Customer Reviews

George Herbert Walker Bush (Penguin Lives)

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Wicker does a good job of concisely giving you Bush's early political life, his successful House campaigns, his unsuccessful Senate campaigns and what not. He also gives a decent description of Bush's role as ambassador, CIA director and chairman of the RNC in the 1970s. All through the era, Wicker paints Bush as a good soldier for the Republicans, and he comes off as an honorable man.

But once Bush becomes Vice President, Wicker is disappointed in him. Wicker sees Bush as a sell-out of his moderate Republican leanings for the red meat Reagan policies. He compares Bush to a chameleon that changes his colors to blend into the current campaign strategy. On top of that, Wicker contends that Bush could easily change political stripes because he lacked vision and purpose.

Okay, Bush lacked vision, but Wicker doesn't seem to value vision at all when it came from Ronald Reagan. In fact, in the middle of a biography of Bush, Wicker deems it necessary to tell us that Reagan's vision of a Soviet Free Europe had absolutely no role in bringing down that superpower. He's just got to tell us that Gorby saved the world not Reagan. That Gorby's goal was the opposite of Reagan's doesn't mean anything to this objective journalist. Does that mean that Gorby lacked vision too? Didn't that genius understand that people would be better off out from under his iron boot? Come to think of it, maybe Hitler would have fallen apart too if we'd just given him a chance. History is just replete with examples of totalitarian governments that renounce themselves and become free without outside agitation.

That's the main problem with Wicker's book. It's less a biography of Bush than a step by step criticism of Republican ideology and its failings. How dare a Republican administration treat Saddam Hussein nicely when he was beating up on the hated Iranians. Surely they knew 10 years in advance that he would invade Kuwait and we'd have to go to war with him.

Bush certainly lacked vision compared to Ronald Reagan. But after 8 years of Clinton, a person can sure grow found of decency, loyalty and personal honor. Wicker says as much during the last paragraph of the book. His conclusion is that Bush may have been a mess, but at least he was a brave guy who won the Gulf War. It was almost like the Penguin editors added that at the end so as not to upset Bush enthusiasts.

Every public figure should have positive and negative books written about him/her in order for students of history to get a wide picture. Books are part of the great debate. The trouble with this book is that it's not a good place for conjecture over substance. In a 200 page Penguin Lives' book, I would like to have an outline of the guy's life not a political fight. Wicker could have easily written a larger biography of Bush somewhere else and told us what a numbskull he was. It seems out of place in this series. Am I going to suffer this again if I read Penguin's books on Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther?

As an avid reader of the Penguin Lives and American Presidents series, I was surprised to see a Penguin Lives biography of a frankly unremarkable president. I have read seven other Penguin Lives (Napoleon, R.E. Lee, Lincoln, St. Augustine, Joan of Arc, Mao Zedong, Wilson) and have been impressed by both the depth of analysis and amount of historical content in these tightly written books.
This book is not up to the same standard and I'm disappointed in the editors of this otherwise unblemished series for putting their label on it. At 240 pages, Wicker's book is also longer than any other Penguin Lives book I have read. By contrast, Thomas Keneally's excellent P.L. biography of Abe Lincoln was 192 pages. Is there really more to say about Bush the First than the Great Emancipator?
First of all, the book is chock full of stupid factual mistakes. Two stood out as soon as I read them and undermined the entire book's credibility: First, Wicker writes that Richard Nixon resigned in 1984 (as opposed to 1974), and toward the end he claims that George W. Bush's presidency began in 2002 (as opposed to 2001). This sloppy scholarship made it less of a surprise to me that Wicker was a correspondent for the New York Times, a journal that after the Jayson Blair scandal has little credibility itself.
Aside from "Check Your Facts," another Writing 101 rule that Wicker ignores is "Provide Evidence For Your Claims." He calls the belief that Reagan's defense buildup accelerated the collapse of the USSR's economy, and thus Soviet communism, "a common misperception." Okay Tom, you claimed it, now back it up. He doesn't even try. I don't mind someone sharing an opinion, but don't insult my intelligence by expecting me to take it for granted! He offers other purely political opinions that he fails to support with any evidence, especially when outlining Bush's political collapse in 1992.
Overall, his thesis is fairly interesting, but also fairly obvious. Bush the First was a president of morals but little conviction who got to office on his friendliness and Reagan's coattails, and he was ultimately rejected by conservatives and the nation's voters because of it. I can think of forty-two other presidents whose biographies I would rather read.
The subject, GHWB's life, is admittedly quite interesting. He held a wider variety of government jobs than any other president I can think of. While George H.W. Bush's presidency was uninspring and thus not a great idea for a biography, it is Tom Wicker's sloppy fact-checking and unsupported editorializing that make this book truly stink.

