In His Father's Shadow: The Transformations of George W. Bush.

by Fred I. Greenstein In His Father's Shadow: The Transformations of George W, Bush. By Stanley A. Renshon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 292 pp. It is not difficult to imagine an outcome of the 2000 election in which Al Gore garnered the modest number of additional votes in Florida he would have needed to win that state's electoral vote and gone on to become the 43d president of the United States. What difference would it have made for the course of events from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2005 if Gore rather than George W. Bush had been president? It is likely that Gore, and most other conceivable occupants of the Oval Office, would have responded much as Bush did to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but it is highly unlikely, to take the most obvious example, that Gore, or most other possible chief executives, would have embarked on a preemptive war in Iraq. Because the war in Iraq and much else that resulted from the 2000 election bear the personal stamp of George W. Bush, the exercise in political psychology under review here calls for close attention, more so because its author, Stanley Renshon, is a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a political scientist who has written such works as The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates (1998). In recounting Bush's pre-presidential years, Renshon relies heavily on Bill Minutaglio's excellent First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty (1999). The younger George Bush, it will be remembered, was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1946, where his war hero father was attending Yale, but brought up in the decidedly less upper-crust setting of Midland, Texas. At age seven, the younger George Bush had the wrenching experience of being informed that his three-year-old sister had died of leukemia. In his teens, Bush received a different kind of jolt. After attending Texas elementary schools, he was sent by his parents to the elite New England preparatory school his father had attended, and went on to spend his undergraduate years at Yale. In both schools, he was a lackluster student and had emotionally painful experiences. In prep school, Bush submitted an English composition describing his grief when his sister died. The instructor subjected the essay to harsh criticism for its awkward prose style, making no mention of its content. At Yale, Bush was told by the university chaplain that his father had been defeated by a "better man" in his recent unsuccessful campaign for the Senate. Bush returned to Texas with an abiding dislike for what he viewed as the arrogance of Eastern intellectuals, but with enduring friendships that served him well in business and politics. After Yale, Bush entered into what have been referred to as his "nomadic years," an extended period in which he drank to excess and got into alcohol-related scrapes. His life gradually came together with his marriage to the level-headed Laura Welch in 1977, the birth of their twin daughters in 1981, and his spiritual awaking in the early 1980s. On the morning of his fortieth birthday, Bush awoke with a fierce hangover and abruptly gave up drinking. In the decade that followed, he found business success as ownermanager of the Texas Rangers baseball team and went on to become governor of Texas and president of the United States. The nub of Renshon's psychological analysis is captured in his book's title and subtitle. Renshon's claim is that Bush's early fecklessness resulted from being "in the shadow" of his intimidatingly accomplished father, an interpretation that Renshon asserts but does not systematically defend. The book's subtitle refers to what Renshon argues are four transformations that have marked Bush's adult years (p. 3). The first two were in Bush himself. He changed from being "a young man trying (not always successfully) to find his place to a president who found his purpose" and later changed from being "a president whose administration was struggling" to one who "was profoundly transformed as a result of the terrorist attack on 9/11." The second two are transformations Bush seeks to impose on his political environment, although they also involved modifications in himself. During his time in the White House, Renshon argues, Bush has been transformed from being "a president with policy views, but no overarching vision, to a president trying to transform American political culture" and from being "a president with little knowledge of the world to a president trying to transform it." Few political observers would deny that Bush underwent a striking maturation early in middle age, or that his presidential leadership became dramatically more assertive in the wake of 9/11. However, the standing of the other pair of transformations to which Renshon refers is less self-evident. There is no question that Bush has sought to bring about significant domestic and international change. It is not obvious, however, that the term "transformation" provides a useful way to characterize his efforts. Indeed, Renshon implies in his final chapter that these would not take effect until the second Bush term that was not assured when his book went to press. In His Father's Shadow is not a full-blown psychobiography in the manner of the Alexander and Juliette George classic, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (1956). On Bush's early years Renshon summarizes what is related in greater detail in such secondary sources as Minutaglio's biography. Renshon does not closely examine the gubernatorial achievements that catapulted Bush to the Republican nomination or scrutinize in depth Bush's actions at such pivotal points in his presidency as 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq war. Renshon's reliance on secondary sources is understandable, however, given the paucity of primary sources on sitting chief executives. Moreover, he is impressively resourceful in his use of one underappreciated primary source--the transcripts of a president's unscripted utterances that are compiled in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. In poring through that compilation, Renshon has uncovered a number of nuggets, including an instructive disquisition by Bush to a group of university students in Russia on what makes for an effective leader. While his insights on the topic are not startling, they have a considered quality that provides us with a reminder that George W. Bush is not to be underestimated. "A leader can't do everything," Bush remarked.

 He must be willing to surround himself ... with smart, capable,
honorable people. A leader must be willing to listen, and
then ... must be decisive enough to make a decision and stick by it.
In politics, in order to lead, you've got to know what you believe.
You have to stand on principle. You have to believe in certain
values, and you must defend them at all costs.... You must set
clear goals and convince people of those goals and constantly lead
toward those goals. And finally, you've got to treat [the members of
your team] with respect.... By respecting people, they become better
members of the team and therefore give better advice and work toward
the same goal.

("Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session with Students at St.
Petersburg State University," St. Petersburg, Russia, Weekly
Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 25, 2002)

Renshon's book would have benefited from a more explicit organization and linear narrative. It tends to repeat interpretative points, rather than developing them in an orderly sequence of steps. The book would have profited as well from a fuller defense of its psychological interpretations, many of which are simply asserted. Here Renshon might have drawn on the example of George and George, who identify alternative interpretations of Woodrow Wilson's motivations and adduce evidence to choose among them. (See also George and George, Presidential Personality and Performance, 1998.) More attention to the weaknesses of Bush's leadership style also would have made the book more persuasive. As it is, the volume comes across as a celebration of Bush's strengths, often in terms that have the ring of idealization, as in Renshon's assertion that Bush's "psychology and mission" are marked by a "fierce and steely determination" (p. 203). Renshon might also have usefully considered a number of explicitly psychological claims that have been advanced about Bush. The mutually exclusive assertions have been advanced that Bush embarked on the Iraq war to vindicate his father and out of an oedipal need to do his father one better. It also has been alleged that Bush is what in the field of addictions therapy is referred to as a "dry drunk"--a former drinker who retains such traits of the alcoholic as impulsiveness, emotional volatility, and black-and-white thinking. A writer with Renshon's credentials should be uniquely qualified to assess such assertions. A final way the book could have been strengthened is with a fuller consideration of Bush's religious beliefs. At some points, Renshon seems even to minimize the importance of faith as a motivating force in Bush's life (e.g., p. 45). Yet Bush is conspicuous for his close ties with evangelical Christianity; he is a daily reader of the Bible and other religious works; and he has made so many assertions about the importance of religion to him that an entire Web site is devoted to the topic ("George W. Bush and Faith," beliefnet.com). Whatever the volume's limitations, In His Father's Shadow is a serious and instructive work. It is obligatory reading for anyone who seeks to take the measure of George W. Bush. Fred I. Greenstein Princeton University

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Publication Information: Article Title: In His Father's Shadow: The Transformations of George W. Bush. Contributors: Fred I. Greenstein - author. Journal Title: Presidential Studies Quarterly. Volume: 35. Issue: 3. Publication Year: 2005. Page Number: 623+. COPYRIGHT 2005 Center for the Study of the Presidency; COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group