A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush by Lori Cox Han (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush by Lori Cox Han Sara A. Mehltretter Drury A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush. By Lori Cox Han. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011; pp. xi + 242. $40.00 cloth. Lori Cox Han begins her book, A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush, by recounting the complex legacy of the single-term president. Initially viewed as a static president who occupied the White House in between two "dynamic and skilled communicators" (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton), George H. W. Bush's legacy continues to be debated by scholars (1). Han argues that Bush's tenure in office and his presidential legacy can be better understood by focusing on the "public presidency"—the president's communication to the American public, his relationship with the press, the communication strategies employed by the advisers to the president, and the media responses to the White House. Furthermore, Han contends that Bush's public leadership was constrained by the context of his presidency, particularly the changes in political media coverage. Throughout the book, Han builds her argument that Bush was upstaged in three major areas. First, Reagan upstaged Bush by creating a "public [End Page 617] expectation" of presidential communication that the press simultaneously resented and expected to be fulfilled by the new president (200). Second, Bush's public presidency and communication were upstaged by "the changing technology and news media environment during the late 1980s and early 1990s" (200). Finally, just as his predecessor upstaged Bush, his successor, Bill Clinton, upstaged the Bush presidency and solidified Bush's initial legacy as an ineffective communicator and incapable leader. In six chapters, Han examines the scholarly assessments of George H. W. Bush, the internal dynamics within the Bush White House, a variety of external factors, two case studies on Bush's public speeches, and a final assessment of the Bush legacy and our understanding of the contemporary public presidency. The book is meticulously researched, with comprehensive sources from newspapers, television shows, memoirs, and the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, including fascinating materials newly obtained through Han's Freedom of Information Act request. After a review of existing scholarship in the first chapter, chapter 2 details the various strategies taken by the Bush administration during its four years in the White House, drawing on an impressive number of archival documents. Han's citation of memoranda from Marlin Fitzwater, the Press Secretary and chief architect of Bush's public communication strategy, demonstrates that the Bush White House actively made decisions to move away from Reagan's "Great Communicator" strategies of giving national addresses, speaking "over" Congress and the press. In contrast, the Bush team designed their communication strategy to emphasize substance over style (18). To underscore the importance of giving the press access to policymaking details, the president made himself available for "real interaction between him and White House reporters" (21). Bush primarily relied on smaller public events to communicate policy rather than on large, national addresses. For example, Bush discontinued the weekly radio address begun by Reagan (and reinstituted, Han notes, by Clinton). The White House communications team worked to keep Bush off, rather than on, the national stage, holding smaller "roundtable interviews" and Q&A sessions with niche publications such as McCalls' (targeting 5 million women readers), Outdoor Life, Prevention (health and fitness), Flame (a Christian publication), and Good Housekeeping (35). While Bush actually participated in more public activities in his four years than Reagan during his first term, Han concludes that the Bush White House never quite learned the lesson [End Page 618] that more press access does not equal more favorable or more comprehensive coverage of policymaking. Overall, the lack of a strong, overarching "vision thing"—as the Bush team called it—plagued Bush throughout his presidency (43). In chapter 3, Han's comprehensive research strongly supports her assessment of the changing dynamic between the news media and the presidency during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This section of the book will be of great interest to scholars looking at the relationship between the media and the contemporary...