Flashbacks
Close Up: George W. Bush
Two years ago a presidential historian offered insight into the mind and
career of President George W. Bush.
.....
F ew Presidents have been scrutinized in the pages of /The Atlantic
Monthly/ as extensively as George W. Bush. In addition to publishing
many articles on Bush's policies, the magazine has tackled his time at
Yale
debating style
most recently, his approach to Iraq
Brookhiser's "The Mind of George W. Bush,"
cover article for April 2003, that perhaps provides most insight into
the way he thinks and works. Brookhiser, a biographer of several
presidents, suggests that the personalities of most leaders fall into
one of several types--"extroverts" like Truman, "ringmasters" like
Franklin Roosevelt, or "scholars" like Jefferson. But Bush, he suggests,
does not fit easily into any category. He is best defined, in
Brookhiser's view, by his humor, his decisiveness, and perhaps above
all, by his faith.
Bush, Brookhiser points out, is unique as the first commander-in-chief
to hold an M.B.A. Throughout his career, the people-management skills he
learned in graduate school have served him well. As a young businessman,
for example, despite his lack of expertise in the oil-exploration
industry, he was very good at attracting investors to his oil companies.
And in 1989, when he bought the Texas Rangers with a group of business
partners, he was able not only to drum up public funding for a new
stadium but to mollify the competing interests of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Years later, when he assumed the presidency, he was able to apply
lessons he had learned from observing his father's "notoriously badly
run" White House, and thus to safeguard against clashing egos by
fostering a spirit of teamwork. "Bush was determined," Brookhiser
writes, "not to reproduce the fireworks of his father's staff."
Bush put together a cabinet largely selected from the ranks of his
father's and the Ford Administrations--Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald
Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice--experienced policy-makers who could be
counted on to be "solid junior managers." Aware of his cabinet's
extensive experience and of his own comparatively limited experience, he
adopted a management approach known as "questioning and listening," in
which he solicits opinions from an array of well-informed people and
then synthesizes a stance on the issue for himself. Brookhiser points to
Bush's deliberation on the question of stem-cell research as an example:
Bush is not a scientist. To address the stem-cell problem, he would
have to rely heavily on expert advice. But because he had not had a
stem-cell team during the [2000] campaign (the issue was not then in
play), he had to create one from scratch. Pro-life lobbyists--people
like Darla St. Martin [of the National Right to Life
Committee]--were available. The opinions of Republican senators such
as Senators Orrin Hatch and Bill Frist (each of whom supported at
least some types of stem-cell research) were out there as political
givens; the opinion of an iconic figure like Nancy Reagan would have
to be taken into account. Bush also turned to academic pro-life
ethicists--for example, Leon Kass, of the University of Chicago.
Of course, such methods, Brookhiser notes, are not without their
limitations; though Bush regularly consults an array of experts on a
given subject, those experts tend to represent a limited political
spectrum. "Bush may a free-range animal," Brookhiser writes, but he has
a habitat, in which he stays."
Though some observers have criticized Bush's decision-making processes
as too instinctual and lacking in nuance--and thus as suggestive of a
limited capacity for sophisticated thought, several people who have
actually worked with him, such as Newt Gingrich and Senator Charles
Schumer (the senior Democrat from New York), told Brookhiser that Bush
is a "bright man" with a "considerable capacity to focus." Moreover,
though he relies heavily on adviser expertise, he brings to bear a
personal clarity when it comes to broad strategic goals.
We do not yet have the benefit of history in judging this President, and
many of his policy decisions are not fully played out. It may not be for
several more years to come, therefore, that the nature of his legacy
will become clear.
"If he prevails [with respect to Iraq]," Brookhiser writes, "Americans
will want to understand how he did it. If he fails, he and the decisions
that misfired will be disgraced and dismissed."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200410u/fb2004-10-28.
All material copyright The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
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