Abstract
It has been argued throughout this book that presidents are entitled to be judged on their own terms rather than on those preferred by their political opponents, media pundits or academics. As a guardian president Bush expressed boundless faith in the American political and economic system.1 Furthermore, in contrast to reforming presidents of the past like Wilson, the two Roosevelts and Johnson, he regarded extensions of the role of government without enthusiasm. He shared Eisenhower’s belief that presidents had a responsibility ‘to restrain and limit government, not to force it to fulfil any great mission or obligation.’2
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Notes
See, for example, George Bush, Looking Forward ( London: The Bodley Head, 1988 ), p. 193.
Alan Brinkley, as quoted in Robert J. Samuelson, ‘There’s Good Reason To Like Ike,’ Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 22–28 October 1990, p. 31.
R. W. Apple, ‘In the Capital’, New York Times, 29 March 1989, p. A16.
Michael Mandelbaum, ‘The Bush Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy, Spring 1991, Vol. 70, pp. 5–22.
Michael Elliott, ‘The Gipper vs the Evil Empire’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 22–28 August 1994, p. 35.
Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War ( Boston: Little Brown, 1993 ), p. 469.
See James MacGregor Burns, The Power to Lead ( New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984 ), p. 16.
See Jonathan Rauch, ‘The Regulatory President’, National Journal, 30 November 1991, pp. 2902–2906
and Matthew P. Weinstock, ‘Running On His Record’, Occupational Hazards, October 1992, Vol. 54, pp. 75–79.
Pierre Kim, ‘From Carter to Reagan to Bush’, Policy Review, No. 63, Winter 1993, pp. 18–19.
See Charles Kolb, White House Daze: The Unmaking of Domestic Policy in the Bush Years (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 73
and John Podhoretz, Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White House Follies 1989–1993 ( New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993 ), p. 227.
See David O’Brien, ‘The Reagan Judges: His Most Enduring Legacy’, in Charles O. Jones, The Reagan Legacy ( Chatham NJ: Chatham House, 1988 ).
Neil A. Lewis, ‘Selection of Conservative Judges Insures a Presidential Legacy’, New York Times, 1 July 1992.
Joan Biskupic, ‘The Reagan-Bush Court Is Back To Keep The Nation Guessing’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 12–18 October 1992, p. 32.
Ruth Marcus, ‘It’s All in the Interpretation for Justices Souter and Thomas’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 13–19 July 1992, p. 31.
Jeremy Rabkin, ‘At the President’s Side: The Role of the White House Counsel in Constitutional Policy’, Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 56, No. 4, Autumn 1993, pp. 63–98.
John E. Yang and Sharon Lafraniere, ‘George Bush’s Eminence Grise’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2–8 December 1991, p. 14.
Charles Tiefer, The Semi-Sovereign Presidency ( Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994 ), p. 34.
Neil Lewis, ‘Turning Loyalty and Service to Bush Into Power as Presidential Counsel’, New York Times, 12 December 1990, p. B12.
David Broder, ‘Getting Government Moving Again’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 7–13 September 1992, p. 4.
David Broder, ‘Bush Showed He Can Fight, but Does He Know How to Lead’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 20–26 March 1989, p. 23.
Robin Toner, ‘For Bush and Congress, Some Spirited Battles But No Full Scale War’, New York Times, 9 August 1989, p. B6.
Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington DC: CQ Press, 1986), Chapter 2 passim.
Quoted in Andrew Rosenthal, ‘Bush in a World Remade’, New York Times, 25 June 1992, p. Al.
Robert Novak, ‘How George Bush May Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 24–30 August 1992, p. 23.
Terry Eastland, Energy in the Executive ( New York: The Free Press, 1992 ), pp. 53–54.
Theodore Lowi, The Personal Presidency ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985 ), p. 59.
For the advantages of simplicity in political rhetoric see John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ), p. 131.
Keith Schneider ‘Bush on the Environment: A Record of Contradictions’, New York Times, 4.July 1992, p. Al.
For some of the arguments in favour of balance in such matters see C. Boyden Gray and David B. Rivkin, ‘A “No Regrets” Environmental Policy’, Foreign Policy, No. 83, Summer 1991, pp. 47–65.
George Will, ‘A Figure of Genuine Pathos’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 3–9 August 1992, p. 29.
Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame, Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush ( New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992 ), Chapter 1.
Gail Sheehy, Character: America’s Search for Leadership ( New York: Bantam Books, 1990 ), p. 198.
Interview with C. Boyden Gray. The articles in question were Ruth Marcus, ‘What Does Bush Really Believe?; Civil Rights Record Illustrates Shifts’,The Washington Post, 18 August 1992, p. Al
and Jefferson Morley, ‘Bush and the Blacks: An Unknown Story’, New York Review of Books, 16 January 1992, pp. 19–26.
Dan Goodgame, ‘Trumpeting Victory in Retreat’, Time (International Edition), 2 December 1991, pp. 68–69.
William Raspberry, ‘Bush’s Missing Drummer’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 2–8 December 1991, p. 29. Kolb, op. cit., p. 258.
For the opposite view that the Democrats ‘beat a total retreat on quotas’ see C. Boyden Gray, ‘Civil Rights: We Won, They Capitulated’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 18–24 November 1991, p. 29.
Robert Shogan, The Riddle of Power: Presidential Leadership From Truman to Bush ( New York: Dutton, 1991 ), p. 264.
Quoted in Martin Walker and Simon Tisdall, ‘Bush Says Sorry For Tax U-turn’, The Guardian (London), 4 March 1992, p. 1.
Michael Duffy, ‘Is Bush Getting a Free Ride’, Time (International Edition), 27 April 1992, pp. 43–45.
See Joshua Muravchik ‘Why the Democrats Finally Won’, Commentary, Vol. 95, January 1993, pp. 17–22.
John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 ), p 336.
Michael Nelson (ed.), The Elections of 1992 ( Washington DC: CQ Press, 1993 ), p. 81.
Dan Qyale, Standing Firm ( New York: Harper Collins, 1994 ), p. 355.
Maureen Dowd, ‘A Presidency Lost: Bush and Campaign Were Out of Touch’, International Herald Tribune, 6 November 1992, p. 1.
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© 1998 David Mervin
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Mervin, D. (1998). Conclusions. In: George Bush and the Guardianship Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26719-4_10
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