Category: Books

Election results present perfect timing for release of new Bush book

Posted by dcrim – November 8, 2010

Former President George W. Bush is ending nearly two years of silence with a series of high-profile interviews to promote his new book, “Decision Points,” which is due out today.

Bush chose not to write a traditional birth-to-Oval-Office autobiography, but instead selected 14 major decisions, or clusters of decisions, that shaped his life and presidency, such as the moment he quit drinking and his handling of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the revelations that have leaked out so far: He contemplated removing Vice President Dick Cheney from the ticket in 2004 and replacing him with Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., but decided not to. He elaborates on his most embarrassing moments before he quit drinking, recounting the time he drunkenly asked a woman at a dinner party what sex after age 50 is like. He also believes John McCain could have used his help during the 2008 presidential election.

Writes the New York Times:

Most Americans still do not view him favorably and a good portion still revile him for invading Iraq, waterboarding terror suspects and presiding over the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He is still a punchline, to many a failed president, the source of today’s economic and foreign policy troubles. And yet, with Mr. Obama increasingly unpopular and “Miss Me Yet?” T-shirts for sale at Washington’s Union Station a short walk from the Capitol, some polls suggest a slight softening of views. Mr. Obama’s blame-Bush strategy did not stop voters last week from returning Republicans to power in the House and handing them more seats in the Senate.

The Times calls the book part spin, part mea culpa, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious effort to (re)shape his political legacy in this review.

Woodward offers up-close look at Obama administration

Posted by dcrim – September 22, 2010

Another president, another Bob Woodward book.

The Watergate legend is out with his 16th book on Monday, “Obama’s Wars,” this time after being granted access to the Obama White House. Politico reports that administration officials hope their cooperation will lead a largely sympathetic portrait, although President George W. Bush was hoping for the same thing, gaining mixed results.

The New York Times says the picture that emerges is of an administration grappling with tough questions of war and peace, but doing so amid the palace intrigue of who’s up, who’s down and who’s not on speaking terms.

The Washington Post says the book reveals President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him. The Post notes that the book focuses “on the strategy review, and the dissension, distrust and infighting that consumed Obama’s national security team as it was locked in a fierce and emotional struggle over the direction, goals, timetable, troop levels and the chances of success” in the Afghanistan war.

The book notes battles with former military commanders — and with Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, the Post said in a story.

Guess I will have to make room for another volume on the Woodward shelf in the mancave, just below the David Halberstam shelf.

Game Change: An interesting look at 2008 presidential race

Posted by dcrim – February 1, 2010

51456158Spent a chunk of the weekend reading a new book on the 2008 presidential election written by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.”

The Atlantic Monthly summarized the book this way: Political scientists aren’t going to like this book, because it portrays politics as it is actually lived by the candidates, their staff and the press, which is to say — a messy, sweaty, ugly, arduous competition between flawed human beings — a universe away from numbers and probabilities and theories.

It certainly is a little different than the “Making of the President “books made famous by Theodore White, but it’s an interesting read. (Neither John nor Elizabeth Edwards come off as very likable people.) The New York Times offers this review and New York magazine has these excerpts.