The presidency of George W. Bush is notable for the grand scale of its ambitions, the controversy that these ambitions generated, and the risks he regularly courted in the spheres of politics, economics, and foreign policy.  Bush's ultimate goal was indeed ambitious: the completion of the conservative “regime change” first heralded by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  But ironically this effort sewed the very discord that ultimately took root and emerged to frustrate Bush's plans, and may even have begun to unravel aspects of the Reagan revolution he sought to institutionalize.  
     Politically, the Bush White House sought the entrenchment of consistent Republican electoral majorities.  Institutionally, the Bush administration sought to preserve control of Congress by maintaining reliable partisan Republican majorities, and to influence the federal courts with a steady stream of conservative judicial appointees.  The administration also sought increased autonomy over the executive branch by the aggressive use of executive orders and bureaucratic reorganizations in response to 9/11. 
     Many of these efforts were at least partially successful.  But ultimately the fate of the Bush presidency was tied to its greatest single gamble, the Iraq War.  The flawed prosecution of that conflict, combined with other White House management failures and finally a slumping economy, left Bush and the Republican Party deeply unpopular and the victim of strong electoral reversals in 2006 and the election victory of Barack Obama in 2008.  The American public had turned against the Bush agenda in great part because of the negative outcomes resulting from the administration's pursuit of that agenda.
     This book assembles prominent presidential scholars to measure the trajectory of Bush's aspirations, his accomplishments, and his failures. By examining presidential leadership, popular politics and policymaking in this context, the contributors begin the work of understanding the unique historical legacy of the Bush presidency.

America’s forty-third president, George W. Bush, presided over eight of the most dramatic years in recent history, from the 9/11 attacks early in his administration to the worldwide economic crisis of 2008. By his side, recording every event from the momentous to the intimate, was his personal White House photographer, Eric Draper. From a collection of nearly one million photographs, Draper has selected more than one hundred images of President Bush that portray both the public figure and the private man.

Front Row Seat presents a compelling, behind-the-scenes view of the presidency of George W. Bush. Through Draper’s lens, we follow Bush through moments of crisis that called for strong leadership, such as 9/11; emotional meetings with troops in war zones, wounded soldiers at home, and Katrina survivors; and happy, relaxed times with his wife Laura, daughters Barbara and Jenna, and parents President George H. W. and Barbara Bush. We also see Bush at work within his inner circle of trusted advisors, including Vice President Richard Cheney, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Capturing moments that reveal the essence of the man, Front Row Seat is an irreplaceable portrait of George W. Bush.

Elected with no clear public mandate, George W. Bush achieved surprising legislative successes in his early months in the White House. Following September 11, 2001, his public support rose to unprecedented heights. Actions taken in the following months and years have revealed the exceptionally ambitious nature of the Bush presidency.

High Risk and Big Ambition brings together leading presidency scholars and journalists to assess the trajectory and character of Bush’s time in office. The common theme running through their contributions is that this presidency is best characterized by a series of bold political and policy risks in the service of two primary goals: the transformation of American foreign policy and the creation of a lasting Republican dominance of domestic politics.

Included are discussions of foreign policy, national security, the war in Iraq, Bush’s leadership style, religious politics, and economic policy. George W. Bush emerges as an "orthodox innovator" who skillfully deploys both personal politics and the power of his office in an effort to complete the conservative governmental agenda initiated by Ronald Reagan. Yet because of the size of his ambitions, each success sets up a greater risk of failure. That alone makes his presidency one of the most interesting and consequential in decades.

This volume questions the motives of Supreme Court justices in a landmark case: The Supreme Court's intervention in the presidential election of 2000, and its subsequent decision in favor of George W. Bush, elicited immediate, heated, and widespread debate. Critics argued that the justices used weak legal arguments to overturn the Florida Supreme Court's ruling, ending a ballot recount and awarding the presidency to Bush. More fundamentally, they questioned the motives of conservative judges who arrived at a decision in favor of the candidate who reflected their political leanings.
     Judging the Supreme Court examines this controversial case and the extensive attention it has received. To fully understand the case, Clarke Rountree argues, we must understand "judicial motives." These are comprised of more than each judge's personal opinions. Judges' motives, which Rountree calls "rhetorical performances," are as influential and publicly discussed as their decisions themselves. Before they are dissected in the media, judges' motives are carefully crafted by the decision- makers themselves, their critics, and their defenders. Justices consider not only the motives of the government, of military officials, of criminals, of public speakers, and of others, they also consider, construct, construe, spin, and deconstruct the motives of dissenters (whom they want to show are "misguided"), earlier courts, lower courts, and, especially, themselves. 
     Every judicial opinion is essentially a portrait of motives that says, "Here's what we did and here's why we did it." Well-constructed judicial motives reinforce the idea that we live under "the rule of law," while motives articulated less successfully raise questions about the legitimacy not just of individual judicial decisions but also of our political system and its foundation on an impartial judiciary. In Bush v. Gore, Rountree concludes, the judges of the majority opinion were not motivated by judicial concerns about law and justice, but rather by their own political and personal motives.

