Destiny and Power The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

To many, he’s the hero behind the first Gulf War. To some, he’s the one who let the US economy slow. To others, he guided the world from the Cold War into a more stable future. To others, he fell short of Reagan’s ideals. Like any impactful president, he consisted of many things to many people. Along with John Adams, he remains one of two presidents ever to have their sons someday succeed them. Meacham, one of America’s great political biographers, here details George HW Bush’s life and remains both sympathetic, independent, and critical throughout the account.

Meacham was granted access to Bush’s diaries that chronicled the heights of his power. He also interviewed numerous members of Bush’s inner circle, along with show more “Number 41” himself. Meacham also tries to pry behind the scenes of Number 41’s mindset when the son “Number 43” came to power and faced crises. Bush’s youth and development are also amply described here along with details from his marriage to Barbara, who contributed to the research effort.

The resulting portrait reveals a complex, competitive man who was described as “good” and “decent” by opponents and fans alike. His service in the US Navy during World War II (for which he volunteered and postponed a time at Yale) defined the trajectory of his life. He aimed to serve his country, free of any fixed ideology, and that became his full-time job for the second-half of his life.

Throughout, Bush made compromises that kept him short of being ideal. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to win a campaign. He flip-flopped on abortion and supply-side economics to become a part of Reagan’s ticket in 1980. Then there was Iran-Contra. He also entered an unfocused drift on the domestic front after the first Persian Gulf War. Meacham does not skip over these and suggests ways that Bush could have improved. However, from reading this book, I get the impression that Bush would wholeheartedly agree with Meacham on most of this critique.

This book will remain the definitive writing on George HW Bush’s life for some time. The quality of historiography and the artful prose make it hard to surpass. Discussion of Bush’s legacy – positive and negative – will continue, and this work provides many conversation starters about that. The inside access that the Bush family gave to Meacham will make this book not only seminal but also a future primary source for future biographers. (Number 43’s biography of Number 41 must also be consulted as a primary source, too.)

Most living Americans might read Destiny and Power as a way to remember their personal histories. It certainly brought back many memories for me. It reminded me of my conservative youth and my ideological shift during Number 43’s presidency. Through reading, I was able to attain a more comprehensive, three-dimensional view of Number 41, independent of the passions of the time (and the passions of my family). Meacham reflects on where America has been recently and where we can go, and for era of 1964-2008, much of that was wrapped up in the service of Number 41 George HW Bush. show less

Jon Meacham was granted extraordinary access to Mr. Bush, his diaries, his family, and those with whom he worked during his long career. He gives us a very human portrait of an ambitious man who felt duty-bound to serve others. We Bush as a child briefly, then as an oil man, Congressman, ambassador to China, chairman of the Republican Party, CIA director, Vice President under Ronald Reagan, and the President whose popularity reached astonishing highs after the Gulf War, but fell so dramatically that he soundly lost his reelection bid, and as a retired elder statesman, whose sons follow in his footsteps.
I am a fairly liberal-leaning Democrat, and have always viewed George H. W. Bush as the finest Republican politician of my lifetime. show more Destiny and Power solidified his place in my mind, and made me appreciate President Bush even more. He exemplified honor, dignity, and decency in a quiet and understated way.
An excellent book about a truly exceptional man. show less

Jon Meacham is a good biographer. I have enjoyed his books. This one on George H. W. Bush does not disappoint. It is an intimate, thorough, and engaging book, covering his genealogy, his early life, his war exploits, his business life, and his political life. Nowhere does it skimp and nowhere does it really disappoint. It is a decent recapitulation of Bush's time in politics and the personalities he came into contact with, as well as a very good narrative history of his time as president, 1989 to 1993, when he presided over the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Bush was no rock-ribbed conservative like Reagan or Gingrich, and Meacham shows this well.

