Fraternity : A Journey in Search of Five Presidents

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Summary: Welcome Back, Bob Greene...
Review: Bob Greene is one of my all-time favorite columnists, and I was super-pleased to hear at Amazon that he had a new book coming out. After some tough times in the past two years, I hope that Mr. Greene can return to his rightful place in the world of letters. No one else shows us the heart of America without being annoyingly sappy.

The two most important lessons you will come away with after reading "Fraternity" are:

A. Our former presidents, while none of them are mentally dull, are not men of sparkling intellect, either. This is, I know, how it must be: a president cannot win the rapport needed for election if "the people" don't feel he is on their level. Still, you may be surprised at how much they are just like you (or the older men you may know) -- except the Secret Service has their back and they are guaranteed the presidential suite at any hotel, any time.

B. Even after you reach the top of the mountain -- who, in public life, is more important than the president of the United States? -- life *does* go on, and it will present you with challenges and opportunities up until the ultimate finish line (death).

It is hard to believe that no one has written a collective retrospective about life post-presidency before. It is heartening to know that Bob Greene has done it.


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Summary: Baby Richard Nixon
Review: Bob Greene was the laziest writer in Chicago. For years, he got away with writing column after column on these topics: Michael Jordan, the Beach Boys, how much better everything was when he was a teenager in Bexley, Ohio in 1964, Bob Evans, and the annoyance to end all annoyances, Baby Richard. Many of us were relieved when he was dismissed from his Tribune post for personal reasons.

Now Bob is back, with this sometimes interesting but mostly maddening volume about ex-Presidents of the United States. Any other writer would have told us more about these men and how they spend their post-Presidency careers and retirements. Not Bob! He spends the majority of the book discussing how the presidents interact with Bob and what each president means to Bob.

Thus, we see Richard Nixon as someone who repeatedly tells his secretary that he has more time for Bob. We see George Bush Sr. making a speech and referencing a conversation he had earlier in the day with Bob, and we hear how Bob feels about it. We get Bob's reaction to Gerald Ford. We get a pointless digression about Jack Nicklaus. We get Bob's visit to a Ronald Reagan Library dinner honoring Yitzhak Rabin. Finally, in the book's most self-indulgent moment, we find out that Nixon sent Bob's infant son an inscribed book. And through all this, Bob doesn't even bother to interview his generational peer, Bill Clinton. You'd think they could have traded memories of Beach Boys songs.

The few tidbits we can get about the presidents themselves are interesting - for example, Nixon had to take his daily walks at 5:30 AM because he would be mobbed otherwise, or Jimmy Carter trying to rest his hurt knee because he would be taking a group of inner-city Atlanta youths on a ski trip the next week, or Gerald Ford and his group of high school football friends who still get together. But ultimately, it's a Bob-fest suitable only for Bob's few fans who are left.

And in case you were wondering, Bob makes three separate references to Columbus (Bexley is a Columbus suburb) and Ohio State University, and mentions Michael Jordan once. You can't teach an old Bob new tricks!

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Summary: Friendly, conversational and quick read with famous folks...
Review: Bob Greene's breezy, nostalgic journey to chat with 5 of our former Chief Executives is a great book to give as a gift, or to pleasantly pass the time in a single sitting. His enthusiasm and humor shine through in his chatty chapters with Nixon, Carter and Ford...all three statesmen come off as interesting, intelligent men (even Nixon with his always astounding idiosyncracies). With the elder Bush, however, Greene seems to have less to work with, so fills out the chapter with his own reflections on the man and his legacy. The final chapter, on Ronald Reagan, is certainly poignant as no interview was possible due to the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.

Greene is a great writer and I'd suggest a follow up on either the former First Ladies or the women of the Senate, entitled SORORITY.

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Summary: Quick and Pleasant
Review: Bob Greene's quest to meet and interview all five living Presidents in the early 1990s has a few moments of surprise, but it's mostly reflective of how ex-presidents lead pretty normal lives.

He begins with Nixon who might be the oddball in this fraternity. He's the most serious about himself and the office of President. He's a very formal man who admits to Green that he never called Eisenhower, Ike, in their private meetings. It was always General or Mr. President. Further, Nixon's best friend, Bebe Rebozo, always addressed Nixon as Mr. President from the day he was elected onward even when they were alone.

