In The Shadow of Bush

Visitors to the Oval Office have a tendency to become yes men. Bob Strauss, a cagey lobbyist and adviser to presidents, liked to tell a story about visitors intimidated by the power of the Oval Office. Before they went in, Strauss used to say, the president's men would posture and boast to one another, "I'm gonna tell that dumb s.o.b. a thing or two!" But once they were actually inside, face to face with the Leader of the Free World, all resolve would melt and they would meekly say, "Oh, Mr. President, you're doing such a fine job." Curiously, Bush has, from time to time, told that Bob Strauss story, or a variation thereof. And yet, by his snide prep-school teasing and bluff shows of resolve, he probably has done as much to discourage honest dissent among his advisers as any of his predecessors.

In realms of power, yes men (and women) are inevitable. The great presidents actively seek out diverse points of view. George Washington included in his first cabinet a pair of political polar opposites—Alexander Hamilton (who wanted to centralize power) as Treasury secretary and Thomas Jefferson (who wanted to diffuse it) as secretary of State. Lincoln's cabinet was a "team of rivals," as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has dubbed it. Franklin D. Roosevelt positively delighted in pitting his subordinates against each other in creative competition. That allowed Roosevelt to be the one in charge, of course, but he was always willing to listen to the bad news. In early 1938, the president's advisers cringed as they watched a young one-star general, George C. Marshall, telling FDR that his defense strategy was all wrong. They assumed Marshall's career was finished. Instead, FDR made Marshall his Army chief of staff, and was rewarded when Marshall became the "organizer of victory" in World War II.

The good presidents learn from their mistakes, however painful. John F. Kennedy dismissed the elaborate national-security structure set up by his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as too stodgy and bureaucratic. Instead, JFK listened to the freebooting swells at the CIA—who promptly led him into the Bay of Pigs. In agony over his humiliation by Fidel Castro's Cuba, JFK threatened to "splinter" the CIA "into a thousand pieces" and moaned to his putative future GOP rival, Barry Goldwater, "So you want this f–––ing job?" But in October 1962, when crisis loomed again in Cuba—this time more dangerously, with the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles—Kennedy was ready. He convened an executive committee (an "Ex Comm") of diverse voices. Over the course of 13 days, these present and former high-ranking government officials argued, sometimes bitterly, but were able to avoid Armageddon with a facesaving secret missile trade with Moscow.

No one came to office with a clearer vision about America's role in the world than Ronald Reagan. He sometimes seemed to believe his own fables, but in his first term, he was clever enough to appoint a tough-minded chief of staff in James A. Baker to serve as a reality check. In Reagan's second term, Baker left the White House to become Treasury secretary, and Reagan allowed a couple of Marine colonels, Bud McFarlane and Oliver North, to cook up an absurd arms-for-hostages deal with Iran that also illegally funded a secret army, the contras, fighting the communist regime in Nicaragua. His presidency in near ruin from the Iran-contra scandal, Reagan was able to recover by bringing in moderate, experienced advisers and working closely with Congress—in time to continue the essential task of winding down the cold war.

Although he gets almost no credit from the mainstream press, Bush 43 has also learned from experience. During his first six years in office, he allowed his political guru, Karl Rove, to dominate weak policy advisers. (The low point may have come in February 2006, when Bush's domestic policy adviser, Claude Allen, resigned after being accused of shoplifting from a suburban mall; he later pleaded guilty.) Josh Bolten, who replaced Andy Card as White House chief of staff in April 2006, has quietly prodded a move toward moderation by the Bush administration. Last summer the White House almost pulled off a much-needed, middle-of-the-road attempt at immigration reform. But it was too late: the Bush White House was too weak to force its will on its own party in Congress.

Bush himself appears to be playing a movie in his mind of ultimate redemption. With the surge in Iraq doing more to reduce violence than most alleged experts had predicted, Bush can hope that his resolve will be vindicated and that future historians will regard him as a latter-day Harry Truman. Grover Cleveland, or some other 19th-century mediocrity, is probably more like it. Still, not long ago, Bush was being compared by some pundits to James Buchanan, Lincoln's pre-Civil War predecessor, generally regarded as low man on the presidential totem pole.