Thank you everyone for a terrific discussion. I hope everyone enjoys the book. Great being here. Julian

I think that one of the factors many observers missed was how the evolution and expansion of the conservative media (including on the Internet) created a foundation and bully pulpit for conservatives after 2008 to attack the president and shape the public agenda.

I might be wrong here, but I think some of the authors touch on this, in terms of when his “average guy” persona became a huge political liability. But it was not the central theme as the authors really pushed to talk about the Bush presidency without focusing just on Bush himself. This I would add is another way in which historians start writing about periods in presidential history. They start looking at issues such as religion and politics in these years, or anti-intellectualism in public life rather than the ins and outs of each individual which journalists tend to do so well.

This is a great question. I love the challenge of writing about contemporary history. I realize that there are risks. I approached this volume with the understanding the history would be incomplete and some of it subject to revision. I have not been that shocked by what has happened, although I think some of my authors were stronger believers that 2008 was the end of the era of conservatism. I tried to frame the book as a moment of crisis for the REpublican Party, which I think it still was. The strains of decades of being in power and the strains of some of the factionalism and contradictions that emerged with the politically unpopular war in Iraq undercut the strength of the GOP. But I argued that it is a mistake to assume we had entered a new era. President Obama himself (while he was a candidate) warned that conservatism had made long-lasting changes in our ideas and policies. Obama himself is a product of this era–rather than the 1960s–and reflects this through a rather centrist approach to domestic policy. Therefore, I feel that the findings in the book still work. They provide a really outstanding look at key issues from this era and capture the ending of the Bush administration as one where a party had fallen politically and it was unclear where they were going next. I am sure as the archives open and events unfold, some claims in the chapters will be challenged. But that is a good thing. Matt and I both know that there are no interpretations by historians that go unchallenged. Even work published 200 years after an event takes place is subject to debate and analysis. That is the great thing about writing history, it is an ongoing process and ongoing debate. The point of this book was to start the debate with some very solid work and some provocative arguments.

Fear is an important aspect of partisan politics. To be sure, Democrats use fear too. It is an old tradition (think of how Truman “scared the hell” out of Congress, taking the advice of Arthur Vandenberg, to build support for the Truman Doctrine. The essays really show how the post-9/11 fears were integral to the politics employed by the Bush administration in his early years. The 2002 midterms were a case in point. But conservatives have also used the politics of hope. Reagan did this very often, such as with his Morning in America campaign. Bush used this rhetoric as well in his discussions of the economy.

I suspect that the political costs are higher for Republicans today. If Bush had been able to obtain immigration reform his chances for expanding the Republican base would have been quite significant. While in the short-term some of the anti-immigrant and even anti-race feeling might fuel some Tea Party activism, I don’t think that helps the GOP. I think it distracts them–and media coverage of the party–from issues that might more potent politically (like the anti-tax argument).

Fred Logevall, I believe, talks a bit about this though the pieces don’t really focus on the “inside story” kind of work we find from Woodward. This is more big picture. But several are pretty clear that the Plame event was part of a rather systematic effort 2002-2003 to suppress and intimidate opponents.

One are the limits of presidential power. Second, is the persistence and durability of policies that Bush inherited when he became president. A third factor was the enormous political damage from Iraq which undercut much of the political strength Bush secured after 9/11. A fourth was the revitalization of the Democratic Party in 2004. Finally, I think (and I stress this perhaps more than others) was that Bush’s national security agenda would always be difficult to actually implement in the post-Vietnam age. Just as conservatives found that many New Deal/Great Society programs were more popular than they thought, the impact of Vietnam was also long-lasting. There was no more draft, there was a distaste for long and costly wars, and there was not much legislative support for calling for the kinds of sacrifice needed in a full-scale military mobilization. All of these are highlighted by different authors as important sources of push back.

The relationship between race and conservatism has been a big issue for historians. Some historians argue that race was the underlying factor behind the conservative mobilization since the 1960s. Others argue that many other factors were at work, such as national security arguments and political economy. Matt has written some fantastic stuff on this subject. I do think Gary Gerstle’s chapter in my book strongly challenges any notion that conservatism has been unified on race. He provides rather strong evidence that Bush, and many Republicans in his Texas circles, didn’t view the world that way and wanted a more diversified Republican Party. There were political reasons for doing so but this was also part of how they saw the world. There have clearly been racial arguments employed by some Tea Party protesters but I am not sure we would want to say this is all that the movement is about.