Greene's meetings with Carter revealed how hands-on the guy is. Whether he is seeing to one of his charities or meeting with his fellow faculty members at Emory University, Carter is on hand and active. Greene's experience would lead one to believe that Carter's immersion into things may have been a hindrance to his presidency where there were just too many concerns to handle personally.

George Bush 41 revealed himself as a decent chap during a 1994 meeting in Chicago when he and Jeb were in town to address some businessmen. Since Jeb was running for Florida governor that year (He lost) and brother George W. was running for Governor of Texas that same year (He won) Greene lets the episode be as much about passing the baton as anything else.

Ford seems such a normal guy because unlike the others who have books to write, charities to tend to, or sons to groom, Ford is just plain retired playing golf in Palm Springs. The Ford visit is interesting because he talks with Betty alone when Gerry is outside doing a golf documentary shoot. He asks her some of the same questions he asked the former president and he gets different answers. When asked what he would have done had he not become President, Gerry says that he'd probably be living in Michigan retired from practicing law. Betty says that they would have moved to Southern California just the same. When asked the toughest day of his life, Gerry says losing re-election to Carter. Betty says his toughest day was no doubt her cancer surgery. The most interesting comment is that Gerry feels closer to Carter than any of the other former Republican Presidents.

The book ends with Greene's attempt to meet Reagan at the Ronald Regan Freedom Awards, but Reagan had already made his Alzheimer's announcement and he would cancel his appearance. Still, Greene does a good job of explaining Nancy's fill-in for him, something she would learn to do for the next ten years. The recipient of that night's award of Prime Minister Rabin of Israel, and he would sadly die of assassination a year later.

At first glance there isn't a whole lot to the book. Bob Greene seems to be asking innocuous questions, but you gradually see some revelations that you probably wouldn't get from the hard-hitting interview.

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Summary: Wonderful book
Review: If it has one weakness, it is the same weakness as Greene's books about Michael Jordan. After a certain point, there is a feeling that you are hearing a man telling his innermost thoughts to famous people to see what they think about his thoughts. On the one hand, it's interesting. On the other, it's narcissitic. One wonders if this was a quest for information or validation. But you do come away with the feeling that it takes a common and uncommon man to become president. Only an uncommon person could have written this book.

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Summary: What Bob Greene did on his summer vacation
Review: It's not unusual for people to visit presidential libraries and museums or collect presidential memorabilia. There is even a surprising number of people who seek out presidential gravesites (and write books about it, like C-SPAN's Brian Lamb). But it's far rarer for someone to attempt to meet and spend time with former presidents themselves. This book is the story of Bob Greene's effort to collect the whole set.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is as much about Greene as it is about the living historical markers he sees the ex-presidents as having become. Americans have lived with president as Caesar, president as criminal, even retrospectively, president as demigod. Now we have president as tourist souvenir.

Back during the 1992 campaign, when that young woman asked then-candidate Clinton the famous "boxers or briefs" question, I remember thinking, "You have a chance to ask a likely future president a question, and that's the best you could do? Shame on you." I had something of the same reaction to this book. Greene explicitly set out to be non-political and non-confrontational, and if that's the direction he had to take to get in the door, than so be it. But it makes Greene's subjects -- whom, he argues, have fallen from exalted heights and are all mournfully cognizant of what they have lost -- seem even more banal to wind up sitting in their living rooms, offices, or hotels discussing sweaters or college football with Bob Greene. Only Jimmy Carter comes across as really *doing something* -- and consequently Greene in those chapters is reduced to part of the hyperkinetic Carter's entourage instead of being the sole object of hours of his subjects' attention, as he is in most of the rest of the book. (A great companion for this section, by the way, is Steven Hayward's "The Real Jimmy Carter" [Regnery, 2004].)

Greene comes to the realization that "you can be elected out of [the presidency], but ... apparently, in some ways, you can never really leave" (p. 182). This "Hotel California" existence is a sign of how much we invest in our presidents, emotionally, symbolically, and even spiritually. Even a man like Gerald Ford, who filled the office for little more than two years, is elevated -- apotheosized -- for all time. Greene suggests Ford's image may show up on a coin someday (Ford himself, entirely rightly, considers the idea laughable). To see how this process affects the men themselves, and to try to tease some insights into the men's personalities out of Greene's readable but not especially deep prose, is probably the best way to approach this book.