The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis of Authority in American Government

by Alasdair Roberts

Overview

When the Bush presidency began to collapse, pundits were quick to tell a tale of the “imperial presidency” gone awry, a story of secretive, power-hungry ideologues who guided an arrogant president down the road to ruin. But the inside story of the failures of the Bush administration is both much more complex and alarming, says leading policy analyst Alasdair Roberts. In the most comprehensive, balanced view of the Bush presidency to date, Roberts portrays a surprisingly weak president, hamstrung by bureaucratic, constitutional, cultural and economic barriers and strikingly unable to wield authority even within his own executive branch.
The Collapse of Fortress Bush shows how the president fought—and lost—key battles with the defense and intelligence communities. From Homeland Security to Katrina, Bush could not coordinate agencies to meet domestic threats or disasters. Either the Bush administration refused to exercise authority, was thwarted in the attempt to exercise authority, or wielded authority but could not meet the test of legitimacy needed to enact their goals. Ultimately, the vaunted White House discipline gave way to public recriminations among key advisers. Condemned for secretiveness, the Bush administration became one of the most closely scrutinized presidencies in the modern era.
Roberts links the collapse of the Bush presidency to deeper currents in American politics and culture, especially a new militarism and the supremacy of the Reagan-era consensus on low taxes, limited government, and free markets. Only in this setting was it possible to have a “total war on terrorism” in which taxes were reduced, private consumption was encouraged, and businesses were lightly regulated.
A balanced, incisive account by a skilled observer of U.S. government, The Collapse of Fortress Bush turns the spotlight from the powerful cabal that launched the war in Iraq to tell a much more disturbing story about American power and the failure of executive leadership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814776063
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2008
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Alasdair Roberts is Professor of Public Administration in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is also a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Policy, UniversityCollege, London. He received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard Universityand a law degree from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, winner of the 2007 Book Award from the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Public Administration Research, the 2007 Best Book Award of the Academy of Management’s Public and Non-Profit Division, the International Political Science Association’s 2007 Levine Book Prize, and the 2006 Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration.

Table of Contents

Preface
1 A Crisis of Authority
2 Citizens and Aliens
3 Home Alone
4 Soothing the Market
5 Cakewalk
6 The Collapse of Fortress Bush
7 Beyond the Imperial Presidency
Notes
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A trenchant analysis of the last eight years of American political history. . . . A work of rare insight that fills gaps glaringly evident in most public discourse.”
-Kirkus Reviews

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“A counterintuitive critique of why the Bush administration collapsed, both internationally and domestically.”
-Publishers Weekly

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“To explain the actions of the Bush administration since 9/11, Roberts . . . offers a provocative and intriguing thesis: that the decisions made by Bush were tightly constrained by the American political system's ‘entrenched liberalism,’ and a prevailing culture of ‘neomilitarism.’ . . . [T]he book deserves a wide audience. It will likely raise many questions to pose to presidential candidates in this election cycle. Highly recommended for all libraries.”
-Thomas J. Baldino,Library Journal

“Roberts’ book reminds us of a fundamental truth about modern democracies—governments and their opponents often have a vested interest in exaggerating the degree to which rhetoric has been transformed into reality.”-Public Finance
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“Roberts’ sound judgment and expertise in the field of public administration make this an excellent primer on governance in the Bush years.”
-Choice

Editorial Reviews

"Roberts book reminds us of a fundamental truth about modern democracies—governments and their opponents often have a vested interest in exaggerating the degree to which rhetoric has been transformed into reality."

Public Finance

"Roberts sound judgment and expertise in the field of public administration make this an excellent primer on governance in the Bush years."

