“We were and remain fascinated by the degree to which George W. Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush, modeled – or tried to model – his presidency not after his father’s but after Ronald Reagan’s.” So begins father and son Lou Cannon and Carl Cannon’s joint effort “Reagan’s Disciple.”
It’s interesting that it took a father and son to write the only book on how Bush the presidential son finds more in common politically with Reagan than with his own father. This is true even though Bush has an admirable relationship with his father, whom he proudly hails as his “hero.” Bush as a person is a product of his father, though Bush as a politician has drawn more from his father’s predecessor. The Cannons consider whether Bush is “the rightful inheritor of Reaganism.” They quote the late Mike Deaver, a longtime Reagan aide, who said, “I mean his [George W. Bush’s] father was supposed to be the third term of the Reagan presidency – but then he wasn’t. This guy is.”
Or, at the least, this guy wanted to be – but, alas, was not, certainly as judged by Bush’s infinitely lower approval ratings, including from his own party and political base. And why not?
The Cannons offer interesting insights on this point: “There are two principal reasons why conservatives have soured on Bush,” they write. “One is uneasiness about the war. The other is Bush’s blithe embrace of deficit spending, necessitated, in part, to finance that war.”
Among the chief reasons for Reagan’s sustained popularity was his ability to triumph in the Cold War without getting bogged down in a long, costly military conflict with a lot of casualties. When Reagan used force, such as Grenada in 1983 and Libya in 1986, it was quick, decisive and successful. This is precisely the opposite of the Bush experience in Iraq. By contrast, write the Cannons, Reagan “was a reluctant warrior who much preferred negotiation to counting the dead.”
Likewise, the Cannons focus on the Reagan-Bush shared pursuit of spreading democracy – “the presumed U.S. obligation to advance the cause of democracy abroad” – a parallel often misunderstood and neglected even by conservatives.
The authors perceptively note the significance of Bush’s November 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, where he referenced Reagan’s June 1982 Westminster Address, in which the elder president said pushing for democracy in Communist countries was “not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity.” Lou Cannon once called that speech the “most prescient” of Reagan’s presidency. But the authors could have said much more about how Bush, in that speech, and again thereafter, has picked up Reagan’s mantle to extend the “March of Freedom” from Europe into the Middle East.
The book also fails to focus on the distinctive spiritual parallels between Bush and Reagan. In a way, this is not surprising since in his biography “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” Lou Cannon underreported this crucial aspect of Reagan’s life and presidency. On the other hand, Carl Cannon has done excellent work on faith and the presidency, including on the question of Bush’s spiritual side.
The Cannons conclude by evoking a different but equally intriguing presidential parallel, on the matter of exporting freedom and democracy. Quoting chief Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, they ponder whether the current chief executive is actually “Truman’s disciple” not Reagan’s. Indeed, it would seem that at this point in their respective presidencies and given their respective unpopularity that George W. Bush and Harry S Truman make for a better, albeit bittersweet, analogy.
Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College, is the author most recently of “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.”
Reagan’s Disciple
George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy
by Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon
PublicAffairs