I've read four or five other Penguin Lives biographies besides this one of George H.W. Bush, and I'm generally a fan of the series and the approach. Designed to be summary overviews, writers are forced to choose key elements and facts from their subject's lives and (ideally) extrapolate them into a portrait that, while not exhaustive in the details, at least gives the reader an idea of who he was, why he did what he did, and how it matters to history. Good writers in this series have managed to pull this off. Others haven't done so well. Unfortunately, Tom Wicker's contribution is one of the latter.

The first tip-off, of course, is Wicker himself. As another reviewer points out -- absolutely correctly -- journalism and biography are different skill sets. It may be too much to ask a journalist who has spent years covering his subject up close to then turn around and have the kind of analytical distance a good bio really requires. This isn't to say a biographer can't have opinions. But they shouldn't be *a priori* ones, and it's too easy to suspect Wicker of having had his mind made up about GHWB before he started to write.

Still, Wicker does hit on many of the major themes of Bush's life -- ones other biographers have identified as well: his sense of *noblesse oblige,* his lifetime of high achievement in most everything he's tried, his friendliness, his history of "running to the right" and then governing from the center. Much of this he interprets as signs of overweening ambition, ruthlessness in destroying opponents, and a desire, above all, to be president of the United States. He paints Bush as a man who played at being conservative because he needed to in order to win election, who swallowed his pride and his centrist principles to serve uncomplainingly under Reagan, but who was unable to win the loyalty of conservatives who anyway tanked the GOP's chances with their divisive 1992 convention in Houston.

Along the way, Wicker recounts many of the highlights of Bush's years as veep and in the White House -- not only Desert Storm and the '92 election (though he devotes the most space to those), but also half-forgotten episodes like the John Tower confirmation fight and the Panama invasion. He also devotes a good deal of time to a what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it of Bush's role in Iran-Contra. All of this is decent history, and of course belongs in any biography of George Bush. But it seemed as much like a chance for Wicker to rehearse old grudges against, and take swipes at, Reagan and the Republicans. This is another problem with writing biographies of your contemporaries.

As a general rule, the Penguin Lives series is a good way to get a quick thumbnail portrait of the men and women featured in its books. But they're not of uniform quality, and some, like this volume, will definitely leave you wanting more. George H.W. Bush strikes me as an interesting historical figure whose legacy (like J.Q. Adams' or William Howard Taft's) will be seen as coming from someplace other than his years in the White House. There's certainly room for a short summary biography of him, but this title isn't quite it.

Well, I think Wicker is a little down on our 41st President. Wicker describes Bush Senior as the person that would do anything to get elected. He also states that Bush had few convictions or beliefs. I will echo what previous reviewers have already said, journalism is sometimes not good history. My own opinion is that Bush Senior was probably a better President than the two men who followed him. However, historians will determine that and not some skeptical New York journalist.

The summary history of George H. W. Bush was nice but brief (excepting the critical remarks). The reader will get an overview history of Bush Senior in this book.

I found this book to be a mere thumbnail sketch of Bush's long service to America, and I found its tone insulting. Wicker constantly derides Bush for his geniality, his many friendships, and for his constant `thank you' notes. I guess the brusque Nixon to Wicker is `one of us', while the polite Bush isn't. Doesn't that say more about Wicker than it does about Bush?

Though Bush was a World War II veteran, a Congressman, a Senate nominee, Ambassador to the United Nations, Envoy to China, GOP Chairman, Director of the CIA, Vice President and President, Wicker seems to think that Bush was merely all `resume', and because he was so `nice' he was easy to lift, with his successes merely a result of the patronage of the powerful (mainly presidents.) What Wicker fails to understand is that Bush was appointed to those positions of power prior to the presidency because he is a man of intelligence and skill capable to preside over entire organizations with style and class.

Wicker grudgingly gives some credit to Bush for his leadership during the Gulf War, but not nearly enough. And Bush's expertise in foreign policy is dismissed by Wicker, who thinks that Bush merely stood back and allowed events to occur, thus giving a sense of `calm'. (Anyone seeking a real understanding of Bush's contribution to foreign policy should read the book he co-authored with Brent Scowcroft, `A World Transformed.)

In conclusion, I don't recommend this book at all. I could have put up with the condescension if it at least provided some sort of depth, but this book is unbelievably shallow.

This brief look at our 41st president simply does not compare to a number of the books in the Penguin Lives series. As a number of the other reviews correctly note, Tom Wicker goes over the top in painting the first President Bush as a "win at all costs" political operator. While Wicker gives Bush patria high marks for his leadership in the Gulf War, he overlooks a number of the Bush administration's successes and failures to focus on Bush's tenure as Reagan's VP including a long and not quite convincing "did he or didn't he" look at Iran-Contra. If the first President Bush is going to be remembered for anything, it might be his skillful leadership on the global stage during the complete meltdown of the Soviet Union and its allies and the unification of Germany. Wicker simply does not focus on this.

The main problem is Wicker falls into a trap that ensnares too much of of the American media these days. Wicker is more concerned with politics and elections than governing. Even in covering politics, Wicker often misses some important threads. For example Wicker takes Bush to task for not constantly remaining a Republican in the line of Nelson Rockefeller and Wendall Wilkie or even his father, Sen. Prescott Bush. Fair enough. But Bush was not on the political stage in Connecticut in the 1950s and Wicker simply does not choose to recognize a number of different factors. For better or worse, in his time on the political stage, Bush changed but so did the nation. Wicker simply can not or will not recognize how fluid the nation was in the later half of the twentieth century and how economic, social and demographic changes greatly reshaped American politics.

This is not to say that the book is mere partisan screed or is useless. Wicker offers an excellent and concise account of Bush's unlikely rise in Texas politics and even his first moments in the national political spotlight (such as his tenure as RNC chair). But Wicker simply fails when his subject becomes VP and President. Those are the key years of any look at George H.W. Bush and it is where Wicker drops the ball.

If you want a quick easy read at 219 pages this might fit the bill for you. I was hoping for more insight into the mans life. If this is indicative of the Penguin Lives series then they are great at telling you something about the man in a short book. I am about to finish my quest of reading a biography on every president, and with the exception of William Howard Taft, Bush has been the hardest to find anything about. Maybe there wasn't that much to the man, but I find this hard to believe. To a man every President to this point has been a complex and intriguing character.If you are really into political biography I would recommend anything from the Signature Series from American Political Biography Press.

Tom Wicker contributes the latest election year biography of the president's father. This volume is an improvement over his similar work on Dwight Eisenhower for Times Books' American Presidents series. That volume suffered from an overabundance of journalism and not enough scholarship, in that Wicker took his newsman's ideas about Eisenhower (which really hadn't changed in the last 50 years) and imposed them on his work. One expected to hear the Adlai Stevenson jingle playing in the background.

His biography of GHW Bush is better in this regard, but suffers from some of the same flaws. For example, you'll never convince Tom Wicker that Reagan was anything other than an idiot that Bush more or less suffered nobly for eight years (along with the rest of the nation which inexplicably kept electing him). And Wicker will have none of this foolishness that it was the defense buildup of the eighties that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Curiously, he gives no alternate explanation for this, I guess because it couldn't possibly have been attributable to Reagan's leadership (or Bush's for that matter).

He gives ample praise to Bush for the coalition he built for Gulf War I, though it does come off as backhanded, since he might be insinuating that the father outdid the son in this regard when it came to Gulf War II. And a good portion of the book is spent reliving the debacle of the 1992 election, which has Wicker excoriating Bush for miscues that were later duplicated during the Clinton Administration, but I guess were okay then. For example, it's too bad that Bush stooped to low tactics in regard to Willie Horton and campaigning against Clinton's supposed character flaws, but Clinton's routine lies about himself and Bush were apparently fair game since they aren't mentioned.

The point of this review is not to say this is a bad book. It is as fair an assessment of the first Bush presidency as you are likely to get from the former Timesman. It might even be characterized as admirable given the outright lies that are being told about the Bushes in order to keep a dynasty from flourishing. It should be noted, though, that the reader can sense Wicker trying to be "fair" with Bush, and it feels awkward. While this is by no means a hatchet job, its tone at times is at times gratingly patronizing.

But, it's better than you could have expected from, say, Anthony Lewis.

I always consider George Herbert Walker Bush the original President Bush, but I prefer to think of him as a person with a clandestine history that has been hidden on a more ominous level, as a prime character, along with Jack Ruby, James Jesus Angleton, E. Howard Hunt, and David Atlee Phillips in PLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Mark Lane, an investigation of the question: Was the CIA involved in the assassination of JFK? In the case of the original President Bush, the success of some of his children is the most obvious evidence that America is currently being ruled by children of the people who killed President Kennedy. Tom Wicker is not so outrageously opposed to the undercover aspects of modern despicabilities, but he is capable of considering plenty of deep doo-doo on the question of whether the original George Bush was a wimp, as implied by the cover of the October 11, 1987 `Newsweek' which is quoted as saying, "George Bush: Fighting the Wimp Image." (p. 86). There is no index for the Penguin Life series book, GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH by Tom Wicker, but source notes on pages 221-228 reveal books with many details to support Wicker's observations.

Not everyone in America has been paying close attention to the personality factors that are deemed important in modern politics. With a majority of the voting citizens being capable of putting anyone they choose into the presidency, and people they hardly know into every other position, intellectuals are in an absurd position of trying to find ideas that correspond to events which are much too complex to conform to easy explanations. Huge amounts of money, a trillion here, a trillion there, are still considered significant in trying to frame political arguments, but few people can articulate any basis for expecting such huge amounts of money to materialize. In the case of the Bush family, much of their wealth followed the formation of Zapata Petroleum, which paid $850,000 to lease land in Coke County, Texas, resulting in seventy-one oil wells pumping more than a thousand barrels of oil a day by the end of 1953. (p. 12). Bush had enough money to join a partnership that opened the Commercial Bank and Trust Company. In 1958 Bush became president of Zapata Offshore and went into undersea drilling. (pp. 12-13).

Tom Wicker hardly appreciates the satisfaction which becomes a part of the life of those people who are where the smart money is and who expect politics to be a continuation of social structures in which they have been successful. But most people don't measure up to the high standards of Skull and Bones, the CIA, or American foreign policy as conducted from the Oval Office. Tom Wicker has a depth of intellectual background which relies mainly on skepticism about policy assertions to arrive at behind-the-scenes explanations. A few things became public in instant headlines, such as Barbara Bush saying, "that four million dollar ----- I can't say it but it rhymes with rich" (p. 672) in 1984 when "Bush resented the fact that reporters then began to search his tax records," (p. 71). Wicker reports that the Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost by an electoral count of 525 to 13, without repeating the `Where's the beef?' line harped on by Walter Mondale, who was sure tax increases would be needed to avoid trillions of national debt now partly funded by baby boomer Social Security contributions that are considered worthless i.o.u.s in the Oval Office.

On the ragged edges of GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, there is little doubt that competent people can engage in meritorious service to a common cause. Bush was brilliant as chairman of the Republican National Committee who showed up at a cabinet meeting on August 6, 1974 and "Nixon did not call on him, but Bush spoke up anyway. Watergate was the vital question, he said; it was sapping public confidence in the president, the party, the economy, the country as a whole. Therefore Nixon should resign, the party chairman told the president to his face--while the cabinet and others present sat in shocked silence." (p. 35). People listening to tapes could hear Nixon agreeing to `Bob Haldeman's cover-up plan for the FBI to stay out of a supposed "national security" incident.' (Note, p. 34). Senators like Barry Goldwater realized that Nixon could lose an impeachment battle on August 6, so Bush was capable of stating an obvious conclusion precisely when it needed to be acknowledged. Opinions among those who have been sampling deep doo-doo recently now differ mainly on what form the next disgrace to preside in the Oval Office will turn out to be.

Once again Tom Wicker has made American history accessible. In 219 pages of easy reading he has given us the essential George H. W. Bush. As a Democrat, I deem Wicker to completely fair. His major points are that Bush I's historical reputation rests on the decisions he made regarding the Gulf War. Even those who believe sanctions against Saddam should have given more time, will have to admit that the President may well have been right. Historically, his decision may have been the equivalent of the French kicking Hitler out of the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936 and avoiding WWII. However, Wicker has plenty of fodder for those of us who generally do not admire Bush I and Bush II. This includes the constant attack on opponents on phony issues rather than relying on their own merits. Wicker also takes us through the less laudible moments in Bush's career: kicking Geraldine Ferraro's ass in 1984; his cynical appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court; his selection of Dan Quayle as VP, dropping bombs on Panamanian civilians for no good reason and Iran-Contra.