But, this is where Meacham's own politics and his sympathies with his subject show more come in. Meacham is good on Jefferson and Jackson, but his more recent political actions and behaviors are decidedly left-liberal. He was caught writing speeches for Biden and then commenting on them as an historian and commentator. His anti-conservative biases show through. For instance, Newt Gingrich is depicted as a Machiavellian, knuckle-dragging bogeyman to Bush, not a principled politician with valid ideals. Meacham, for instance, (pp. 390-391, and passim) lauds Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat who was corrupt as all get out and lost his position due to this corruption, in contradistinction to Newt Gingrich. Things like this are just silly.

And the poor Bushes. How they could go from disliking Hillary to actually voting for her in 2016 (after this book was written) is beyond me. I mean, I get you don't like Trump. But you abstain instead of voting for a Democrat if you are a real Republican. Meacham and the cohorts who know laud George H. W. Bush (and his sons) in the post-Trump era were the same ones who lambasted them as Republicans in their useful political life. I don't get that. show less

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,
Jon Meacham, author; Paul Michael, narrator
It is obvious from the start of the book that Jon Meacham has respect and genuine affection for George Herbert Walker Bush. That is not a good reason to dislike or fail to appreciate the excellent job he did of defining Bush 41’s, life, unless you are an ideologue who cannot accept any positive presentation of a member of the Republican Party. For me, the book was well researched, informative and interesting. Although it is quite long, and sometimes repetitive, I found it to be a steady paced commentary on the life of the 41st President of the United States, with the information presented taken largely from the his diaries show more and the diaries of the First Lady. Bush is a man who represents the past, a time of far better manners and decorum both in and out of the White House. That is a fact that I believe cannot be disputed. The narrator did a fine job modulating his voice so that even though it could have been slow going to read such a tome, it was always engaging.
Raised with old-fashioned values and a code of ethics largely no longer in existence, he is the last of a dying breed. He was taught to respect women and to care about those less fortunate than he. He was taught to “always do the right thing”. He was taught to honor and love his country and those were the same values he and his wife of more than 70 years, Barbara Pierce, tried to inculcate into their own children. Bush fell in love with Barbara while still in his teens and they married before he finished his term of duty during WWII when he was 20 and she, only 19.
Bush enlisted in 1943, at age 18, after graduating high school. He believed it was the honorable thing to do, to serve his country, and he found it hard to reconcile the fact that the President following him into the Oval Office had actually actively avoided the draft and service to his country. However, Bill Clinton was only the first of those to follow who saw no need to give to their country but rather to have their country give to them, which was quite a contrast to the request of former Democrat and President, John F. Kennedy, who requested that we “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” The times have definitely changed in today’s America.
I am not sure if he has been given the credit that is due him by his adversaries. He was criticized for not doing enough on the domestic front, yet he passed the American Disabilities Act, improved the Clean Air Bill and approved the Fair Housing Act. He also ushered in the end of the Cold War and successfully liberated Kuwait when it was invaded by Iraq. He has been unfairly maligned because he raised taxes, breaking his promise when he said “read my lips”. However, the deficit could not be curbed in any other way, and he chose to do what was best for the country, not himself or his future in politics. Also, one must not forget that both houses of Congress were controlled by the Democrats, at that time, so he had little choice to do otherwise. He could possibly fight them and shut down the government, or he could compromise. Always the gentleman, he chose to compromise and put the needs of America first.
As the ultimate gentleman, he resisted going negative when campaigning, even though it meant he would lose. In his heart and mind, he always hoped and thought he would win, believing in the integrity of the electorate, sadly, a mistake, because they believed the lies that the biased media disseminated. During his run for reelection in 1992, the press coverage of Bush was 96% negative, proving that the fourth estate, once the watchdog, was now dead, or at the very least, under-performing. The media prejudice has since been proven, but the practice has continued. Shortly after he lost, his approval rating rose 15 points because they stopped hammering him and/or his associates with false accusations and innuendo.
Bush was a man uniquely qualified to serve as Chief Executive. His past experience was broad and prepared him well. He was Republican Party chairman in Texas, and the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, he was a member of the House of Representatives, he was US Ambassador to the United Nations, he was the U.S. Envoy to China, he was director of the CIA, and he was Vice President before being elected to the highest office in the land. He served only one term, losing to a younger, more charismatic candidate, a man he eventually grew to like and respect, but a man who disappointed him because of his behavior and draft dodging. Still, Bush believed that Clinton’s private life should not be politicized and publicized as it was with the Lewinsky scandal. He knew that the President had important business to conduct and saw first hand that Europe was shocked by what they believed was the unnecessary attention given to the scandal. He understood the stress caused by the vitriol of the press when it was unleashed, but perhaps not the actual transgression. In the face of adversity, Bush always turned his attention to the future, not the past.
To put it succinctly, this is a good book about a good man that was written by a good author! Meacham has presented an even handed picture of a man who put service to his country before service to himself, a man even held in high esteem by Barack Obama, a progressive Democrat, who honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and praised the man and his service in the highest terms, noting his “humility and decency, and his seven decades of devotion to the United States. show less

POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
Jon Meacham
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
Random House
Ebook, 978-0-81299-820-7 (also available in hardcover, large print paperback, as an audio book, and on Audible), 864 pgs., $17.99
November 10, 2015


When George Herbert Walker Bush was five years old his school report cards included the category “Claims More Than His Fair Share of Time and Attention in Class.” His parents didn’t worry about this category. Bush’s nickname was “Have-Half” because he split everything he had with friends. Eighty-five years later he is much the same.

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush is Jon Meacham’s account of the life of the forty-first president, show more “a child of one generation’s ruling class, the head of another’s, and the father of yet a third.” Meacham presents Bush as a man of humility and compassion as well as ambitious and deeply competitive, a believer in compromise, diplomacy, and the power of personal relationships.

A well-balanced account, Destiny and Power progresses briskly and never belabors a point. Meacham provides insightful analysis of family dynamics in Bush’s formative years, a recitation of the facts liberally leavened with anecdotes, and a good mix of formal and candid photos. Meacham had access to Bush’s diaries that he spoke into a hand-held recorder which provides a sense of immediacy—Bush’s thoughts in real time.

Meacham is fond of his subject and writes thrillingly of the “dazzling, epochal news” of the fall of the Berlin wall and chillingly of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Bush’s diary allows us to watch his thinking develop as he struggles toward “This will not stand.” But Meacham doesn’t mince words regarding controversies such as Iran-Contra, deemed “unworthy of [Bush’s] essential character.”

Meacham reinforces the point throughout the book that “with Bush one got both hardball and high-mindedness, with the former being played in order to give him the power to put the latter into action.” However, Meacham doesn’t address the damage done to American political discourse resulting in polarization. Bush’s personal story is the larger story of how the Republican Party moved to the right in Texas and nationally.

Meacham explores the relationship between Bush and George W.’s presidency, including personal correspondence between them as George W. prepares to invade Iraq, as well as what Bush thought of “axis of evil” rhetoric and his estimation of Dick Cheney’s vice presidency. Bush “returned on several occasions to the subject of Dick Cheney, whom he believed . . . had his own empire there.” Cheney, upon reading the transcript, smiled and said, “Fascinating.”

Bush’s legendary life is conveyed with profound details such as telling his diary on the eve of Operation Desert Storm, “The face of war looks at me,” and Gorbachev’s gift to Bush Christmas morning, 1991, when he called “to announce the end of the experiment in Communism born in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.” Meacham humanizes that legendary life with charming details: Bush’s “Merry Christmas” socks, his staff stocking hotel rooms with pork rinds and Dr. Pepper, and the occasional shower with Millie, the springer spaniel.

Bush may be, as Meacham says, “the last gentleman” who used “privilege to build, not to consume or to coast.” If so, the nation will be poorer for it.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life. show less

I enjoyed reading this bio about Bush.
While lacking the amount of detail I prefer, it told me the story of Bush growing up through his 'retirement', and much of it is derived from Bush's diaries making it feel autobiographical at times.
Easy to read and had a good flow to it.

I think the best part of this book is in explaining why the 41st president of the United States struggled to understand a changing world that shook so many of his core beliefs. The most commonly mentioned source in the text is Bush's diary. While it is very revealing, it also is one dimensional. I also felt there could be more context to better explain Bush's choices and actions.