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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pages 71 to 102 are not bound into the book
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2022
(Page 70) Lt Bush was about to be sent to the Pacific with his squadron for the invasion of Japan. On September 1, 1945, President Truman announced the Japanese surrender. Next page (Page 103) is a poem he wrote about his second child, Robin, in 1953. A Random House book. Gee! If I buy it again will I get all the pages? Hmmm
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2022
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K E Smith
George Herbert Walker Bush - a truly great American
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An interesting read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 31, 2016
