Close Look at a Focused President
In Reviews, Scholars Cite Bush's Discipline But Question Policies
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42544-2003Apr26.html
Sunday, April 27, 2003; Page A04
PRINCETON, N.J., April 26 -- President Bush has not been particularly friendly to historians: He signed an executive order making it easier for officials to classify documents, gave former presidents a veto over the release of their papers, and in most cases allows his staff to give only the most sanitized accounts of life in his White House.
But the 43rd president is providing rich fodder for those historians, offering a colorful and elusive target for a raft of professors trying to explain how a semi-prepared Texan, armed with simple eloquence and prickly certitude, managed to elevate the office but alienate much of the world after the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001.
Hugh Heclo, a public affairs professor at George Mason University, says Bush's presidency "is already destined for a remarkable place in the history books," not just because of his response to the terrorist attacks, but also because of his early decision to brush aside the conventional advice to proceed cautiously after the election debacle of 2000.
"The only modern president with less of a mandate was Gerald Ford in 1974, who received zero popular votes," Heclo said. But he added that in contrast to Bush's image as a slacker, "focus, self-control and unblinking perseverance prepared Bush to be a wartime president before he, or America, knew it was at war."
Bush has 43 percent of his term left -- 828 days down, 634 to go. Two-thirds of his "axis of evil" remains. Osama bin Laden as well as Saddam Hussein and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are unaccounted for. The economy dithers. His reelection race is still in previews.
But in the era of the 24-hour news cycle, history can't wait. Fifteen well-known presidential scholars packed a lecture hall at Princeton University on Friday and today for "The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment."
Liberals and other Bush skeptics were well-represented, and one presenter joked privately that the subtext of the sessions was: "This guy's crazy. Why is he so successful?"
Fred I. Greenstein of Princeton University, an authority on presidential leadership styles who organized the conference, said the consensus was that Bush has mastered the art of doing a few things well: He is very much in charge, sets a few priorities and sticks to them, and surrounds himself with very experienced people but is not intimidated by them.
"That might not keep him from driving the country off the cliff," Greenstein said. "But he would be a very good race-car driver."
Karen M. Hult, a political scientist at Virginia Tech, drew flow charts of the West Wing and found a White House "permeated with concerns about public relations" that drive policy deliberation and initiatives. She said Bush's aides accelerated the trend, building since President Richard M. Nixon, of using the presidency to serve "the permanent campaign."
A criticism from several seminars was that Bush, 56, has favored short-term victories and may leave messes behind. Allen Schick, a specialist in public finance at the University of Maryland, said the White House has mounted a misleading "no-fault defense" for rising deficits by blaming the terrorist attacks and a fragile economy rather than the $1.3 trillion tax cut that was the signature victory of Bush's first months in office.
"The Bush White House is not clueless on the fiscal course the president has charted," Schick said. Instead, he sees Bush as embarked on a strategy of depriving government of revenue so that Congress will be forced to restrain spending and unable to rescue Social Security and Medicare.
"Just as Reagan was succeeded by presidents who boosted taxes, so too will George W. Bush," Schick said. "It does not even matter whether his successor is a Republican or a Democrat."
While Schick alleged intended consequences, two former members of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff warned of unintended consequences from Bush's policy of preempting attacks by crushing states that harbor terrorists. Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, both senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, argued that administration arrogance has bred mistrust and resentment abroad, and could turn the United States into "a powerful pariah state that, in many instances, will prove unable to achieve its most important goals."
The Brookings scholars sought to debunk the notion that the terrorist attacks had changed Bush's worldview. They said today's foreign policy, which Daalder described as "killing people before they kill you," is a logical outcome of Bush's choice of "intelligent hardliners" rather than moderate Republicans as his campaign advisers. The scholars wrote that the al Qaeda hijackings affirmed Bush's conviction "that this dangerous world could be made secure only by the confident application of American power, especially its military power."
"George Bush is an agent of his own making," Daalder said. "This is a man who is in control. This is not a revolution of an administration. It is a revolution of one man."
Daalder contended Bush had sacrificed vital international cooperation by failing "to convince the rest of the world of the justice and logic of the Bush revolution."
Similarly, George Mason's Heclo asserted that Bush's "decisiveness and essentialism" have made him a skillful politician but have caused him to "lead without teaching."
Panelists marveled repeatedly at that decisiveness. Greenstein, pointing to Bush's determination to "campaign and govern on the basis of explicit objectives," noted a potential irony.
"Bush 41 may have failed to win reelection in 1998 because he lacked vision," Greenstein said. "If the aftermath of war in Iraq or Bush's quest for a supply-side remedy for a halting economy go wrong, Bush 43 may be undone because of his policy vision."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company |
