Abstract
The presidency of George Bush is something of an enigma in contemporary American politics. Unlike the Carter administration, which is the only other real single-term presidency of the second half of the twentieth century, the Bush administration appeared highly competent, and the President himself obtained far higher ratings in opinion polls than Jimmy Carter ever did. Moreover, unlike Carter who was reluctant to use military force, George Bush was a highly successful war president and Commander in Chief. At the end of the war in the Gulf Bush had an approval rating of over 80 per cent and appeared politically unassailable. Yet he ended up as a one-term president who ran an extremely lack-lustre political campaign and lost to a Democratic candidate who only months earlier had been on the verge of pulling out of the presidential race.
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Notes
This became a popular theme largely as a result of the work of Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
For a fuller discussion of the importance of personality see James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972);
James David Barber, The Pulse of the Politics: Electing Presidents in the Media Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980).
See also Michael Nelson, ‘The Psychological Presidency’, in Michael Nelson (ed.), The Presidency And The Political System, 3rd edn. (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1990), pp. 189–212, especially p. 200.
Kerry Mullins and Aaron Wildavsky, ‘The Procedural Presidency of George Bush’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 107, No. 1, Spring 1992, pp. 31–62 at p. 31.
Anna Quindlen, ‘No There There’, New York Times, 6 May 1992, A29.
Thomas Halpern, Foreign Policy Crises: Appearance and Reality in Decision-Making (Columbus, Ohio: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971).
Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 302.
See Thomas Mann, ‘Breaking the Political Impasse’, in Henry J. Aaron (ed.), Setting National Priorities (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990), p. 295.
Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, ‘The Political Price of Thomas’s Win’, National journal Vol. 23, No. 42, 19 October 1991, p. 2565.
Burt Solomon, ‘Darman Sheathes His Stiletto In New White House Power Equation’, National Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, 4 January 1992, p. 34.
James P. Pfiffner, ‘Establishing the Bush Presidency’, Public Administration Review, Vol. 50, No. 1, January/February 1990, p. 68.
The idea of multiple advocacy was developed by Alexander George. See his Presidential Decision Making in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980).
Burt Solomon, ‘In Bush’s Image’, National Journal, Vol. 22, No. 27, 7 July 1990, p. 1642.
Burt Solomon, ‘Sam Skinner’s Managerial Skills Won’t Assure A New Bush Message’, National Journal, Vol. 23, No. 50, 14 December 1991, p. 3038.
Bert Rockman, ‘How Is The President Doing?’, Brookings Review, Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer 1991, p. 56.
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© 1994 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hill, D.M., Williams, P. (1994). Introduction: The Bush Administration — An Overview. In: Hill, D.M., Williams, P. (eds) The Bush Presidency. Southampton Studies in International Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23402-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23402-8_1
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