any case, W was the de facto leader of the Christian Right when he was in the White House. His father was basically a secularist.
And this, I think, is the fundamental issue with W. He became the vehicle through whom two powerful movements came together--the Christian Right, a mass movement of tens of millions of evangelicals, and the neocons, a movement of right wing 'intellectual' policymakers.
As a result, the father and son differed profoundly on the Middle East--an issue where the neocons and the Christian Right come together. Yes, Bush senior was close to the Saudis, but there were also legitimate realists in his administration who took a very different tack from W in Middle East.
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Ed. note: This post was originally a comment here.
I think Bush could be smarter than he appeared sometimes (probably the better word is "craftier"), but I think the incuriousity was genuine (beyond his very narrow interests).
Here's a great scholarly piece someone did on “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism”:
http://www.kzoo.edu/polisci/dlipson/105/shogan.pdf
Bush was an anti-intellectual, like most of the Christian right, and this allowed him to come across as "authentic" and appeal to those constituencies. He had the talent of looking "authentic" while saying completely misleading things--"good old boy" that he was.
But the fundamentalist-tinged incuriousity was real.
The interesting thing is the GOP's attraction for "authentic," completely incurious (perhaps malleable) leaders. Hmmm. Bush the sequel?: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/15/the-palin-project/
May 27, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
The difference for me was that Bush 41 never struck me as a fraud, or a moron.
May 27, 2009 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
For decades foreign affairs was the province of Republican aristocrats -- Prescott Bush, Bill Donovan, John J. McCloy(?), the Dulles brothers, David Rockefeller -- that is, the New York "Establishment" of international bankers and lawyers. Then came Reagan and a bunch of admen from the West Coast.
It used to be all secrecy -- outside the Yale Club and the Old Barn mum was the word. Then, it all changed. Publicity and mustachioed villains -- Qaddafi, Castro, Ortega, Noriega (even "H.W." couldn't resist) and the Ayatollah -- international dandruff to be vanquished by the new Head and Shoulders.
George W. Bush was just the most recent in the recent line of Republican admen who aren't satisfied to whisper their successes.
May 27, 2009 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it matters how sincere Bush Jr is in his pius professions of faith, or his father's professions of moderation in all things Middle East, the real problem is that we have a hereditary plutocracy which has seized hold on the government to such an extent that we may never be out from under their destructive control.
This book isn't about the differences or similarities of the Bushes, it's about the control the family exercises in a democracy.
May 27, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
George W. Bush has had only two visible motivations in his political career: To anger his father, and frustrate his brother.
That's it, that's the grand strategy.
We invaded Iraq so W. could tell Bush41, "Hello, Dad? Remember that country you never conquered? Guess what I did, Dad!" (Imagine this in the voice of the song, "Hello, Dad? I'm In JAIL!" -- which has been W.'s theme his whole life.)
For Exhibit A, I remind everyone of Thanksgiving 2003. That was when W. flew to Iraq in secret to have Thanksgiving dinner with the troops. The not so widely covered aspect to the trip, though: Laura, the twins, Poppy, and Barbara were all left in Crawford, wondering where W. had gone AWOL to this time. Not even Bush41 was allowed to know, "for national security." The ludicrousness of a former president being a putative "security risk" should be plain. The whole thing was an exercise in shoving it all in Poppy's face. And it was eminently possible for W. to saunter in on Friday, to say, "Oh, Dad... Are you still here? Sorry I couldn't make it, Dad. I was in IRAQ!"
Thus, as far W. is concerned, of course the Mission Was Accomplished. And always will be.
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In re W.'s ostensible religiosity: You're right -- the evangelicals did believe. That's mostly because they were so earnestly hungry, and wanted to believe so badly. But it's already been covered in memoirs by David Kuo that in the Bush White House, they were regarded as "nuts."
Like George Burns said, The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
W.'s bamboozlement of the evangelicals is perhaps one of the most tragic aspects of his political life. They've believed in him so much more than he's believed in them.
May 27, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see W as the vehicle by which the neocons came to power and exercised power, harnessing the Christian Right gain that power. Evangelicals were used, so to speak, because the administration never operated as an expression of evangelism, as the evangelicals thought it would. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Feith, etc, but foremost and always Cheney, were the powers and fit their policies and language into the W. religious format -- and supported by an over influence of religiosity in the military.
May 28, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink