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Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by [Jon Meacham]

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Jon Meacham

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this brilliant biography, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush.

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.

His was one of the great American lives. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday and at age twenty was shot down on a combat mission over the Pacific. He married young, started a family, and resisted pressure to go to Wall Street, striking out for the adventurous world of Texas oil. Over the course of three decades, Bush would rise from the chairmanship of his county Republican Party to serve as congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, head of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China, director of Central Intelligence, vice president under Ronald Reagan, and, finally, president of the United States. In retirement he became the first president since John Adams to see his son win the ultimate prize in American politics.

With access not only to the Bush diaries but, through extensive interviews, to the former president himself, Meacham presents Bush’s candid assessments of many of the critical figures of the age, ranging from Richard Nixon to Nancy Reagan; Mao to Mikhail Gorbachev; Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld; Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton. Here is high politics as it really is but as we rarely see it.

From the Pacific to the presidency, Destiny and Power charts the vicissitudes of the life of this quietly compelling American original. Meacham sheds new light on the rise of the right wing in the Republican Party, a shift that signaled the beginning of the end of the center in American politics. Destiny and Power is an affecting portrait of a man who, driven by destiny and by duty, forever sought, ultimately, to put the country first.

Praise for Destiny and Power

“Should be required reading—if not for every presidential candidate, then for every president-elect.”—The Washington Post

“Reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating biography of the forty-first president.”—The Dallas Morning News

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Jon] Meacham’s book should be required reading—if not for every presidential candidate, then for every president-elect.”—The Washington Post

“Destiny and Power reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it. If Meacham is sometimes polite to a fault, Destiny and Power does not suffer for it. His kinder, gentler approach succeeds in making George H. W. Bush a more sympathetic—and more complex—figure than if the former president had written his own doorstopper after all.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, put an enormous amount of work into this volume: nine years of interviews, full access to the diaries of George H. W. and Barbara Bush, and an open door to family members and friends. Add to this Meacham’s balanced journalism and smooth writing, and you have a fascinating biography of the forty-first president.”—The Dallas Morning News

“When we rank, reconsider, laud, or denounce past Presidents, living or dead, we are taking stock of our own times. In that sense, the vindication of George H. W. Bush is a reflection of what we know we’ve lost. Jon Meacham’s new biography of Bush, Destiny and Power, makes that plain from its very first pages.”—The New Yorker

“Graceful prose, backed by diligent mining of the archives and access to an oral diary that Bush dictated throughout his presidency . . . The story of the forty-first man to hold the office sheds light not only on the country we were, but the one we’ve become.”—Los Angeles Times

“Meacham is a superb historian and he weaves a compelling historical narrative, drawing heavily on Bush’s own contemporaneous diaries. The result is a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into high-stakes decision making in a rapidly evolving world.”—The Seattle Times

“Through one man’s long journey through politics, we see America’s changing attitudes toward power and duty.”—Time

“Illuminating . . . written from Bush’s perspective but with a journalist’s rigor . . . George and Barbara Bush have provided extraordinary cooperation [for] an account of his life and presidency that has depth and value.”—USA Today (4 out of 4 stars)

“A gripping new biography of the forty-first president.”—The Economist

“Meticulously researched . . . a revealing biography that should serve as the starting point for future evaluations of the forty-first president.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A vivid, well-written account.”—Publishers Weekly

“The more time passes, the more the dust settles, the clearer it becomes that George H. W. Bush and the strengths of character he brought to his long service to this country deserve more attention and appreciation. And now comes Destiny and Power, Jon Meacham’s altogether fair, insightful biography of the forty-first president—a portrait made especially compelling by the author’s remarkable access to Bush’s private White House diaries. This is a timely, first-rate book!”—David McCullough

“What a spectacular and moving portrait this is—not only of a remarkably classy man but of the era that shaped him! It is hard to imagine a biographer more fitted than Jon Meacham to write what will surely be the definitive work on George Herbert Walker Bush.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

“This astonishing book is both timely and timeless. Based on candid interviews and intimate letters and diaries, it provides a deep insight into the character of George H. W. Bush, flavored with colorful anecdotes depicting his relationships with people ranging from Gorbachev and Reagan to his sons George and Jeb. The result is a fascinating and insightful portrayal of the life of an exemplary American citizen.”—Walter Isaacson

“Jon Meacham’s timely and intimate biography of George Bush 41 is a welcome reminder of this modest president’s call to service, from the cockpits of World War II to the Oval Office and the end of the Cold War. Here you’ll meet a man of patrician manners, wartime heroics, Texas assimilation, party and personal loyalty, with a refined sense of power that carried him into history. Meet the George Bush you didn’t know.”—Tom Brokaw

“This riveting biography by the incomparable Jon Meacham gives George H. W. Bush his well-deserved place in history. Destiny and Power is full of surprises, revealing 41’s important role in scene after crucial historical scene of the past seven decades. President Bush used to say that he could never quite convey his “heartbeat” to Americans. Now, using a treasure of heretofore unseen diaries and other documents, as well as his own detailed interviews, Meacham takes us behind closed doors to show us what this sometimes misunderstood leader was really like.”—Michael Beschloss

About the Author

Jon Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston. Meacham, who teaches at Vanderbilt University and at The University of the South, is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One

The Land of the Self-Made Man

★

Is it not by the courage always to do the right thing that the fires of hell shall be put out?

—The Reverend James Smith Bush, Episcopal clergyman and great-grandfather of George H. W. Bush

Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the one all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life.

—Charles Francis Adams, Jr.

To Samuel Prescott Bush—“Bushy” to his beloved first wife, Flora—the ocean seemed to go on forever. The view from the top of the Hotel Traymore overlooking the boardwalk in Atlantic City at Illinois Avenue was grand, and unique: A publicist for the hotel assured the press that the Traymore roof was “the most elevated point on the Atlantic coast south of the Statue of Liberty.” (“In absence of evidence to the contrary,” a reporter added, “we take his word for it.”) A prominent Midwestern industrialist, Bush was at the Jersey Shore in the early summer of 1915 to take part in what was described as “the highest golf driving contest ever held in the history of the great Scotch game.”

In from Columbus, Ohio, where he presided over Buckeye Steel Castings, a manufacturer of railroad parts, the tall, angular Bush looked out from a makeshift tee atop the brick hotel two hundred feet above the beach. A favorite of well-heeled visitors to Atlantic City, the domed Traymore had just undergone renovations that Bankers’ Magazine solemnly reported had turned the hotel into a showplace with “700 rooms and 700 baths”—the kind of construction project that was making grandeur ever more accessible to men who were building a prosperous business class.

S. P. Bush was one such man. The son of an Episcopal clergyman, Bush, who was to become George H. W. Bush’s paternal grandfather, had spent much of his childhood in New York and New Jersey. After college, Bush went west, finding his future at Buckeye, a company backed by the railroad baron E. H. Harriman and run, in the first decade of the new century, by a brother of John D. Rockefeller, Frank. President of Buckeye since 1908 and a director of numerous railway companies, S. P. Bush had grown rich. Now standing on the roof of the Hotel Traymore, he was part of an emerging American elite—one based not on birth but on success and achievement. Facing the Atlantic, in a long-sleeved dress shirt and formal trousers, Bush, driver in hand, took his stance and swung smoothly. He connected just the way he wanted to—cleanly and perfectly. The ball rose rapidly, a tiny spinning meteor. Bush’s shot streaked out over the blue-green water, soaring over the white-capped waves before disappearing deep in the distance, the sound of its splash lost in the wind and surf.

Bush won, of course. Though his opponents did what they could, they failed to surpass Bush’s dramatic drive. It was not the most serious of competitions, but that did not matter. The New York Times reported Bush’s triumph. A contest was a contest.

To win was to be alive; to compete was as natural as breathing—a common code among the ancestors of George Herbert Walker Bush. Theirs is a story of big men and strong women, ambitious husbands and fathers taking unconventional risks—in business, in politics, even in religion—while wives and mothers who might have expected fairly staid lives adapt and emerge as impressive figures in their own rights. Across more than two centuries, maternal and paternal lines reinforced and supported one another, producing generation after generation driven by both the pursuit of wealth and by a sense of public service.

Bush’s ancestors were in America from the beginning. Some arrived on the Mayflower, settling in New England and New York. On the night of Tuesday, April 18, 1775, the Massachusetts patriot Dr. Samuel Prescott, a Bush forebear, rode with Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn Concord of the pending British invasion. Only Prescott made it all the way through the night.

Obadiah Bush, George H. W. Bush’s great-great-grandfather, was born in 1797, served in the War of 1812 at age fifteen, and became a schoolmaster in Cayuga County, New York. He married a pupil (a young woman whom family tradition recalled as the “comely” Harriet Smith), and went into business in Rochester. He fell on hard times and, in distress, unsuccessfully turned to Senator William Seward (who would join Lincoln’s cabinet much later) in search of government preferment in San Francisco or in Rio de Janeiro.

Gold, or at least the prospect of it, saved him, then killed him. Obadiah grew obsessed with news of the gold rush in California, journeying west to look into mining opportunities in the San Francisco area. He liked what he found but died before he could collect his family and permanently relocate.

Obadiah’s eldest son, James Smith Bush, who would become George H. W. Bush’s great-grandfather, barely made it out of infancy. Born in 1825, he was described as “a puny and sickly child, of fragile build, with weak lungs.” A doctor was harsh with Harriet Bush, James Smith Bush’s mother: “You had better knock him in the head, for [even] if he lives he will never amount to anything.” He survived, and, in 1841, at sixteen, enrolled at Yale College. James Smith Bush was popular and charming, a good student, and an excellent athlete, especially at crew. “His classmates speak of him as tall and slender in person, rather grave of mien, except when engaged in earnest conversation or good-humored repartee; ever kind and considerate, and always a gentleman—still very strong in his likes and dislikes,” a friend of Bush’s wrote. “He made many friends.”

These and other family traits became evident in Bush’s life during his Yale years. There was a restlessness, an eagerness to break away from the established order of life, but not so much that one could not return. There was a kind of moderation, a discomfort with extremes or dogma. There was a capacity to charm and a fondness for attractive women. And there was also a sense of familial duty. At college he realized that his father, Obadiah, was short of money, and so James Smith Bush sought professional security in the law. On a visit to Saratoga Springs as a young attorney, he was dazzled by the passing figure of Sarah Freeman, the daughter of a local doctor. She was, it was said, “the most beautiful woman of this place,” and Bush fell in love. They married in October 1851, and he took her to live in Rochester.

It was a love match. Bush adored his bride, and the world seemed a brighter, happier place to him with her in it. Then, eighteen months after the wedding, Sarah Freeman Bush died, devastating her young husband into near insensibility. Shattered by the loss of his wife, Bush sought consolation in religion. Initially a Presbyterian, he had become an Episcopalian under Sarah’s influence. Now, in the wake of the calamity of her death, Bush was ordained a priest and took charge of Grace Church in Orange, New Jersey, in June 1855. He eventually found another great love: Harriet Eleanor Fay. Like Bush’s first wife, Harriet was said to be “brilliant and beautiful.” The poet James Russell Lowell admired her extravagantly. “She possessed the finest mind,” Lowell remarked, “and was the most brilliant woman, intellectually, of the young women of my day.” Bush’s head turned anew, he married Harriet Fay at Trinity Church in New York in 1859. The marriage was a happy one, producing four children, including, on Sunday, October 4, 1863, a son they named Samuel Prescott Bush—S.P.

While Obadiah appears to have had a gambler’s temperament, James Smith Bush was moderate in tone and philosophy. Amid a controversy over the teaching of the Bible in public schools, the Reverend Bush preached a sermon in support of the separation of church and state. A strong Union man during the Civil War, Bush spoke to public gatherings celebrating the North’s triumphs at Vicksburg and at Gettysburg and reportedly flew the American flag at his church against the wishes of the neighborhood’s Southern sympathizers. After the grim news from Ford’s Theatre on the evening of Good Friday, 1865, Bush wrote a sermon to commemorate the martyred Abraham Lincoln. “Be assured, my brethren, as that great and good man did not live in vain, so he has not died in vain,” Bush told his Easter congregation that Sunday. “The President was an instrument in the hands of God.”

The popular Bush served as chaplain on an expedition around Cape Horn to California under Commodore John “Fighting Jack” Rodgers and spent several years at Grace Church on Nob Hill in San Francisco before returning east in 1872, where he became rector of the Church of the Ascension at West Brighton, Staten Island. There the strains of the second great spiritual crisis of Bush’s life became apparent. Forged in the fire of his grief over the death of his first wife, Sarah, his faith was fading. The more miraculous elements of the creeds—the Virgin Birth was one example—now seemed implausible to him. “I discovered early in my acquaintance with Mr. Bush that his theological garments were outgrown,” said Dr. Horatio Stebbins of San Francisco, a leading Unitarian.

On a visit to the Ashfield, Massachusetts, home of George William Curtis, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, Bush discussed his shifting views on religion. Curtis introduced his guest to a poem of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s entitled “The Problem,” which tells the story of a believer who has fallen out of love with the trappings of earthly ecclesiastical institutions, beginning with the “cowl,” or a long robe with deep sleeves and a hood.

I like a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

and on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,

Which I could not on me endure?

Bush was stunned at how Emerson’s verses resonated. “Why, why,” Bush told Curtis, “that is my faith.” Around Christmas 1883 he resigned from his parish and moved his family to Concord, Massachusetts, a center of inquiry and of Unitarianism infused with the spirits of Emerson and Thoreau.

On Monday, November 11, 1889, James Smith Bush died after a heart attack. A eulogy underscored his love of politics and his gentleness of temper. “Interested in all public questions, possessing strong opinions, and having the courage of his convictions, he never was offensive or aggressive in asserting them,” a friend said of Bush. He was buried in Ithaca, where he and his family had moved yet again, his restless journey done.

Mechanics and money, not metaphysics, was top of mind for Bush’s son Samuel Prescott Bush. In this, George H. W. Bush’s grandfather reflected the larger currents of the time. The post–Civil War era found its name in Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s novel The Gilded Age. The excesses of the era, including the exploitation of labor and the attendant growth in the gap between the few and the many, led to the important work of the Progressives. Yet, among elements of the Gilded Age elite there was an expectation that money brought with it certain responsibilities. Andrew Carnegie articulated this new faith in “The Gospel of Wealth,” published in 1889:

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: To set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.

The pursuit of wealth was thus imbued with a sense of purpose. America, wrote the banker Henry Clews, was “the land of the self-made man.”

S.P. attended the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, a choice suggesting he had decided to seek his career in a world of certitude and of science rather than in his father’s ethos of twilight and of theology, devoting himself to engineering, manufacture—and money making. After graduating from Stevens in 1884, Bush worked for a number of railroads, moving between Logansport, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; and Milwaukee. In 1901, he returned to Columbus to join the Buckeye Castings Company, whose railroad parts were widely praised for being of the “highest grade.”

Late on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 14, 1902, in Columbus, Buckeye invited spectators to witness the shift from the older world of iron to the new, more profitable universe of steel. Watching a crane and furnace at work at Buckeye, a reporter for The Columbus Citizen wrote “the steel came pouring forth in a stream of liquid fire amid a cloud of fiery spray. It was a beautiful sight, indeed.” So began S. P. Bush’s long career at Buckeye, one that made him rich and—crucial for the Bush family’s self-image—“respected,” as his grandson George H. W. Bush recalled. The Bushes were a big force in a big town in a big time. And S. P. Bush, who married a Columbus native, Flora Sheldon, was a big man. “Grandfather Bush was quite severe,” recalled George’s sister, Nancy Bush Ellis. “He wasn’t mean, but so correct.” He was, a Buckeye colleague recalled, “a snorter . . . Everyone knew when he was around; when he issued orders, boy it went!”

There was championship level golf; the leading of charities; the building of a great house with elaborate gardens; a critical role in creating the Ohio State football program; the establishment of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association; and, politically, a voice in both the state’s Democratic Party and in the anti-tax Ohio Tax League. There was also the support of symphonies, of art galleries, of literary and cultural gatherings. S.P. expected hard work from others and from himself. Determined and focused, he was often asked to serve as a director on the boards of other companies—perhaps the highest compliment one businessman can pay another. Yet, Bush spoke of himself in a humble, self-improving tone: “I could be a lot better man if I could do a little more of some things and less of others, and I would like to be a better man too.”

Flora, who was engaged by many things—gardening, design, history—saw her main role as that of a supportive wife. “Let me know dear what you are doing—the little details of your days & nights—for they are my greatest interest in life,” Flora wrote S.P. when he was away on business. “You are a very dear Bushy, adored by your children and tenderly loved by your wife & loved more today than ever before.”

The eldest of those children was Prescott Sheldon Bush. Born in Columbus on Wednesday, May 15, 1895, Prescott was high-spirited, savoring athletic success and attention. After church one summer day at Osterville, a Cape Cod village where the Bushes spent time in the summers, lunch with the family was raucous. “The children were hilarious to such a degree I think your poor mother’s head whirled,” Flora wrote her husband. “Prescott is after all a naughty boy on occasion—he kept the ball rolling so that I was helpless” with laughter. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00VZZ2OY4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (November 10, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 10, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 139093 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 794 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #168,110 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Jon Meacham

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Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville with his wife and children.

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Phred

Who is this guy and what is all of this about destiny?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 16, 2022

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Before getting into my remarks about Quote” Jon Meacham is the editor of Newsweek, a Pulitzer Prize winning bestselling author and a commentator on politics, history, and religious faith in America.”(Source Goodreads) and his book, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, let us play a pretend game. Pretend it is 100 years from now. The entire period from the Viet Nam War to, say 9/11 is covered in about 5 pages of the typical high school history book. Almost all the present day left/right politics has morphed into some other simplistic dichotomy. Pretend you picked up Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush not to prove and confirm whatever your present echo chamber has reinforced in your pre-existing ideas and ideology. This will be your first in depth take on President George W. W. Bush. Maybe all you will ever know about him. Using that as a test, what exactly has this Pulitzer Prize winner and author and commentator on faith and the rest told you?

The entire Democratic Party is shrugged off early in the book with a partisan and derogatory quote. Never confirmed, denied or substantially considered. The press is unfailingly ugly. Why or what may have been the substance of that hostility is not worth mentioning. The occasional issue that receives any coverage is covered briefly and mostly about the terrible people who were leading that portion of the republican vote off handedly described as “passionate, unthinking voters.” There is the occasional mention of a democratic president, a scattering of highly placed other than American leaders, but the former are not important and most of the later are dealt with by an at home barbeque with the Bushes.

In short, this book is so much an insider’s book, so dependent upon The President’s diaries that no reader of this book can fairly say they learned much about George H.W. Bush. We can be certain that we can recite what he and his, and his besties were likely to say, and at that only what they might say to his or his genuinely loving wife’s face.

My problems with the book began with the title: Destiny and Power. Presidents certainly have power, but from whence comes Destiny? The word, and this book made me look it up, means: The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined; one's lot. (Wordnik). How so was it that this man was destined for this or that life? It would be said of G.H.W’s son that “He was born on third base and claimed to have hit a home run.” This would be an unfair assessment of the father.

George H.W. Bush was born to a lot of money, power and connections. He was never entirely dependent upon them. His war record was entirely of his making, it was honorable and heroic. Except that there was never any question but that he would be an officer. A Navy aviator by choice and talent (No one got pilot’s wings on family ties). His medal was for an action where he could have made a legitimate and easier choice. His business career was his own, except that he made smart use of his name and his family. He had to have had some skills at politics. Much of his political success can be thought of as his own achievement. There are some “howevers”, but in the main these are less about the man. It cannot be taken from him that his life could have been a lot simpler, less filled with personal achievements and he could have passed through America history as just another rich guy. He was just as determined to be more than a coaster. He early made the decision to make his own way and allowing for connections he worked a lot harder than he had too and delivered on more promise than was obvious at his birth.

I was still thinking about ‘Destiny”. As often as Meacham would remind us that Mr. Bush could have made his way in an easier way, I was also reminded that he was born, white, male and Christian at a time when these things, as much as money and family meant that certain decisions were open to him. No woman, of whatever race or religion was going to pilot a warplane, at the front in World War II. Only a fixed percentage of Jews would have a chance to go to the schools that placed him among his generations of elites, and as for the choices a Black man had in 1930-1980 America, need I finish that sentence? None of this can properly be held against Mr. Bush. It is an unmentioned aspect of his destiny. It is in the nature of privilege, that its rewards are so given as to be assumed and therefore unnecessary to mention.

