The Bush Presidency: Triumphs and Adversities

245 Pages·1994·24.33 MB·English

by  Dilys M. Hill

THE BUSH PRESIDENCY
The Bush Presidency
Triumphs and Adversities
Edited by
Dilys M. Hill
Reader in Politics
Unil'ersity of Southampton
and
Phil Williams
Professor in International Security and
Director. the Matthew Ridgll'ay Center
Unil'ersity of Pittsburgh
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-23404-2 ISBN 978-1-349-23402-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23402-8
Editorial matter and selection © Dilys M. Hill and Phil Williams 1994
Text © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 18t edition 1994
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York. N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1994
ISBN 978-0-312-12102-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Bush presidency: triumphs and adversities / edited by Dilys M.
Hill, Phil Williams.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-12102-0
I. United States-Politics and government-I 989-1 993. I. Hill,
Dilys M. II. Williams, Phil, 1948-
JK271.B74 1994
973.928'092-<1c20 93-42731
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgement vi
The Mountbatten Centre for International Studies VII
Notes on the Contributors VIII
1 Introduction: The Bush Administration -
An Overview 1
Dilys M. Hill and Phil Williams
2 Managing the Bush White House 17
Marcia Lynn l-Vhicker
3 The President and Congress 44
Michael Foley
4 American Political Parties and the Bush Presidency 63
Gillian Peele
5 Bush and the Courts 84
Tinsley E. Yarbrough
6 The Economic Policies of the Bush Administration 109
Stephen Woolcock
7 Domestic Policy 134
Dilys M. Hill
8 Foreign Policy 162
Raymond A. Moore
9 Defense Policy 184
Steve Garber and Phil Williams
10 Conclusion 214
Dilys M. Hill and Phil Williams
Index 229
v
Acknowledgement
The editors are indebted to Mrs Sandra Wilkins, Department
of Politics, University of Southampton, for making the prepara
tion of this volume possible.
vi
THE MOUNTBATTEN CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL
STUDIES
The Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (MCIS),
located in the Department of Politics at the University of
Southampton, conducts many cooperative and individual
research programmes and activities. Current areas of research
include nuclear non-proliferation, human rights, international
environmental issues, naval peacekeeping, European and
Asian security, civil-military relations and police studies.
MCIS activities include residential seminars by its Defence
Studies Unit as well as a programme of seminars and public
lectures. The Centre is interdisciplinary, relying for its
resource base on many departments within the University
including History, Law, Education, and Aeronautics and
Astronautics.
Links have been established with the Centre d'Histoire
Militaire of the University of Montpellier, the Fondation pour
les Etudes de Defense Nationale, Paris, and the Faculte des
Mfaires Internationales, Universite du Havre. The Centre also
participates in the work of the team on Political Culture in
Eastern Europe at the Ecole des Hauts Etudes en Sciences
Sociales, Paris. Members of the Centre have participated in the
work of the European Science Foundation and the Inter
national Congress of Historical Sciences.
Publications of the Centre include the Southampton Studies
in International Policy book series, in association with Macmillan,
and a monograph and newsletter series produced by the pro
gramme on nuclear non-proliferation. MCIS was established in
1990 in succession to the Centre for International Policy
Studies (founded in 1983). The Mountbatten Centre bears the
name of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979) whose
papers are housed at the University of Southampton.
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Michael Foley is Professor, Department of International Pol
itics, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is a leading
expert on American politics, particularly on the United States
Congress, and is the author of Laws, Men and Machines: Modern
American Government and the Appeal oj Newtonian Mechanics
(London, 1990), and American Political Ideas: Traditions and
Usages (Manchester, 1991).
Steve Garber is a Presidential Management Intern at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA.
Dilys M. Hill is Reader in Politics in the Department of Politics,
University of Southampton. She has written extensively on
urban and domestic policy in Britain and the United States
and is co-editor (with M. Glenn Abernathy and Phil Williams)
of The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making (London and
New York, 1984), and with Raymond A. Moore and Phil
