Catherine L. Fithian

An Absolute Stunner

Revisado: 06-05-21

I grew up hating W. I was a fanatical viewer of Jon Stewart (at probably too young an age) and I soaked in every word my father said about switching to become a Republican in Ohio in 2000 just to vote against him in the Primary. He was stupid, boorish, ruined our alliances and every move he took was a mistake. It wasn’t Bush’s fault though anyway, he was an empty suit as Darth Cheney ran the Administration and destroyed America.

This endlessly fascinating, detailed and researched book is probably the most thorough confrontation of those beliefs I have ever had. In light of the last administration, I have been warming up as an adult to W. as a man, and this book was a game changer for me. On balance I still believe the Bush Presidency was a failed administration, but I walk away from this book believing it was not only nowhere near as bad as I had grown up believing but also largely a failure based on genuine positives of Bush himself as a politician and as a man.

The Bush revealed in this book may have been anti-intellectual, but not stupid. He was a deep thinker, well read, clever, but hated pretension and superiority complexes. He genuinely believed most of what he said, and when he attempted to play the cynical games of all American Politicians to win votes he would fail to find the passion or drive to push. In particular his pledge to ban same sex marriage as a second campaign promise, as he was personally opposed to federal involvement in such matters and loved many queer people in his life, but pushed the pledge nonetheless to win an Evangelical Base he only mildly related to. He genuinely cared for the education of all Americans despite race or language, and the failure of No Child Left Behind was born not of cynical politicking but of a genuine disconnect between the research of childcare and the policy makers. Big one: I get the build up to the war in Iraq, on Bush’s part. The war was a blunder that helped throw the entire region into turmoil, but for much of his second term especially the war seemed to be creating stability and ending in honor. Bush himself comes off as a real human being who fundamentally was not built for the role in history he was mantled with, and fundamentally he made mistakes born out of intentions I cannot argue against. He also admits that a lot throughout the book. He was self aware in ways many politicians fundamentally are not.

Cheney does not come off as well. The Machiavellian Darth Cheney of the Left’s (and my) imagination is far more of a dude’s dude, a quiet, brooding, old guard neocon paranoid who believed in the military as a fly swatter and in the divine right of the American Presidency. The Dick of Adam McKay’s Vice is also wrong: he’s not an evil genius. He’s a strongman and a bit of a jerk. The book’s main thrust largely becomes how the first term was born out of Cheney seeming like a level headed mentor for W., and the second term being George and Condaleeza Rice attempting to clean up the messes Dick left in his wake. Cheney would have, honestly, fit in very well in The Donald’s administration, and feels very much a last remnant of the Nixon Era (which is exactly what he was).

This book is also perhaps the most exhaustively researched Presidential Narrative I have ever read not written by either Caro or Chernow. Every detail is lifted from interviews, memos, legal documents or recordings. Occasionally a reference is made toward how much legal trouble it was to get some of the documents sourced.

This book is utterly brilliant, and to end I wish to have a damning revelation from this book, and an uplifting and enlightening one. Firstly, The Patriot Act, wherein the Government had been permitted to spy on its citizens without repercussions, was born out of an ill thought out and rushed proposal that was never fully thought through. Your basic civil rights to privacy and free speech are violated every day because the bill wasn’t properly vetted.
And an up: fundamentally I don’t think the world would be a better place without the Bush Administration’s efforts to fight AIDS and Malaria worldwide, especially in Africa. Going step by step through the work W. pushed in the region, it is actually shocking how much the man clearly cared and what a net positive his administration brought. We have one positive from those eight years that need not come with an asterisk.

Read this book. It’s incredible.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Varied

Revisado: 12-09-18

The first part dragged, for me, but the second half was very interesting. She's a good reader, too.

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Excellent story

Revisado: 01-04-17

I've read this series and re-read them over the years and they never disappoint. This audio, however, is slightly disappointing for 2 reasons: it's not the author reading and the recorded chapter breaks are obviously from the old disc release and not modernised to have chapters breaking in the recording at each book chapter's end.

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