John Robert Greene – författare

After George H. W. Bush lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992, John Robert Greene’s verdict on the 41st president of the United States was that he “brought no discredit to the office” and “was both patient and prudent. . . mak [ing] few mistakes.” In the years since the release of Greene’s profile of the senior Bush, deemed by Publishers Weekly, “the essential introduction to Bush’s abbreviated, but still consequential, tenure in office,” a wealth of materials about Bush’s presidency has become available, even as distance has sharpened our perspective on the Bush years. In this significantly expanded second edition of The Presidency of George H. W. Bush, Greene takes full advantage of newly released documents to revisit Bush’s term, to consider his post-presidency accomplishment, and to enhance and clarify our understanding of his place in history.

Such milestones as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the fall of the Soviet Union, the savings and loan crisis, and the transition to the Clinton administration receive renewed and far more detailed treatment here, as do the ramifications of George H. W. Bush’s positions and policies. Greene also devotes ample attention to Bush’s post-presidency, including his relationship with his son, President George W. Bush, as well as the development of his close friendship with Bill Clinton. The elder Bush emerges from this reappraisal as a considerably more activist president, with a more activist administration, than was previously assumed. Greene’s concise and readable account drawing on the contents of the Bush Library, the papers of James A. Baker III, and personal interviews, shows us the 41st president—and thus an important chapter in American history—in a new and more revealing light.

When the 1952 presidential election campaign began, many assumed it would be a race between Harry Truman, seeking his second full term, and Robert A. Taft, son of a former president and, to many of his fellow partisans, “Mr. Republican.” No one imagined the party standard bearers would be Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson II and Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower. I Like Ike tells the story of a critical election fought between two avowedly reluctant warriors, including Truman’s efforts to recruit Eisenhower as the candidate of the Democrat Party—to a finish that, for all the partisan wrangling, had more to do with the extraordinary popularity of the former general, who, along with Stevenson, was seen to be somehow above politics.

In the first book to analyze the 1952 election in its entirety, political historian John Robert Greene looks in detail at how Stevenson and Eisenhower faced demands that they run for an office neither originally wanted. He examines the campaigns of their opponents—Harry Truman and Robert Taft, but also Estes Kefauver, Richard B. Russell, Averell Harriman and Earl Warren. Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers Speech,” Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign, and television as a new medium for news and political commercials—each figured in the election in its own way; and drawing in depth on the Eisenhower, Stevenson, Taft and Nixon papers, Greene traces how.

I Like Ike is a compelling account of how an America fearful of a Communist threat elected a war hero and brought an end to twenty years of Democrat control of the White House. In an era of political ferment, it also makes a timely and persuasive case for the importance of the election of 1952 not only to the Eisenhower Administration, but also to the development of presidential politics well into the future.

The Presidency of George W. Bush is the first balanced academic study to analyze the entirety of his presidency—domestic, social, economic, and national security policies—as well as the administration’s response to 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror. In so doing, John Robert Greene argues persuasively that the judgment of most scholars—that the Bush administration was a complete failure—has been made in haste and without the benefit of primary sources. This book is the first scholarly work to make wide use of the documents at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, many of which have only recently been made available to researchers through the Freedom of Information Act.

John Robert Greene offers a balanced assessment and nuanced conclusions supported by documentary evidence. Yet in doing so he does not absolve the Bush administration of its shortcomings. The Presidency of George W. Bush shows that the administration could be vindictive, as demonstrated by the Plame Wilson affair and the firing of the US attorneys. It all too often moved too slowly, as shown by the National Security Council’s lethargic handling of terrorism pre-9/11, the failed attempt to revise Social Security, and the sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It was an administration that accepted, and acted on, the highly suspect theory of the unitary presidency as advocated by Dick Cheney and accepted by the president. On the other side of the balance sheet, however, the evidence also makes it eminently clear that the Bush administration was responsible for many positive achievements: No Child Left Behind set the nation on the road toward affecting serious educational reform. In healthcare reform, the Bush administration both strengthened the Medicare system and extended its benefits for millions of Americans. And Bush did more to combat the worldwide scourge of AIDS, particularly in Africa, than any other president. In sum, the actions of this presidency continue to affect the presidencies of each of his successors as well as the trajectory of world history to the present day.