Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush

In an indictment of the Bush presidency, two White House correspondents for Time portray a do-nothing president who has set no real national priorities. Bush's self-defined custodial role, they charge, has been to perform a holding action for his core constituency, America's ruling class. Duffy and Goodgame accuse Bush of an unprincipled approach to civil rights and fault his irresolution on education, the environment and the war on drugs. While applauding his stubborn resolve in the Persian Gulf crisis, they blast his frenetic ``Rolodex diplomacy'' and his tolerance for human rights abuses and autocracy, as shown by his secret conciliatory missions to Beijing after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Bush's agenda of upholding the status quo no longer appeals to voters who fear America's long decline, Duffy and Goodgame assert; in this bombshell of a book they explain why the policies that got Bush elected may be his undoing. They predict that a second Bush term would be ``more of the same, only less.'' First serial to Time; author tour. (Aug.)