This is the book that cracks the code of the Bush presidency. Unstintingly yet compassionately, and with no political ax to grind, Slate editor in chief Jacob Weisberg methodically and objectively examines the family and circle of advisers who played crucial parts in George W. Bush’s historic downfall.
In this revealing and defining portrait, Weisberg uncovers the “black box” from the crash of the Bush presidency. Using in-depth research, revealing analysis, and keen psychological acuity, Weisberg explores the whole Bush story. Distilling all that has been previously written about Bush into a defining portrait, he illuminates the fateful choices and key decisions that led George W., and thereby the country, into its current predicament. Weisberg gives the tragedy a historical and literary frame, comparing Bush not just to previous American leaders, but also to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, who rises from ne’er-do-well youth to become the warrior king Henry V.
Here is the bitter and fascinating truth of the early years of the Bush dynasty, with never-before-revealed information about the conflict between the two patriarchs on George W.’s father’s side of the family–the one an upright pillar of the community, the other a rowdy playboy–and how that schism would later shape and twist the younger George Bush; his father, a hero of war, business, and Republican politics whose accomplishments George W. would attempt to copy and whose absences he would resent; his mother, Barbara, who suffered from insecurity, depression, and deep dissatisfaction with her role as housewife; and his younger brother Jeb, seen by his parents as steadier, stronger, and the son most likely to succeed.
Weisberg also anatomizes the replacement family Bush surrounded himself with in Washington, a group he thought could help him correct the mistakes he felt had destroyed his father’s presidency: Karl Rove, who led Bush astray by pursuing his own historical ambitions and transforming the president into a deeply polarizing figure; Dick Cheney, whose obsessive quest to restore presidential power and protect the country after 9/11 caused Bush and America to lose the world’s respect; and, finally, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, who encouraged Bush’s foreign policy illusions and abetted his flight from reality.
Delving as no other biography has into Bush’s religious beliefs–which are presented as at once opportunistic and sincere–The Bush Tragedy is an essential work that is sure to become a standard reference for any future assessment. It is the most balanced and compelling account of a sitting president ever written.
From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Jacob Weisberg
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Customer Reviews
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A View for a Soldier's Mother
I will make this short and to the point. I despise George Bush and this book only substantiates my opinion of this man. As the mother of a soldier in the National Guard who never in a million years thought we would be involved in something of this magnitude, this book only re-enforces the lunacy of the Iraq War. My son and my family have spent the last five years in this hell and I only wish George Bush and his family could have expierenced his incompetence first hand. I think the overriding thing about this book is what it shows in terms of the total lack on Bush's part of any understanding of what his actions could and did result in. I have attended the funerals of some of the fine young people who have died because of his arrogance, his stupidity, his ignorance, and his narcicism. I just hope what goes around comes around when it comes to this poor excuse for a human being. This book does an excellent job in trying to diagnosis the sickness that is George Bush. I truely feel for his father who I know understands what his son has done to this country and to this world and for that reason he cries.
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The Letter Hiding in Plain Sight
In The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe imagines a story where a damning letter that can bring doom to the monarchy is hidden in plain sight, available for everyone to see but escaping the police's gaze because of its obvious location and minor changes in its appearance. This story was later taken up by psychoanalysts as a metaphor of their own method of enquiry. Marie Bonaparte, Freud's French disciple, stressed that the purloined letter in the story symbolizes regret for missing maternal penis and reproach for its loss by the son-detective. Jacques Lacan, rebellious heir to the Freudian tradition, saw the letter as the sign of the constitutive lack which forms the keystone of the symbolic order.
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<br />Although he cautions his reader against what he calls "psychobabble", Jacob Weisberg also claims the Freudian legacy. The Freud he refers to is the co-author of Woodrow Wilson's biography, in which he argues that Wilson's inability to process aggressive feelings towards his father left him increasingly messianic and detached from reality: "facts ceased to exist for him if they conflicted with his unconscious desires".
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<br />But Weisberg also implicitly refers to Poe's narrative to characterize his method of investigation: "In pursuit of leaks and scoops, we journalists often miss what's hiding in plain sight. The key that unlocks the mystery of political motivation is seldom hidden in a locked vault. It's usually right in front of us".
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<br />Indeed, there is a purloined letter in almost every chapter of The Bush Tragedy. The elusive letter is most obviously revealed in the opening chapter, where the key to George W. Bush's destiny is to be found in his middle initial. According to Weisberg's version of the family story, "W" is the product of two family traditions, the Bushes and the Walkers, and he is in many ways more a Walker than a Bush. As is well known, only one letter separates him from his father, and the towering figure loomed large on everything he did to gain recognition or assert independence.
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<br />Weisberg also exposes the plans of the two most controversial characters of the Bush presidency: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. As he demonstrates, they were not driven by a hidden agenda or a secret plot to take over America: they acted in plain sight, and their intentions had been publicized all along. Rove's grandiose historical ambition was to achieve nationally what he had done in Texas: operate a major political realignment and ensure Republican dominance for decades to come. Cheney, otherwise secretive and manipulative, never hid his intention to expand executive power and limit interference by the legislative branch. The writing was on the wall for all people to see.
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<br />Another version of the tell-tale letter is the wave of anthrax letters that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Weisberg greatly reevaluates this episode: without the anthrax attacks, Cheney would never have gained such ascendency over the president, and Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq.
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<br />I have read several biographies of American presidents and I thought the genre improved with the passage of time, with history providing a decanter that allowed the best wine bottles to mellow. But Weisberg's Bush Tragedy proves that a portrait could be written on the spur of time and still claim a commanding place on history's bookshelves.
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