This is an interesting question, not one I am sure I have an answer to. Obviously many of the economic policies (see the Jacobs and Lichtenstein chapters in the book) did benefit key interest groups in the Republican coalition. But the basic policy outlook of deregulation, tax cuts, and shifting resources toward the sunbelt) meshed with the ideological worldview of the GOP by 2001. I think Bush believed that he was doing what was best in the country, and key interests lined up behind someone whose views were so similar. This is not to say his policies were best for the country. Just in trying to evaluate what he was doing I don’t think there was a huge tension between worldview and interest group support in the GOP.

That might be true. Of course, all Republicans today remember the government shutdown in 1995 and 1996 are are hesitant to repeat that mistake. For all the rhetoric, Bush actually abandoned or backed off from the far right on many issues, immigration reform, Social Security privatization, other wars of regime change (like Iran) and more. My guess is we will see this again.

I am not 100 percent certain we know what drives the Tea Party movement. Some of it is a rebellion against the GOP and the perception that the leadership became too comfortable in Washington. Some of it is the frustration and anxiety among the middle class about the economy. Some of it is clearly a strong movement against Obama and his policies. I think political parties have the ability to absorb these kinds of rebellions. They can live with the movement-elite dynamic, if it becomes a way to drive up voting and broaden legislative support. In the first few years after 9/11, using national security as a unifying theme, Republicans were able to do this. The impact was clear in 2004. The big question in my mind is if Tea Party Republicans push things so far that they force the party–as in 1995-1996–into taking politically untenable steps that give Democrats a huge opening.

This gets back to our earlier discussion. In general, work by journalists tends to stress how president remake politics. The work by historians, and some political scientists, often finds that the case is very different. Presidents are often constrained by existing policies, institutions, and public opinion. The cases Matt mentions are very good. I think our book makes clear that President Bush was often frustrated by his inability to make changes, even with the significant advances that do take place. Indeed, without 9/11 it is unclear how much change would have taken place. I would only disagree a bit with Matt (and this relates to another book of mine which we discussed here, Arsenal of Democracy) that presidents have a free hand on national security. Public opinion, Congress, and pre-existing policies have an enormous impact here as well. I think President Obama has learned this since day 1.

Not exactly clear on the question can you explain? The essays show Bush officials constantly trying to balance these needs–doing what (they think) is best for the country and doing what is needed to win reelection and build a strong coalition. Often the two didn’t go hand in hand. But please expand so I can answer you.

Not yet. The tensions between the new Republicans in 1995 and the leadership was also quite severe. People like Robert Dole were really frustrated with the new class in the House. But over time, the radical Republicans became Washington Republicans. It was a pretty quick process. My guess is this can happen again. I can also see some of the grass roots energy of the Tea Party dying down, particularly if Obama continues to make aggressive moves toward the center and the economy picks up.

Most presidents go through cycles in terms of how they are evaluated. Even someone like Herbert Hoover has had historians who look at changes that did occur under his presidency which influenced FDR. As I mentioned, the transformation in how we analyze Ronald Reagan has been dramatic. This is really unending. It depends on new archival discoveries, changes in the political context within which historians are writing, and the way that events unfold overseas (think of Truman as another example).

Dudziak looks at how the administration used the law to advance its objectives. She challenges conservatives and liberals who have argued that the administration ignored the law. She finds that Bush officials developed complex and “creative” ways to avoid court jurisdiction such as with their constitutional theories of executive power. She shows how the administration used law to push certain policies and to protect the executive branch

There is a wonderful chapter in the book by the historian David Greenberg who writes about anti-intellectualism in the Bush administration. The chapter is NOT about Bush and his intelligence. Rather Greenberg traces how the administration mounted an intense war against expertise as they pursued their policy agenda. In areas such as the environment, Bush and his colleagues were very successful when they tried to discredit the experts who were raising big questions about what was going on. I think the findings of the chapter offer some important insights into the kind of politics we have seen in recent months.

This is a good point. I don’t think all the authors are in agreement on this. I believe that the divisions in the GOP sometimes could be useful. If the divisions are contained, as they were during the early part of the presidency, they become a source of building coalitional support for the party and the president’s policies. I think most of the essays agree that in terms of policies–the division in the GOP did nothing to prevent some rather significant changes from taking place. The divisions caused two problems. First, there were certain policies where the divisions undercut the ability of the GOP to move forward in ways that might have benefited the party. Nowhere is this clearer than with immigration reform which ended the genuine effort by Bush to bring Latino voters into his party. Second, the divisions became a problem in the electoral arena by 2008 when it dampened enthusiasm for the GOP.

We do need to be careful here. Thinking of Matt’s comments earlier. Jim Patterson’s and Nelson Lichtenstein’s essays in the book makes a strong case that Bush’s economic policies–from deregulation to tax cuts–were very expansive but rooted in policy preferences that had taken shape for several decades. Many Democrats had accepted these policies as well.