Review by Choice Review
When a political biography begins, "Rarely ... has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush," readers know it will be interesting. In fact, it is a fascinating political tale. Bush, in time, turned his early life around and followed his father into politics. Bush's political compass was one in which life was a struggle between two polar opposites, good and evil. And Bush was determined to be God's instrument in that struggle. Smith rather downplays the scenario in which Dick Cheney ran the government and pulled Bush's strings. Bush, Smith maintains, was the person in charge, labeling himself "the Decider." This book shows that Bush was the Decider who often decided without the advice of his advisers. Smith notes that Bush led the fight against AIDS, improved relations with China, and reduced America's nuclear arsenal in addition to taking America on a war course to find weapons of mass destruction and paving the way for the rise of ISIS. Other than his war policies, Bush is best known for his No Child Left Behind program. Bush left the presidency with very low approval ratings. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --William K. Hall, Bradley University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
IT'S AN AXIOM of American politics that presidents become more popular once they are ex-presidents. Admittedly, George W. Bush had nowhere to go but up. With two months left in his second term, Bush's approval rating sat at an abysmal 25 percent, just one point higher than Richard Nixon's during Watergate. On the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, when a Marine helicopter ferried the outgoing president away from the United States Capitol, many in the crowd serenaded him with chants of "Bye-bye Bush!" and "Go home to Texas!" Then the predictable happened. Bush's absence from public life made Americans' hearts for him grow fonder. Out of the spotlight, he busied himself painting oil portraits of family pets and world leaders; when he did dip his toe into political waters, it was for laudable and uncontroversial causes like fighting AIDS and malaria in Africa. His poll numbers began their inexorable climb. By June of last year, Bush's favorability rating was 52 percent - higher than Obama's at the time. His younger brother, Jeb, started his ill-fated 2016 presidential run with the declaration, "I am my own man." But by the end of Jeb's run, he was appearing alongside Dubya at rallies. Although Jeb's fraternal Hail Mary ultimately fell short, his older brother's re-emergence on the campaign trail only served to confirm that, fewer than eight years after being hounded from the White House, George W. Bush had become a less polarizing, fairly popular, at times even lovable figure. Readers of the presidential historian Jean Edward Smith's mammoth new biography, "Bush," will surely be cured of this political amnesia. Smith - who has written biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower - is unsparing in his verdict on our 43rd president. "Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush," Smith writes in the first sentence of the preface. And then he gets harsh. In Smith's clipped retelling of his subject's early years, Bush was an unaccomplished, callow son of privilege who cashed in on his family's connections for everything from his admission to Yale to his avoidance of Vietnam. Quoting Bush's tautological explanation of his wasted youth - "When I was young and irresponsible, I behaved young and irresponsibly" - Smith concludes, "That pretty well says it all." Being Texas governor "was scarcely a full-time job," and his 2000 victory in the presidential race owed as much to the ineptness of his Democratic opponent, Al Gore - who "came across as wooden and selfimportant" - as it did to Bush's "ease on the campaign trail." None of this prepared Bush for the gravity of the responsibilities he would face as president, Smith argues, and time and again Bush failed to meet the challenges of the office. "His initial response to the subprime mortgage meltdown was similar to his initial response to Hurricane Katrina," Smith writes. "He watched it happen." Bush promoted incompetent yes-men and yes-women - "people who knew the president, had worked closely with him and were prepared to do his bidding" - to key posts in his administration, whether it was making Alberto Gonzales his attorney general or trying (and failing) to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court. Even Bush's speeches are subjected to Smith's - and, by extension, history's - withering judgment: "Bush's second Inaugural Address must rank as one of the most ill-considered of all time." And then, of course, there's Iraq. Just as the war ultimately consumed much of Bush's presidency, so does it consume much of "Bush," as Smith offers an exhaustive, excruciating autopsy of the American invasion and its bloody aftermath. "Unfamiliar with the rules and norms of the world beyond America's