Meacham seems to be unable to step back from his protagonist to perform any historian’s due diligence. Never to do we get context, depth or contrary opinion about any issue. Never mind the left/right, or even the right/right arguments, what might have been an objective documentation of any issue? We are told that Mr. Bush held a large number of very difficult and important jobs. He held many of them briefly. Did he really master diplomacy in hardly a year? Was he the real catalyst for the rehabilitation of the CIA in another brief year? He absolutely had a resumé a mile long, but objectively, how deep? How might his resume change if he was intended, from the beginning, to be a place holder, or a front man?

What for a reader not 100 years from today? Jon Meacham gives us a good, patriotic, hard working family man. One who was conscientious about his service to his country and his political and religious values. George H. W. Bush was from early on determined to be more than a well to do scion of the Bush family largess. More than many who start down that road even given his advantages, he achieved much more than was average. If you are looking for a positive and uplifting book, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush is all that. I wanted something more.

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Clem

Informative, Easy to Read, Great book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2016

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This is one of those biographies that, while rare, I consider it nearly perfect. Perfect in so many ways - it’s treatment of its subject, its ease of readability, and its balance of George HW Bush’s life among other things. As someone who reads a lot of presidential/historical figure biographies, I can assure you that such cases are rare. Meacham seems to know exactly how much detail to include in each phase of this man’s life. I also appreciate biographies that don’t sugar coat the subject, but don’t turn it into a mudslinging effort trying to smear the particular individual. I’m sure, however, that those who worship the man will find that it can be too critical, whereas those whose politics lean far to the left won’t like such a rosy picture painted of one of those oh-so-nasty Republicans.

About half of this book takes place prior to Bush becoming Vice President, and about half after the fact. This, in my judgement, is a very good balance. I’m guessing that most people want to read about his presidency (and vice-presidency), and don’t really care much about his youth, nor his less significant positions within the federal government. I was reminded of H.W. Brands’ excellent biography of Ronald Reagan that seemed to follow a similar timeline.

We first read about the powerful family that Bush was born into. Oh, sure, we know he was born into a life of wealth. Yes, he had to work for what he achieved, and it is very obvious that a family with wealth and power can give you a significant head start in any endeavor you wish to begin. Still, though, most of his accomplishments could have never happened without his own drive, dedication, and hard work.

We read about his heroics in World War II, and his successful wheeling and dealing as a young oil entrepreneur in Midland, Texas. We read about his beautiful new wife and wonderful family - taking a bit of detour when he tragically loses his toddler daughter to leukemia. Politics is next on the list. Some elections are won, some are not, but again, it helps when your family is so well connected.

The book then zooms by as we briefly read about his Ambassadorship to China, his chairing of the Republican National Committee, and his tenure as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. During these events, he’s actually strongly considered to be a VP running mate to both Nixon and Ford during different times, but as close as he comes to securing the office, he’s always a bit short of the elusive brass ring.

Then we come to 1980, and the book really takes shape. Once Bush starts his campaign for president against the ever popular Ronald Reagan, we see politics at its best (or worst). Initially, Reagan doesn’t like Bush. It seems the “voodoo economics” statement really hurts the Governor’s feelings. When Reagan secures the nomination, he doesn’t want Bush on the ticket with him. Advisers disagree. It seems Reagan wants former President Gerald Ford, but having an ex-president as a future vice-president has too many unknowns, so Bush is selected at the last minute. Fortunately for both, Bush serves his role admirably, and the two end up having incredible respect for each other, become great friends, and having Reagan as such a strong ally assists Bush in securing the head office in 1988.

