A review by jeremyanderberg
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham
4.0
I came away from Meacham's Destiny & Power with more respect for Bush than any of the other presidents I've read about thus far. He was a fundamentally decent man through and through. Jeb Bush, after being in politics himself, once marveled at the fact that America, even 30 years ago, would elect such a good human as his dad.
And while his legacy has generally been as a failed one-term president tucked between Reagan (who defines the 80s) and Clinton (who defines the 90s), Meacham convincingly writes that he deserves much more.
When Bush lost in '92, it was really a generational changing of the guard from WWII's Greatest Generation (Bush volunteered for WWII service and was shot down over the Pacific) to the Baby Boomers. Bush is the first to admit that he didn't run a good campaign. But his heart wasn't in it. After holding the highest mantle for 4 years, he was tired. Sick of the partisan bickering and how politics was put ahead of making the country a better place.
When it comes to presidential legacies, time is everything. Clinton's seems to only get more tarnished (deservedly so), while Bush's seems to be on the rise. Yes, he followed Reagan's coattails, but was a decidedly different kind of conservative who made plenty of enemies in his own party. He ushered in the end of the Cold War and navigated what post-Soviet world leadership should look like, successfully and quickly got Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait — and didn't get stuck there (as his son would a decade later), got the Americans With Disabilities Act passed, and never even sniffed at any kind of scandal.
Destiny & Power is just a superb biography of a man who has been serially and seriously underrated as POTUS. Books can and do have effects on presidential legacies (see McCullough's Truman); here's to hoping that this one can do that for the late, great George Herbert Walker Bush.
And while his legacy has generally been as a failed one-term president tucked between Reagan (who defines the 80s) and Clinton (who defines the 90s), Meacham convincingly writes that he deserves much more.
When Bush lost in '92, it was really a generational changing of the guard from WWII's Greatest Generation (Bush volunteered for WWII service and was shot down over the Pacific) to the Baby Boomers. Bush is the first to admit that he didn't run a good campaign. But his heart wasn't in it. After holding the highest mantle for 4 years, he was tired. Sick of the partisan bickering and how politics was put ahead of making the country a better place.
When it comes to presidential legacies, time is everything. Clinton's seems to only get more tarnished (deservedly so), while Bush's seems to be on the rise. Yes, he followed Reagan's coattails, but was a decidedly different kind of conservative who made plenty of enemies in his own party. He ushered in the end of the Cold War and navigated what post-Soviet world leadership should look like, successfully and quickly got Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait — and didn't get stuck there (as his son would a decade later), got the Americans With Disabilities Act passed, and never even sniffed at any kind of scandal.
Destiny & Power is just a superb biography of a man who has been serially and seriously underrated as POTUS. Books can and do have effects on presidential legacies (see McCullough's Truman); here's to hoping that this one can do that for the late, great George Herbert Walker Bush.