Robert Kaplan compares the two presidents in a column for The National Interest.
President Barack Obama is known to be a great admirer of President George H. W. Bush, who Obama recently said is “one of the more underrated presidents we have ever had.” Obama notes, “When you look at how he managed foreign policy. . . he was thoughtful, restrained and made good decisions.” Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, explicitly compared his boss some years back to Bush 41, because of Obama’s “realpolitik” and “cold-blooded” instinct about national self-interest. In this view, it is Obama who is the natural heir to the elder Bush, rather than Bush’s own son, the allegedly destructive, adventurous George W. Bush.
I consider myself a realist, who has sympathized with Obama on some foreign policy issues like negotiating with Iran and the Asia Pivot. But this comparison is a myth. The elder Bush’s team of Brent Scowcroft, James Baker III and Dick Cheney arguably constituted both the wisest and most efficiently run foreign policy apparatus between the Ford administration and now. The differences between Obama and the elder Bush are more important than the similarities.
George H. W. Bush was cautious, yes. More importantly, he emanated strength and conviction, and took hard, risky decisions that completed the work of Ronald Reagan. …
… Bush was an internationalist who never would have talked about “nation-building at home.” Though he exercised restraint—in not liberating Baghdad, in not breaking relations with China after the Tiananmen Square massacre—he was careful in how he telegraphed that message, so as not to create the impression abroad that America could be intimidated. Restraint tends to work well when you don’t incessantly advertise it, otherwise it signals apologetic weakness.
The elder Bush administration certainly knew how to conduct negotiations: witness the complex negotiations over the status of post-Cold War Germany, the behind-the-scenes assembling of a vast coalition to liberate Kuwait, and the on-going dialogue with the Soviets that helped prevent major war as their empire in Central and Eastern Europe collapsed. Does anybody really believe that James Baker would have negotiated with Iran exactly as did Kerry? Kerry’s public posture emblemized desperation for a deal. Baker never would have made that mistake, and likely would have gotten a measurably better outcome, peeling off some important adversaries to the whole idea of warming to Iran. The Bush Middle East team would also have crafted a better regional strategy to go along with their opening to Iran that would have made allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel less nervous. Saudi and Israeli hostility to the Iran talks was partially driven by the failure of the Obama White House to radiate strength and internationalist conviction generally—not just in the Middle East.
