The Revision Thing
How good a president was George Bush? And what kind of ex has he been? In a rare interview, he and Barbara talk—humbly—about his legacy, their lives in Houston, and the new library at Texas A&M.
(Page 4 of 4)
But the law has had unforeseen consequences that will limit research at the Bush library: More records are closed today than would have been closed under the old system. Under the Presidential Records Act, the archivist becomes a policeman who must withdraw papers if they fall into one of twelve categories. The most controversial one is “confidential advice.” Just about everything that is of interest to researchers is, in some way, confidential advice. I looked through a couple of boxes of papers in the Bush library, and they were laden with pink sheets describing documents that had been withdrawn. Most of the missing papers appeared to be totally innocuous; for example, one involved the award of a technology medal, which apparently depended upon confidential advice. After many years have passed (there is no set time limit), all of the withdrawn documents will eventually be returned to the files; in the meantime, researchers can use a cumbersome procedure to appeal the withdrawal of papers. Archivists at the Bush library fear that soon they will be buried by a backlog of such requests.
A lot of people were surprised when Bush picked A&M as the location for his library—his only prior connection with the school or with College Station was an honorary doctorate he received in May 1989—but as the building neared completion this fall, the logic of his choice was clear. Though the federal government provides the staff for the library through the National Archives, the building itself must be paid for with private funds, and Aggies love to part with their money when their school comes calling. When David Alsobrook, the archivist who is the executive director of the library, was asked what he wanted the building to have, he answered, “Everything every other presidential library wished they had.” A&M saw that he got it.
The library has an extensive museum, a separate gallery for temporary and traveling exhibits, and a classroom for schoolchildren who visit, in addition to stack space for more than 38 million pages of documents. Visitors to the museum are greeted by an airplane hanging from the ceiling; it is of the same type as the one Bush had to ditch in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. (Amazingly, someone from the ship that picked him up filmed the rescue on a home movie camera, kept the reel, and many years later, realized who was on the film. Now the scene is preserved on videotape at the library.)
Most of the papers are kept in a climate-controlled room the size of half a football field. “This may remind you of Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Alsobrook said as he punched a code that opened the door. He was referring, of course, to the movie’s closing scene of the storage place for the Ark of the Covenant, a warehouse filled with endless rows of crates and boxes. In the Bush library the crates were stacked haphazardly along the walls of the room and had “NO GUITAR” scrawled on them, indicating which crates had been searched, fruitlessly, in an effort to locate an instrument that had been a gift to the president from B. B. King. The papers resided in brown and gray boxes on shelves that extended in some cases to fifty yards in length, brown indicating that the papers therein had not been processed, gray that they had been—and there was a lot more brown than gray.
This means that the historical judgment on the legacy of George Bush may be a longer time in coming than he would hope. In the meantime, let’s try to anticipate what questions the historians will ask and see whether any answers are available now.
Were his policies sound? From the short-term perspective of 1997, Bush is looking very good. Whether he decided consciously not to try to stimulate the economy, or decided by not deciding, the result of his inaction was that good times came back without federal intervention, though too late to help him win reelection. Indeed, it is hard to find an area where Bush made an obvious policy mistake. Candidate Bill Clinton assailed Bush’s pro-China trade policy for “coddling dictators”; President Clinton follows Bush’s lead. The tax bill of 1990 now is seen as the first step toward deficit reduction. The international coalition Bush assembled against Iraq, which included the Soviet Union and key Arab countries, provided a moral basis for American military action that hasn’t existed, at home or abroad, since World War II. (“Desert Storm was one of the great achievements of the twentieth century,” George W. Bush told me, “and it had a shelf life of about a month.”) His caution during the disintegration of the Eastern bloc and of the Soviet Union—by not going to Berlin to, as he put it, “dance on the wall”—gave communist hard-liners no excuse to mount a counterrevolution. Sometimes what doesn’t happen is as important as what does happen.
Why didn’t he get full credit for his policies? Because he wasn’t Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut taxes but he also signed major tax bills; he helped drive the Soviet Union to economic ruin but in the process he rolled up budget deficits of unimaginable size; he became mired in the Iran-Contra scandal; and whatever he did, the public loved him. It was Bush’s bad timing that his shortcomings—a lack of ideological vision, the inability to articulate his ideas, the difficulty of getting across to the public who he really was—were the flip side of Reagan’s strengths. Conservatives accused him of squandering the Reagan legacy, but Reagan himself would have had a hard time staying on course with the deficit out of control and a highly partisan Democratic Congress aligned against him.
Was Bush’s lackluster 1992 campaign the result of a physical and mental letdown? The idea comes from biographer Parmet, who had access to transcripts of Bush’s diaries. “I don’t know whether it’s the anticlimax or that I’m too tired to enjoy anything, but I just seem to be losing my perspective,” Bush wrote in March 1991. Another excerpt from that month: “Sometimes I really like the spotlight, but I’m tired of it. I’ve been at the head table for many years, and now I wonder what else is out there.” A few days later: “For some reason, my whole body is dragging and I’m tired. I don’t understand it.” In April, Parmet reports, a staffer told the White House physician that there were changes in Bush’s handwriting. His sleep pattern was more erratic than usual, and he was losing weight. Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater told Parmet, “There was a point after the war, it seemed to me, that he had a real feeling he didn’t want to run.” On May 4 Bush developed a shortness of breath while jogging at Camp David and was airlifted to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Even after he recovered, aides kept telling his doctors that “the president didn’t seem to have the same zest as he used to.” Barbara Bush told me that her husband never seriously considered not running for reelection, but it seems evident that at the very least, he lacked fire, especially about resuming domestic hostilities with Senate majority leader George Mitchell. In our interview Bush described the Maine Democrat to me as “the most partisan leader I’ve ever come up against. He was determined to frustrate everything we tried to do.” And yet, ever the gentleman and probably too much so, Bush would offer Mitchell a ride on Air Force One when he went to Kennebunkport.
Why didn’t Bush’s values count for more? This, finally, is the overriding question of the Bush presidency. One answer is that Bush’s emphasis on integrity could be a handicap at times. When he acted like a typical politician—by captializing on the furlough granted to convicted killer Willie Horton in 1988, for example—he was particularly vulnerable to the charge that he was compromising his high standards to get the presidency. Another answer is that his frequent references to his code of values reminded the public of his establishment background: It is easy, or at least easier, for the privileged to play by the rules. Bush’s values were virtues that he urged for individuals, unlike Ronald Reagan’s values, which were virtues that he urged for the nation. Reagan’s values were more relevant to politics than Bush’s were. So, in the 1992 election, were Bill Clinton’s: Politics is about public values. George Bush lost to a lesser man but a greater politician. Sometimes integrity and the best of intentions are not enough to prevent disappointment and defeat.
My Library
