president” largely because of his winning manner even when
faced with the Iran-contra scandal and a stock market plunge,
on October 19, 1987, inevitably attributed to Reaganomics.
Whether Reagan’s affable sincerity was genuine, we will never
know. But he was a model of successful self-invention who pro-
jected authenticity and a lack of pretense that made him one of
the most popular presidents in recent history.
The senior George Bush was an American Brahmin on a
more modest scale than FDR or JFK. With Reagan, he was the
last of our presidents to have been forged in the crucible of
World War II, in which he served as a very young and much
decorated pilot. Bush received some of the highest acceptance
ratings in polling history during his campaign against Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein, Desert Storm. And it was on Bush’s watch
that the Soviet Union—the “Evil Empire,” as Reagan called
it—dissolved in 1991. But Bush was ultimately undone by his
inability to distance himself from his aristocratic roots. Con-
stantly reminded by the brilliant, relentless coalition that put
Clinton in the White House in 1992, the American public
never forgot the image of Bush staring in wonder at an elec-
tronic supermarket scanner. The voting public may forgive you
for going to Choate, but it will never forgive you for not know-
ing how the other half shops.
An orphan raised by an alcoholic step-father, President Clin-
ton was brilliantly self-made, a man who was swept into office in
1992 by making voters believe in a place called Hope, the
stranger-than-fiction name of his Arkansas birthplace. Clinton
had the intelligence, the charm, the ability to find common
ground—everything he needed to be one of the greatest presi-
dents in history. Everything, that is, except the strong moral
compass that all great leaders have. Clinton’s case is tragic in the
Understanding the Basics