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| Reagan's Disciple: George W. Bush's Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy | 
 enlarge | Authors: Lou Cannon, Carl M. Cannon
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 540548
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 1586484486
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931092
EAN: 9781586484484
ASIN: 1586484486
Publication Date: January 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
George W. Bush ran for office promising to continue what conservative icon Ronald Reagan started, and two years into his first term, Bush was still being described as "Reagan's son." Today, with the Iraq War spinning out of control and the Democrats in charge of Congress, Republicans and the conservative movement have all but abandoned George W. Bush. What happened? Did Bush change, or did his party's perceptions? Has the war and Bush's performance on other issues derailed the larger goals of the Reagan Revolution? and even undermined its foundations? Or does the nation remain on a conservative path despite Bush's low standing with his fellow Americans? In Reagan's Disciple, two widely respected reporter/ historians provide an authoritative and concise investigation into these issues. They describe the essence of the 40th and the 43rd presidencies, and compare them to shed new light on the history of the past three decades. They show both how extraordinary a leader Reagan was, and how preposterous the expectations for Bush were from the beginning. As Americans look toward choosing a new leader in 2008, Reagan's Disciple will serve as an instructive tale for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike.
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| Customer Reviews:
 George Bush's role of a lifetime March 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lou Cannon, author of several books about Ronald Reagan, has co-written "Reagan's Disciple", with his son Carl. A highly insightful, yet somewhat uneven book, it nonetheless makes some great comparisons between our nation's fortieth and forty-third presidents. Guess which one fares less well?
The authors state in the preface that this is a book with "a fair and balanced point of view". In many respects it is, but it's hard not to notice (at least with the elder Cannon) a sense of awe regarding his subject. Granted, Reagan's star has been rising in past years and the Cannons take full measure of it. That legacy is still in dispute with many of us, but this offering certainly makes Bush look inadequate in contrast. If Reagan brought the Republican party into unanimity a generation ago, Bush has almost singlehandedly squandered it, as the authors point out.
Much of "Reagan's Disciple" deals with war, beginning with a look at Woodrow Wilson's idealism, and subsequently how Reagan and Bush looked at war differently. Reagan, ever cautious about foreign entanglements, would almost certainly not have invaded Iraq as Bush did, much to everyone's chagrin today. The narrative of the Cannons is crisp but the subject matter tends to bounce around leaving a less than unifying story line. Yet the contrasting style of Reagan and Bush is the most fascinating part of the book and the authors tell this one well. While Reagan sought broad consensus and a balanced view, Bush has retained a small coterie of yes-men with hardly divergent views.
As we reach the end of the tragic Bush years, "Reagan's Disciple" is a reminder of the bookends of the Republican domination since 1980. The "Morning in America" brand of Ronald Reagan has been wiped clean by the miasma of the past several years. As the authors rightly suggest, when Bush comes on tv people either change the channel or put on the mute button...Americans stopped listening to him a long time ago. People will invoke Reagan's name for years to come, but Bush's legacy, undoubtedly, will be something quite different.
 The Gipper's mantle doesn't fit on his self-proclaimed heir March 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Lou Cannon, journalist and historian, is one of Ronald Reagan's most prolific and reliable biographers (I think his President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime is still about the best bio yet written of our 40th president). Carl M. Cannon is a resourceful and clear-eyed reporter in the Washington of Bush 43. Together, they have produced an interesting book that gives us some valuable insights into the motivations and actions of the Bush presidency. It also, perhaps unexpectedly, shines a fascinating light on Ronald Reagan.
For years -- before, during, and after his time in the Oval Office -- Ronald Reagan was portrayed by his opposition as a dim ideological cowboy. In recent years, however, he has been granted a Strange New Respect (as R.E. Tyrrell might put it) by the Left -- in part, no doubt, to try to seize a bit of his own still-strong popularity with the American people for their own purposes, but also to use as a cudgel with which to beat the new, dimmer ideological cowboy, George W. Bush. To use the inevitable cliche -- so inevitable that even the Washington Post Book World review quoted on this page made use of it -- "George W. Bush, you're no Ronald Reagan."
It's one of the many paradoxical features of today's political scene that it's now the Left who sees in Ronald Reagan a nuanced, deliberative statesman, while the Right (or at least the neocon, Bushian right) honors a one-dimensional, caricatured memory of who Reagan was and what he believed. One of the most valuable parts of "Reagan's Disciple," I thought, was the Cannons' accurate portrayal of Reagan as a leader far more practical, realistic, and conciliatory than ideological; far less willing to put American lives on the line or rely on military muscle than anyone thought; and far more willing to draw on a broad range of advisers and opinions than is his ostensible philosophical heir, President Bush.
I found the most interesting parts of "Reagan's Disciple" to be the comparison of the two presidents' approach to warmaking. But the authors also discuss in some detail Supreme Court confirmation battles, the politics of White House personnel decisions, and what it means to be a "decisive" leader. There's also an interesting exploration of the validity of George W. Bush's current preferred presidential comparison, himself with Harry Truman: scorned and unpopular when he left office, but ultimately vindicated by history and honored in the memory of the American people. The Cannons find this comparison also ... imprecise.
As this primary season has shown, Ronald Reagan is still a touchstone of Republican politics. As the Cannons and other historians have noted, if all the presidents since 1945 operated in the shadow of FDR, the presidents since 1989 have operated in the shadow of Ronald Reagan -- a shadow that seems likely to stretch, like a movie gunslinger's at sunset, for a considerable time yet. With George W. Bush having so explicitly claimed the Reaganite mantle, a book like "Reagan's Disciple" was both necessary and inevitable. That it was done so well, and by two writers so well-qualified to draw conclusions, is something to be thankful for. With so many books written about the Bush presidency, from so many different directions and viewpoints, how can you tell which ones are worth reading? Here's my helpful hint: this is one of the good ones.
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