Bush on the Home Front Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks [Paperback]

Military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed so much attention during his presidency that few people appreciated that George W. Bush was also an activist on the home front. Despite limited public support, and while confronting a deeply divided Congress, Bush engineered and implemented reforms of public policy on a wide range of issues: taxes, education, health care, energy, environment, and regulatory reform. In Bush on the Home Front, former Bush White House official and academic John D. Graham analyzes Bushs successes in these areas and setbacks in other areas such as Social Security and immigration reform. Graham provides valuable insights into how future presidents can shape U.S. domestic policy while facing continuing partisan polarization.

In this magnificent book, John D. Graham shows that George W. Bush was a domestic policy activist from start to finishpertinacious, astute, and surprisingly successful. With a thin electoral mandate, faced with great political polarization and a consuming foreign crisis, Bush 43 nonetheless advanced his domestic agenda to an impressive degree. Bush on the Home Front scores the wins, losses, and muddlesand lays out a penetrating analysis of legislative and administrative strategies that every future president will want to study. John Graham has admirably combined insider insight and scholarly detachment; right out of the box, he has set a very high standard for histories of a complex and contentious period in American politics.Informative, thoroughly researched, clear both in structure and presentation, and provocative. . . . Will likely serve as a source document for other views of the Bush presidency. . . . A significant addition to the public policy literature on the Bush presidency.2011 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection

Contents<\>
Preface and Acknowledgments

1. Ambiguous Mandate, Polarized Congress
2. Lower Taxes, More Spending
3. The Social Security Debl³±