borders" and "smitten with his role as commander in chief," Smith writes, Bush committed "easily the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president." And Smith makes clear that in his considered opinion it was Bush's decision. He pins Iraq - and every other Bush failure - on the president and the president alone. Although Bush has often been portrayed as the puppet of Dick Cheney or Karl Rove or some other offstage figure, Smith argues that in the Bush administration, Bush was - to a degree unusual even for a president - the ultimate authority. Or, as he liked to think of himself, he was "the decider." He empowered confidants like Condoleezza Rice, first as national security adviser and later as secretary of state, who "sought to provide Bush with what made him most comfortable," and if his advisers gave him reasoned analysis instead of the comfort he craved, he simply ignored them in favor of his own gut. It was Bush, after all, who in his "Mission Accomplished" speech on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln announced, without consulting the Pentagon or State Department, that he intended to bring democracy to Iraq. Just as it was Bush who, after that decision proved disastrous, "short-circuited the military chain of command" by reorganizing the staff of the National Security Council so that David Petraeus could communicate directly with the president rather than having to go through his immediate superiors. "Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt," Smith concludes, "had White House decision-making been so personalized." Smith's theory about Bush's "personalization of presidential power" sometimes leads him to let other administration officials off the historical hook. He portrays Cheney, for instance, as merely a devoted helpmate whose attempt to take command of the response to 9/11 was "not a power grab" but a "good faith" offer that was "a reflection of the president's unfamiliarity with the issues." Donald Rumsfeld is forgiven his swaggering arrogance: While Smith heaps scorn on Bush's bellicose statements, comparing them at one point to those of "a mid-20th-century European dictator," he writes that the secretary of defense only "unwittingly exacerbated" tensions with France and Germany when he dismissively referred to them as "old Europe." PERHAPS SMITH IS more charitable to Cheney and Rumsfeld because, unlike Bush, they granted him interviews. (Bush canceled an interview on the grounds that Smith had once written a critical book about his father, the 41st president.) But it seems that neither man told Smith anything revelatory. Indeed, Smith's biography of Bush unearths little new information on its subject. Most of "Bush" relies on previous books by journalists like Peter Baker, Robert Draper and Bob Woodward or the memoirs of key figures including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Bush himself. Nonetheless, Smith is an able synthesizer who weaves together a readable if often workmanlike narrative out of these sources. More important, despite his unremittingly negative assessment, Smith is neither a partisan nor a polemicist; he's a historian and his conclusions carry weight. When, toward the end of "Bush," he allows that his subject "may not have been America's worst president," the act of charity stings far worse than his cruelest barbs. It also strikes an ironic note, since, given the state of the 2016 campaign, it's now depressingly easy to imagine a president worse than George W. Bush. Time and again, Smith argues, Bush failed to meet the challenges of his office. JASON ZENGERLE is the political correspondent for GQ and a contributing editor for New York magazine.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
Esteemed biographer Smith (Eisenhower in War and Peace, 2012) doesn't take long to show his cards. On the opening page of this comprehensive biography of our forty-third president, he describes Bush's presidency as an unmitigated disaster. A budget surplus was squandered, the national debt exploded, a decade of relative peace was ended by involvement in two full-scale wars, and a strong economy ended in massive recession. For most of these misfortunes, Smith holds Bush directly responsible, writing that these failures resulted, to a large extent, from Bush's personal flaws. Bush is characterized as arrogant, rigid, and unwilling to consider the complexity of issues, even of his own policies. Smith dispels the commonly held notion that Bush fell victim to a cabal of ideologues, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and various neoconservatives. Rather, Bush truly was the decider, especially on foreign policy issues, where he seems to have been strongly influenced by a sense of religious destiny. Smith's portrait is fascinating; it will take time, however, for a more balanced account of the Bush legacy.