A trenchant analysis of the last eight years of American political
history.George W. Bush is usually either lauded as a courageous
visionary or damned as an imperialistic ideologue. Rare is the
voice that offers sober, balanced assessment, but Roberts (Public
Administration/Syracuse Univ.; Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in
the Information Age, 2006, etc.) seems to have found it. Despite a
title that suggests another left-wing screed, the book
contextualizes the major claims and initiatives of the Bush
administration in the light of recent American history. In today's
sprawling and complicated federal government, the author states,
even the most far-reaching chief executive is hard-put to make his
imprint on domestic and foreign policy. While conventional wisdom
says that Bush broke with long-standing American policy by
launching a preemptive war against Iraq, for example, Roberts
argues that in fact America has been slowly approaching war in the
region since halfway through the second Clinton administration, if
not as far back as Bush I. To the frequent claim that Bush has
expanded executive power in an "Imperial Presidency," the author
counters that the increasingly complex and bloated organism known
as the federal government has diminished the presidency as at
perhaps no other time in our history. Roberts is far from being an
apologist for the administration, faulting it for incompetence,
lack of foresight and failure to adapt to changing realities. But
America's problems are much greater than a single person or
administration, he contends, which makes solutions that much harder
to come by. A work of rare insight that fills gaps glaringly
evident in most public discourse. One minor complaint: The author
spends too much time in this slender book rehashing events of the
last decades and quoting from other books written about them.
(Kirkus Reviews)
When the Bush presidency began to collapse, pundits were quick to
tell a tale of the "imperial presidency" gone awry, a story of
secretive, power-hungry ideologues who guided an arrogant president
down the road to ruin. But the inside story of the failures of the
Bush administration is both much more complex and alarming, says
leading policy analyst Alasdair Roberts. In the most comprehensive,
balanced view of the Bush presidency to date, Roberts portrays a
surprisingly weak president, hamstrung by bureaucratic,
constitutional, cultural and economic barriers and strikingly
unable to wield authority even within his own executive branch. The
Collapse of Fortress Bush shows how the president fought-and
lost-key battles with the defense and intelligence communities.
From Homeland Security to Katrina, Bush could not coordinate
agencies to meet domestic threats or disasters. Either the Bush
administration refused to exercise authority, was thwarted in the
attempt to exercise authority, or wielded authority but could not
meet the test of legitimacy needed to enact their goals.
Ultimately, the vaunted White House discipline gave way to public
recriminations among key advisers. Condemned for secretiveness, the
Bush administration became one of the most closely scrutinized
presidencies in the modern era. Roberts links the collapse of the
Bush presidency to deeper currents in American politics and
culture, especially a new militarism and the supremacy of the
Reagan-era consensus on low taxes, limited government, and free
markets. Only in this setting was it possible to have a "total war
on terrorism" in which taxes were reduced, private consumption was
encouraged, and businesses were lightly regulated. A balanced,
incisive account by a skilled observer of U.S. government, The
Collapse of Fortress Bush turns the spotlight from the powerful
cabal that launched the war in Iraq to tell a much more disturbing
story about American power and the failure of executive leadership.
General
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