Williams of The Reagan Presidency: An Incomplete Revolution?
(London and New York, 1990).
Raymond A. Moore is Distinguished Professor Emeritus,
Department of Government and International Studies, Univer
sity of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. He has held
Ford Foundation and other fellowships at institutions in
America and in Australia, Pakistan and South Korea. He is the
author, with Marcia Lynn Whicker, of ~en Presidents are Great
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988), and contributor, and co-editor
with Marcia Lynn Whicker and James P. Pfiffner, of The
Presidency and the Persian Gulf War (New York, 1993), and con
tributor and co-editor of The Reagan Presidency: An Incomplete
Revolution? (London and New York, 1990).
Gillian Peele is Fellow and Tutor in Politics, Lady Margaret
Hall, University of Oxford, and has published widely on
American and British politics and government. She is the
author of Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America
(Oxford, 1984), contributor, and co-editor with CJ. Bailey and
Vlll
Notes on the Contributors ix
Bruce Cain, of Developments in American Politics 2 (London,
forthcoming 1994), and contributor to The Reagan Presidency:
An Incomplete Revolution? (London and New York, 1990).
Marcia Lynn Whicker is Professor, Department of Public Admin
istration at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, and has
written extensively in the field of presidential studies and interna
tional affairs. She is the author of Contraversial Issues in Economic
Regulatory Policy (Berkeley, 1993) and is a contributor, and co
editor with Raymond A. Moore and James P. Pfiffner, of The Presi
dency and the Persian Gulf War (New York, 1993).
Phil Williams is Professor of International Security, University
of Pittsburgh, and Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center.
He is the author of a large body of work on defence policy and
international affairs. His works include Crisis Management
(London, 1986), The Senate and US Troops in Europe (London,
1986) and Superpower Detente: A Reappraisal, with Mike Bowker
(London, 1988).
Stephen Woolcock is Senior Research Fellow, European Pro
gramme, Royal Institute of International Mfairs, Chatham
House, London. He has written widely on trade and industrial
issues in Europe and the world economy. His recent publica
tions include Market Access Issues in EC-US Relations: Trading
Partners or Trading Blows? (London, 1992); and with Michael
Smith, US-EC Relations in a Transformed World (London, 1993).
He was a contributor to The Carter Year.s: The President and Policy
Making (London and New York, 1984).
Tinsley E. Yarbrough is Professor in the Department of
Political Science, East Carolina University, Greenville, North
Carolina, and a leading expert on the judiciary and on civil
rights. He is the author of John Mar.shaU Harlan: Great Dissenter
of the Warren Court (New York, 1992), Mr. Justice Black and his
Critics (Durham, NC, 1988), and was a contributor to The
Reagan Presidency: An Incomplete Revolution? (London and New
York, 1990).
1 Introduction: The Bush
Administration - An
Overview
Dilys M. Hill and Phil Williams
THE PUZZLE
The presidency of George Bush is something of an enigma in
contemporary American politics. Unlike the Carter adminis
tration, which is the only other real single-term presidency of
the second half of the twentieth century, the Bush administra
tion appeared highly competent, and the President himself
obtained far higher ratings in opinion polls than Jimmy
Carter ever did. Moreover, unlike Carter who was reluctant to
use military force, George Bush was a highly successful war
president and Commander in Chief. At the end of the war in
the Gulf Bush had an approval rating of over 80 per cent and
appeared politically unassailable. Yet he ended up as a one
term president who ran an extremely lack-lustre political cam
paign and lost to a Democratic candidate who only months
earlier had been on the verge of pulling out of the presiden
tial race.
Although President Bush failed to imprint himself on the
American consciousness in the same way as his predecessor,
Ronald Reagan, he not only presided over a period of historic
change in international politics but did so in a way which
added a degree of predictability and stability in a world charac
terized by enormous upheaval. This was not surprising. Bush
came to office as probably the most experienced president
since Richard Nixon. Not only had Bush served as Reagan's
Vice President for eight years but he was also former CIA
Director and had been Ambassador to China and to the
United Nations. The sense of continuity and experience were
reflected in a very professional if sometimes highly negative
1