Bush 1 and Bush 2
I am reading the Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg. I have come across a paragraph or two that I think will be of interest to the audience.
Where the father engaged in the details of policy, the son saw himself as a leader who set priorities, tasked people to carry them out and held them accountable. He wouldn’t micromanage the way his father had. His father was methodical, slow to choose a course, and capable of changing his mind. The son was an instantaneous “decider” who didn’t revisit his choices or change his mind. His father was mocked for being too “prudent” and nice. The son would be bold and, like his mother, blunt. He told people he wanted to be a “consequential” president, not the manager of an inbox, like his dad.
On social issues including immigration and education, George W. positioned himself as a more effective moderate. His father called himself “the education president,” but hadn’t taken it much beyond rhetoric. September 11 would not have found Poppy reading to second graders because he didn’t visit public schools. His son, “a reformer with results,” intended to make the issue of repairing public education his cause, as he had in Texas.
There are a lot of comparasions in this book between a thoughtful, introspective father and a shoot-from-the-hip son. Perhaps the most telling is a quote in the book from George W.’s immediate predecessor, Bill Clinton:
“He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t want to know anything. But he’s not dumb.”
If that doesn’t define active ignorance, I don’t know what does.
Tags: Chief
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