George Herbert Walker Bush

by Tom Wicker

Book Overview

No one is more qualified to give a fully rounded, objective portrait of our forty-first president than Tom Wicker. A political correspondent for The New York Times for more than thirty years, Wicker was a first-hand witness to and reporter of George H. W. Bush s political rise and presidential reign. In George Herbert Walker Bush, Wicker provides a richly drawn and succinct overview of Bush from his New England roots, his decorated service in World...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670033030
• ISBN13: 9780670033034
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Lipper
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Light intellectual reading, politically factual with jokes

I always consider George Herbert Walker Bush the original President Bush, but I prefer to think of him as a person with a clandestine history that has been hidden on a more ominous level, as a prime character, along with Jack Ruby, James Jesus Angleton, E. Howard Hunt, and David Atlee Phillips in PLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Mark Lane, an investigation of the question: Was the CIA involved in the assassination of JFK? In the case of the original President Bush, the success of some of his children is the most obvious evidence that America is currently being ruled by children of the people who killed President Kennedy. Tom Wicker is not so outrageously opposed to the undercover aspects of modern despicabilities, but he is capable of considering plenty of deep doo-doo on the question of whether the original George Bush was a wimp, as implied by the cover of the October 11, 1987 `Newsweek' which is quoted as saying, "George Bush: Fighting the Wimp Image." (p. 86). There is no index for the Penguin Life series book, GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH by Tom Wicker, but source notes on pages 221-228 reveal books with many details to support Wicker's observations. Not everyone in America has been paying close attention to the personality factors that are deemed important in modern politics. With a majority of the voting citizens being capable of putting anyone they choose into the presidency, and people they hardly know into every other position, intellectuals are in an absurd position of trying to find ideas that correspond to events which are much too complex to conform to easy explanations. Huge amounts of money, a trillion here, a trillion there, are still considered significant in trying to frame political arguments, but few people can articulate any basis for expecting such huge amounts of money to materialize. In the case of the Bush family, much of their wealth followed the formation of Zapata Petroleum, which paid $850,000 to lease land in Coke County, Texas, resulting in seventy-one oil wells pumping more than a thousand barrels of oil a day by the end of 1953. (p. 12). Bush had enough money to join a partnership that opened the Commercial Bank and Trust Company. In 1958 Bush became president of Zapata Offshore and went into undersea drilling. (pp. 12-13). Tom Wicker hardly appreciates the satisfaction which becomes a part of the life of those people who are where the smart money is and who expect politics to be a continuation of social structures in which they have been successful. But most people don't measure up to the high standards of Skull and Bones, the CIA, or American foreign policy as conducted from the Oval Office. Tom Wicker has a depth of intellectual background which relies mainly on skepticism about policy assertions to arrive at behind-the-scenes explanations. A few things became public in instant headlines, such as Barbara Bush saying, "that four million dollar ----- I can't say it but it rhymes with rich" (p. 672) in 1984 wh

This book is a real gem

Once again Tom Wicker has made American history accessible. In 219 pages of easy reading he has given us the essential George H. W. Bush. As a Democrat, I deem Wicker to completely fair. His major points are that Bush I's historical reputation rests on the decisions he made regarding the Gulf War. Even those who believe sanctions against Saddam should have given more time, will have to admit that the President may well have been right. Historically, his decision may have been the equivalent of the French kicking Hitler out of the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936 and avoiding WWII. However, Wicker has plenty of fodder for those of us who generally do not admire Bush I and Bush II. This includes the constant attack on opponents on phony issues rather than relying on their own merits. Wicker also takes us through the less laudible moments in Bush's career: kicking Geraldine Ferraro's ass in 1984; his cynical appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court; his selection of Dan Quayle as VP, dropping bombs on Panamanian civilians for no good reason and Iran-Contra.