Identifying the historical antecedents of President George W. Bush’s imperial ambitions and the sources of the reactionary thought and politics that underlie them, Paul A. Bové shows how neoconservatism represents a singular danger to democracy. At the same time, he criticizes the equally disheartening inability of the academic Left to oppose neoconservatives and its tendency to mirror their views instead. Divorced from historical knowledge and intellectual rigor, the neocon mindset reflects a cultural and historical amnesia that feeds on ignorance and conformity. Exposing the threats to national survival inherent in the alliance of right-wing politics and academic tribalism, Bové emphasizes the need to reconnect with the powers of imagination and the complexity of human historical experience. With urgency and passion, Bové shows how the neocons have succeeded in cowing or coopting academic intellectuals and how language has been used and abused for the maintenance and extension of an undemocratic regime.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama criticized the George W. Bush administration for its unrestrained actions in matters of national security. In secret Justice Department memos, President Bush’s officials had claimed for the executive branch total authority to use military force in response to threats of terrorism. They set aside laws made by Congress, even criminal laws prohibiting torture and warrantless surveillance. Candidate Obama promised to restore the rule of law and make a clean break with the Bush approach. President Obama has not done so. Why?
            In a thorough comparison of the Bush and Obama administrations’ national security policies, Chris Edelson demonstrates that President Obama and his officials have used softer rhetoric and toned-down legal arguments, but in key areas—military action, surveillance, and state secrets—they have simply found new ways to assert power without meaningful constitutional or statutory constraints.
            Edelson contends that this legacy of the two immediately post-9/11 presidencies raises crucial questions for future presidents, Congress, the courts, and American citizens. Where is the political will to restore a balance of powers among branches of government and adherence to the rule of law? What are the limits of authority regarding presidential national security power? Have national security concerns created a permanent shift to unconstrained presidential power?

The American presidency has long tested the capacity of the system of checks and balances to constrain executive power, especially in times of war. While scholars have examined presidents starting military conflicts without congressional authorization or infringing on civil liberties in the name of national security, Stuart Streichler focuses on the conduct of hostilities. Using the treatment of war-on-terror detainees under President George W. Bush as a case study, he integrates international humanitarian law into a constitutional analysis of the repercussions of presidential war powers for human rights around the world.

Putting President Bush’s actions in a wider context, Presidential Accountability in Wartime begins with a historical survey of the laws of war, with particular emphasis on the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Tribunal. Streichler then reconstructs the decision-making process that led to the president’s approval of interrogation methods that violated Geneva’s mandate to treat wartime captives humanely. While taking note of various accountability options—from within the executive branch to the International Criminal Court—the book illustrates the challenge in holding presidents personally responsible for violating the laws of war through an in-depth analysis of the actions taken by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the public in response. In doing so, this book not only raises questions about whether international humanitarian law can moderate wartime presidential behavior but also about the character of the presidency and the American constitutional system of government.

Though George W. Bush took office in January, the nation is still recovering from the prolonged and complex process by which he was elected. The Florida electoral controversy and the subsequent decisions by both the Florida courts and the U.S. Supreme Court left citizens and scholars alike divided over the role of the judiciary in the electoral arena. Now, after a few months of reflection, leading constitutional scholarsCass R. Sunstein, Richard A. Epstein, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard A. Posner, and John Yoo, among others—weigh in on the Supreme Court's actions, which remain sensible, legally legitimate, and pragmatically defensible to some and an egregious abuse of power to others. Representing the full spectrum of views and arguments, The Vote offers the most timely and considered guide to the ultimate consequences and significance of the Supreme Court's decision.

The contributors to this volume were highly visible in the national media while the controversy raged, and here they present fully fleshed-out arguments for the positions they promoted on the airwaves. Readers will find in The Vote equally impassioned defenses for and indictments of the Court's actions, and they will come to understand the practical and theoretical implications of the Court's ruling in the realms of both law and politics. No doubt a spate of books will appear on the 2000 presidential election, but none will claim as distinguished a roster of contributors better qualified to place these recent events in their appropriate historical, legal, and political contexts.

Leading constitutional scholars render their verdicts on the 2000 presidential election controversy

Contributors:

Richard A. Epstein

Elizabeth Garrett

Samuel Issacharoff

Pamela S. Karlan

Michael W. McConnell

Frank I. Michelman

Richard H. Pildes

Richard A. Posner

David A. Strauss

Cass R. Sunstein

John Yoo

An earlier electronic edition of The Vote was available on the University of Chicago Press Web site.

Taking seriously the “W Stands for Women” rhetoric of the 2004 Bush–Cheney campaign, the contributors to this collection investigate how “W” stands for women. They argue that George W. Bush has hijacked feminist language toward decidedly antifeminist ends; his use of feminist rhetoric is deeply and problematically connected to a conservative gender ideology. While it is not surprising that conservative views about gender motivate Bush’s stance on so-called “women’s issues” such as abortion, what is surprising—and what this collection demonstrates—is that a conservative gender ideology also underlies a range of policies that do not appear explicitly related to gender, most notably foreign and domestic policies associated with the post-9/11 security state. Any assessment of the lasting consequences of the Bush presidency requires an understanding of the gender conservatism at its core.

In W Stands for Women ten feminist scholars analyze various aspects of Bush’s persona, language, and policy to show how his administration has shaped a new politics of gender. One contributor points out the shortcomings of “compassionate conservatism,” a political philosophy that requires a weaker class to be the subject of compassion. Another examines Lynndie England’s participation in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in relation to the interrogation practices elaborated in the Army Field Manual, practices that often entail “feminizing” detainees by stripping them of their masculine gender identities. Whether investigating the ways that Bush himself performs masculinity or the problems with discourse that positions non-Western women as supplicants in need of saving, these essays highlight the far-reaching consequences of the Bush administration’s conflation of feminist rhetoric, conservative gender ideology, and neoconservative national security policy.

Contributors. Andrew Feffer, Michaele L. Ferguson, David S. Gutterman, Mary Hawkesworth, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Lori Jo Marso, Danielle Regan, R. Claire Snyder, Iris Marion Young, Karen Zivi

Michaela Ferguson and Karen Zivi appeared on KPFA’s Against the Grain on September 11, 2007. Listen to the audio.
Michaela Ferguson and Lori Jo Marso appeared on WUNC’s The State of Things on August 30, 2007. Listen to the audio.