Bush makes great strides as Commander in Chief. Ironically, it’s Reagan’s “voodoo economics” that leaves the economy in a bit of a pinch, and Bush decides that the best thing for the country is to abandon his “read my lips” pledge, and he raises taxes. Furthermore, it’s the staunch Republicans that are the most ticked off at the broken pledge. You would think that Democrats would applaud the man, but, no, this is politics. I guess it’s more important to point out that the guy on “the other team” screwed up than in it is to ensure the country stays on track. What really kills Bush, is that he won’t emulate Ronald Reagan and look the American people in the eye and admit his mistake. He feels he just doesn’t have Reagan’s charisma to pull off such a thing. Even VP Dan Quayle tells his boss that the best thing for Bush to do is to admit his mistake publicly. Alas, Quayle’s advice goes unheeded.

At this point in my review, I feel it’s important to bring up the fact that much of this book takes its notes from Bush’s own, published diaries. The author quotes George Bush’s memoirs extensively, and I mention this here, because according to Bush, anyway, he seems to lose a lot of the passion during the second half of his presidential term. When it’s time to start campaigning for the 1992 reelection, it seems as though Bush is struck with a sudden blow of ennui. When he campaigned against Governor Bill Clinton, he definitely seemed disconnected and, sadly, had almost no appeal with the younger generation. Clinton, on the other hand, was doing live Q&As on places like MTV talking about his underwear. Young people found him hip. Not surprisingly, Bush loses his reelection bid.

The book continues with Bush now retired from the presidency. Yes, we read about his involvement and his feelings as his oldest son runs and wins the presidency eight years later, but Bush Sr., as he has done his whole political life, elects to stay in the background for the most part when the spotlight should be on someone else. The job is now his son’s, and if dad ever does give much advice, it certainly isn’t recorded anywhere. He never really cared much for Donald Rumsfeld (the two have had a bit of a checkered history), and he feels as though Dick Cheney steered his son towards some paths that probably should have been avoided. Other than that, Bush Sr. seems to feel at peace by staying on the sidelines and avoiding the headlines wherever possible.

I loved this book. I have a lot of respect for the man, even though I didn’t agree with a lot of things he did or stood for. Human beings are human, and George HW Bush handled such immense responsibility better than most people could have. I also felt he was a much better communicator than he gave himself credit.

Tip O’Neal summed it up nicely when he told Bush in 1992 “You ran a horrible campaign for reelection, but history will remember you fondly.”

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Jim Bowen

An interesting read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 31, 2016

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This is the second book I've read about the life of George H. W. Bush, after a biography by Bush's daughter, that was written a few few years ago.

This book is better than that book (called My Father, My President), because it is more clinical, and more inclined to ask the hard questions about Bush's life and political choices (which Doro Bush Loch was less inclined to do, because, well, she's his daughter). Personally, I don't think the book's handling of the Iran-Contra Affair was bad, because it didn't try and whitewash Bush's role.

All in all the book wasn't a bad read. I don't think anyone who knows much of the politics of the period will learn a huge amount about Bush's life that they didn't know already, but I think they will learn more about why he did some things, which was interesting. Perhaps the most depressing thing I learned was quite why Bush sucked so badly at "politics" (as opposed to the "doing the job" element of being President). I'll be honest, I wanted to yell at him some, because of it, but I felt I understood him better too.

The thing I would warn people about is that the author can feel like a bit of a fanboy about Bush on occasion, inasmuch as I think he liked Bush, and so gave him the benefit of the doubt in some areas, with the effect that I wondered how much cold scholarly analysis Meacham was using.

Other than that, it's a good book.

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NTL

A Gentleman??

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 6, 2017

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The author has tremendous respect for Bush and as a reader you can see that Bush 41 is a gentleman and honourable man. A fascinating read which show the merits of the president and the decisions he made while in office. By this account Bush is probably an understated leader. Will now read Jean Edwards Smith biography of Bush 43 to see what I make of him. Can't see me liking this joker. But maybe it will explain some of his deplorable decisions. Anyway great work Jon Meacham.

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Jim C.

A very fine biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 12, 2018

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A marvellous portrait of the elder Bush - family man, businessman, politician and statesman

Jack McGee

Highly recommend it!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 22, 2019

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Amazing read, provides a solid in-depth look into the life of 41. Changed how I looked at him, his family and the wider world, and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Cold War/American politics. Very well written and look forward to reading another Meacham.

john murphy

More a personal history than a political one, but ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 24, 2016

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More a personal history than a political one, but well written and compelling, one gets to see and understand what makes George tick!

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