Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301170218
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Julia Malone Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
THE BUSH LEGACY
He led the nation to a spectacular military victory and presided over the end of the Cold War. But George Herbert Walker Bush in his single-term presidency left Americans grumbling over the stalled economy and hungry for change.As he now departs the White House, the debate begins on the legacy he will leave behind.
Some early verdicts are harsh. "I'd leave a column of blank space" to assess Bush's administration, said John Mueller, political science professor at the University of Rochester. The Persian Gulf war has become "a blip," the presidential scholar said, and during the collapse of communism in Europe, Bush "mostly stood there and watched the big things that happened."
But Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at Georgetown University, forecast that Bush, much like Harry Truman, will be praised belatedly for "an outstanding job."
When historians are surveyed on Bush's record, he automatically will be excluded from the "great" or "near great" categories because he served only one term, said William Leuchtenburg, presidential scholar at the University of North Carolina. And only clear disasters, like Warren G. Harding's presidency, are rated failures.
"The question settles into whether he was `average' or `less than average,' " said Leuchtenburg.
The results could be colored by the outcome of the Iran-Contra cover-up probe that has dogged him for six years. But the significance of the Bush years will hinge principally on his impact on international policy, the part of his job that he openly favored.
Early in his term, Bush agreed with Congress to overhaul the Clean Air Act and pass a sweeping law to guarantee rights of disabled Americans. But in the face of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party, the Republican president pushed for few other major domestic initiatives.
His most memorable domestic move was almost certainly a negative one, breaking his "no new taxes" pledge. His clearest legislative success was the 35 vetoes of bills he opposed. Only once could Congress muster enough votes to override him.
Elected with few promises and caught in the shadow of his more charismatic predecessor Ronald Reagan, Bush hesitated to press for dramatic initiatives even as the U.S. economy soured.
For most of his four years, Bush was turning his attention outside U.S. borders to the drama unfolding on the world stage.
If there was a single symbol of his tenure, it was the specially outfitted, luxurious Boeing 747 jumbo jet that had been ordered by Reagan but not delivered until Bush had taken office.
"Have plane, will travel," Bush chirped merrily after inspecting his new Air Force One, which helped him become the most traveled single-term president ever. Aboard his plane, he once modeled with obvious pleasure a gift jacket decorated with a map of the world.
He visited every continent except Antarctica during his term and kept personal telephone contact with dozens of fellow leaders.
As communist imperialism collapsed, Bush secured historic cutbacks in the world's nuclear arsenals. And he reluctantly accepted large cuts in U.S. military budgets.
Yet the president, whose outlook had been formed by his World War II experience as a young bomber pilot, made the military the crucial tool of his leadership. Not since the Vietnam War had a president called on soldiers to perform so many missions.
Bush ordered an invasion of Panama, dispatched warplanes in a show of force to ward off a coup in the Philippines, and sent the biggest deployment of American troops since the Vietnam War to oust the invading Iraqi army from Kuwait.
In the aftermath of the rout of Iraq, he responded to the emotionally wrenching pictures of the besieged Kurds in Iraq by sending U.S. armed forces to protect them.
And in a precedent-setting move last month, Bush sent American troops into Somalia for purely humane purposes - bringing relief to a country where 1,000 people were dying daily from starvation.
He has "created a new set of perceptions of the role of American military force in the post-Cold War era," says Cordesman. "It redefines the use of force on a much broader level as a method of peacemaking and peace keeping."
Increasingly attuned to his place in history as the days of his presidency dwindled, Bush outlined a doctrine for using military force that could set the course for future presidents.
The United States should use its troops "where the stakes warrant," where "no other policies are likely to prove effective," and where the mission is "limited" in scope and time, Bush told West Point cadets Jan. 5 in an emotional farewell.
Critics charge that the Bush use-of-force doctrine was makeshift, after-the-fact affair. They argue that his foreign policy expertise is overrated amid the seismic shifts in the world, that his four years added up to little more than a "third" term for the Reagan era.
Leuchtenburg said that in the coming years scholars "are likely to debate what, if anything, Bush had to do with ending the Cold War."
"On the other hand, it did happen on Bush's watch," he adds. "Those taking a kindlier view are likely to cite that."
George C. Edwards, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University where Bush's presidential library will be built, predicts that 20 years hence, historians "will probably say he was a pretty good president."
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