President Bush has matured into a leader with a vision and seems to grasp the international challenges posed by a war with Iraq, said a top analyst of the presidency at the Wilson School yesterday.
Fred Greenstein, a Wilson School professor emeritus and leading scholar of presidential leadership, referred to Bush's recent prime time press conference and said, "With what was the length of his answers, what was the density of his responses, you could see someone who was far more up to speed than he was before."
The lecture titled "Presidential Leadership Wartime: The Case of George W. Bush," part of a speakers series for Princeton residents on wartime presidential leadership, comes at a crucial point in the U.S. attempt to gain international support for war with Iraq.
About 100 people attended the talk in the Wilson School's Dodds Auditorium, which was open to students but not attended by many.
"It seems almost as fate has determined a point which seems to me like lecturing on [John F.] Kennedy on the first public day of the missile crisis," Greenstein said.
Changed presidency
Bush had a "lackluster" first eight months to his presidency, but in the month after Sept. 11, 2001, the president learned about the threat of terrorism and the role of a leader quickly, Greenstein said.
From Sept. 11 to Oct. 11, Bush held 25 National Security Council meetings, and his press conferences and talk before a joint session of Congress were impressive, Greenstein said.
He also praised the president's hiring of keen advisers, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser.
"I think there is a hidden member of [Bush's cabinet], and his name is George H. W. Bush," Greenstein said.
"These two are in touch all the time."
Recent improvements
Greenstein said in the most recent press conference, Bush had matured from "where he had given a facetious line, now he was going in great detail."
"Where you had thought his answer had stopped, you'd see engagement," he said.
"It was a performance that I think most people would give a B to, and thus an edge over his C-average at Yale."
He contrasted this performance with previous public appearances, in which Bush would make blunt statements and often fumble his words.
Greenstein noted that Bush sometimes seems to be a "black and white thinker, someone who only sees good and evil."
The vision thing
Greenstein said a key lesson Bush learned from his father was that the president needs "vision."
"The son took from the fact that his father who had the highest approval level in the history of the president but was defeated for reelection," Greenstein said.
Greenstein has developed six lenses through which to examine U.S. presidents: emotional intelligence, cognitive qualities, political skills, political vision, organizational capacity and public communication skills.
"Emotional intelligence is a threshold requirement," he said.
Greenstein said Bush used to be a more "fragile" person who may have rebelled against the many successes of his father.
But Sept. 11 and the war with Iraq has focused Bush like never before, he said.
Fame
Greenstein gained fame for his revisionist book on the Eisenhower presidency, in which he argued that Ike was deliberately ambiguous and played a "hidden-hand" in politics as a style of leadership.
He recently published a book on presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.
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