A few years ago, author Malcolm Gladwell suggested that cultural leanings might make plane crashes more likely. For example, Korean culture, the theory went, was so hierarchical that crew members would rather risk crashing than show up the pilot.
Could it be that a similar deference to authority and protocol led George Bush 41 to hold his tongue while his son’s administration crashed and burned?
It’s not like he didn’t have lots of practice keeping his mouth shut. As Ronald Reagan’s loyal running mate and vice president, 41 suppressed and altered his personal positions (remember “voodoo economics”?). And as an ex-president, 41 also seems to have kept his opinions (even on issues where he was uniquely suited to provide counsel!) mostly to himself.
Until now, that is.
I’m speaking, of course, about recent revelations that Bush 41 didn’t think Bush 43 was terribly well served by Vice President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He also didn’t care much for his son’s cowboy rhetoric.
Wouldn’t this have been information that might have been more useful, I don’t know, a decade ago?
Maureen Dowd’s tendency to overplay the pop psychology angle can grow old, but in this case, she raises an interesting point:
Even for a Waspy American family with scorn for introspection and a long tradition of fathers not weighing in, choosing to let their sons make their own life choices, it’s remarkable that two presidents who went to war with the same Iraqi dictator can bluntly talk to each other only through a biographer.
Why wouldn’t George W. Bush want to tap into his father’s expertise on everything from tapping top aides to going to war with Iraq?
Having spent a dozen years in the White House, the one person in the world uniquely capable of advising Dubya on how to manage the presidency was…his own father. Yet, it was his Heavenly Father (and his favorite philosopher) and his political father (Ronald Reagan) — not to mention Cheney and Rumsfeld — who seemed to completely supplant the old man in his son’s eyes.
Doesn’t it seem at least possible that some of Dubya’s life and career decisions — both stylistic and substantive — were made simply out of a desire to be the opposite of his one-term “preppy” father?
The fact that the younger Bush tapped his dad’s rival for Defense Secretary demonstrates he wasn’t terribly interested in following in the footsteps of, you know, the only flesh and blood person in the world who was uniquely suited to provide advice.
But let’s put aside the fact that the son always wanted to be his own man. Why wouldn’t Bush 41 make damned sure 43 heard his wisdom and warnings — whether he liked it, or not? “If only they were Italian,” Dowd writes. “Maybe the father could have simply said to the son in real time: ‘Don’t screw this up, invade the wrong country and create a power vacuum in the Middle East. Dick’s gone nuts.’”
I don’t know if it’s a Waspy thing (as Dowd suggests) or just a weird thing; but it does seem like 43 was deeply invested in not taking his dad’s advice — just as 41 seems to have been deeply committed to not giving too much advice that wasn’t solicited.
Without being too simplistic and boiling all of modern history down to a deep-seated communication breakdown in one family, is it crazy to think the world might be entirely different today had one son and one father been better communicators?
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