Choice

To explain the actions of the Bush administration since 9/11, Roberts . . . offers a provocative and intriguing thesis: that the decisions made by Bush were tightly constrained by the American political system's ‘entrenched liberalism,’ and a prevailing culture of ‘neomilitarism.’ . . . [T]he book deserves a wide audience. It will likely raise many questions to pose to presidential candidates in this election cycle. Highly recommended for all libraries.”
-Thomas J. Baldino,Library Journal

“Roberts’ book reminds us of a fundamental truth about modern democracies—governments and their opponents often have a vested interest in exaggerating the degree to which rhetoric has been transformed into reality.”-Public Finance

From the Publisher

In the years following the September 11 attacks, supporters and critics of the Bush administration have debated its broad expansion of executive authority. Syracuse professor Roberts breaks decisively from these assertions, instead arguing that the Bush administration has repeatedly failed to consolidate presidential authority. Where critics decry recent infringements on civil liberties, the author counters that, in comparison to previous historical crises, legal and social protections have limited the scope of these infringements. Similarly, the realities of geo-politics have constrained espoused changes in foreign policy typified by the Bush Doctrine advocating preemptive action against threats to American interests. The author insists that the institutional design of the federal government and political shifts of the 1960s and 1970s have made the consolidation of executive power extremely difficult. This provocative, intelligent book will likely challenge the opinions of Bush's champions and detractors alike. With his simple but compelling central argument that "personnel may change, but the broad constraints on federal action do not shift so readily," Roberts suggests that institutional forces have shaped American politics more profoundly than the personalities and aspirations of those in power. (Feb.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

To explain the actions of the Bush administration since 9/11, Roberts (public administration, Syracuse Univ.; Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age ) offers a provocative and intriguing thesis: that the decisions made by Bush were tightly constrained by the American political system's "entrenched liberalism," and a prevailing culture of "neomilitarism." He argues that while the president has great potential power as outlined in the Constitution, in fact his ability to act is limited by its checks and balances, by diminished public trust in and fear of big government, by advances in media news investigation and dissemination, and by the people's resistance to government action that limits their own liberties. Indeed, the author views the resistance of civil libertarians to the Patriot Act and Bush administration efforts to engage in domestic surveillance as evidence that entrenched liberalism undermined Bush's authority. Moreover, the military establishment has so thoroughly transformed itself since Vietnam (e.g., by shedding the draft, by developing high-tech weapons that make combat seem like a video game) that it is now held in higher public esteem than Congress or the President. Roberts carefully develops his argument with examples and compelling logic. Some of his points are vaguely reminiscent of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power , that the real power of any President is the power to persuade. Despite this reviewer's concern with the author's evaluation of some of Bush's actions, the book deserves a wide audience. It will likely raise many questions to pose to presidential candidates in this election cycle. Highly recommended for alllibraries.-Thomas J. Baldino, Wilkes University

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A trenchant analysis of the last eight years of American political history. George W. Bush is usually either lauded as a courageous visionary or damned as an imperialistic ideologue. Rare is the voice that offers sober, balanced assessment, but Roberts (Public Administration/Syracuse Univ.; Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, 2006, etc.) seems to have found it. Despite a title that suggests another left-wing screed, the book contextualizes the major claims and initiatives of the Bush administration in the light of recent American history. In today's sprawling and complicated federal government, the author states, even the most far-reaching chief executive is hard-put to make his imprint on domestic and foreign policy. While conventional wisdom says that Bush broke with long-standing American policy by launching a preemptive war against Iraq, for example, Roberts argues that in fact America has been slowly approaching war in the region since halfway through the second Clinton administration, if not as far back as Bush I. To the frequent claim that Bush has expanded executive power in an "Imperial Presidency," the author counters that the increasingly complex and bloated organism known as the federal government has diminished the presidency as at perhaps no other time in our history. Roberts is far from being an apologist for the administration, faulting it for incompetence, lack of foresight and failure to adapt to changing realities. But America's problems are much greater than a single person or administration, he contends, which makes solutions that much harder to come by. A work of rare insight that fills gaps glaringly evident in most public discourse. One minorcomplaint: The author spends too much time in this slender book rehashing events of the last decades and quoting from other books written about them.

Kirkus Reviews