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"George W. Bush may not have been America's worst president" is as nice as historian Smith (Eisenhower in War and Peace) gets in this hard-hitting biography. He gives the 43rd president grudging nods for his No Child Left Behind initiative, prescription-drug plan for seniors, and AIDS relief programs but otherwise portrays Bush's eight-year presidency as a parade of disasters; irresponsible tax cuts and spiraling deficits; a simplistic, bellicose response to the 9/11 attacks; warrantless NSA surveillance and other assaults on privacy; torture of detainees; a negligent passivity toward Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 financial collapse; and above all, the Iraq War, "the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president." Smith's negativity is sometimes too much-"Like Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984, the president launched the nation on a never-ending struggle"-but he presents a shrewd, nuanced view of Bush as an insecure, intellectually lazy man who made up for youthful fecklessness with an unwarranted overconfidence and decisiveness in office, a "personalization of presidential power" inside a bubble of sycophantic advisors. Smith embeds this portrait in a lucid, highly readable narrative, balancing rich detail with clear delineation of the larger shape of policy through the chaos of politics. This is a superb recap and critical analysis of Bush's controversial administration. Photos. Agent: Peter Matson, Sterling Lord Literistic. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize finalist Smith (Eisenhower in War and Peace) treads boldly into an assessment of the ambitious and controversial presidency of George W. Bush (b. 1946) with this highly interpretive study. The author contends that Bush, rather than advisors Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, set his own course in international relations guided by a religious, binary view of the world. Smith himself does not offer differing, alternative assessments of the presidency that spanned 2000-08. Instead, the author compares Bush to others who entered the White House hoping for a larger role at home than abroad. Similar to Woodrow Wilson, Bush believed God destined him for leadership, and both men attempted to export democracy during their terms. While Smith praises Bush's domestic policy stance on immigration, the senior prescription drug-assistance program, and the 2008 bank bailout, he ultimately deems the Iraq War to be the worst foreign policy decision of any American president, overshadowing everything else. There is little doubt that Bush's interventionist actions after the September 11 attacks made his a consequential reign. VERDICT Both public and academic libraries will want this work, although many other accounts are sure to follow as time, perspective, and still-classified primary sources result in a more nuanced, definitive portrait. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Biography of George W. Bush (b. 1946), concentrating on the eight years of his presidency. From the first sentence, accomplished presidential biographer and historian Smith (Political Science/Marshall Univ.; Eisenhower in War and Peace, 2012, etc.) establishes his critical tone: "Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush." By miring the country in a disastrous war in Iraq, costing 4,000 American lives and some $3 trillion, allowing torture of "unlawful combatants" and restrictions on Americans' fundamental issues of privacy thanks to an empowered National Security Agency, the author considers Bush one of the worse presidents yet. Hurtling quickly through his subject's early life, Smith emphasizes his abysmal school records at Andover and Yale. Indeed, he was coddled as a legacy son "many times over." His penchant for "coasting" and partying kept him floundering for many years, and his well-placed parents bailed him out continuously, until he apprenticed under Lee Atwater and caught the political bug. Marrying Laura Welch, a Midland, Texas, native and librarian, and becoming a born-again Christian thanks to Billy Graham in 1983 helped center Bush's ambitions. However, Smith points out how his "religious certitude and his singular determination," as well as his braggadocio, often swayed his actions more than the advice of more experienced colleagues. Bush relied on sports-minded advisers and hawkish "vulcans" like Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld when the crisis of 9/11 shifted the president's focus from domestic to foreign policy, which he knew little about. Smith considers it a national shame that he was so insistent on finding a casus belli to invade Iraqthen letting Colin Powell be the fall guydespite the resistance of the rest of the world and cowing even the Democrats in Congress. Notwithstanding Bush's global leadership on AIDS, immigration reform, and education, he left a tarnished presidency. A relentlessly hard-hitting assessment of a president who was a "decider" but "did not wrestle with the details of policy." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.