How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History [Hardcover]

John Gibson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2009

Swiftboating, as it has come to be defined by the Left, is the political trick of claiming to expose truth while in fact lying. Operating under that definition, the Left repeatedly assailed Bush, the Right, the Iraq War, counterterrorism efforts and the entire effort to keep America safe from terrorism by defeating Al Qaeda. The Left said here's the truth: failure of judgment, loss at war, incompetence at all levels, all of which were demonstrable lies, but by repetition over a period of years proved effective. Polling tracked the disillusionment among Americans as the lies set in. Wrong track polling ran into eighty percent, and the credibility of President Bush was eroded into the low twenty percent. It's time to render a verdict. Who was right and who was wrong in taking us into the Iraq War, and what followed in elaborate and expensive efforts to protect America? The answer likely will horrify many Lefties for sheer emphatic audacity: The Right was right, the Left was wrong. Period. John Gibson will prove it.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Gibson is a bestselling conservative author who appears frequently on Fox News Channel and has his own national radio program, reaching about two million listeners on ninety stations each week. He lives in New York City.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper (December 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061792896
• ISBN-13: 978-0061792892
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #803,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 98 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's great to finally read the TRUTH about President Bush., December 9, 2009

By 

Tim Black - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book. I always believed the liberal media and liberal comedians were constantly bashing Bush for political reasons. I didn't agree with everything President Bush did but I knew he wasn't the devil the media made him out to be. If you started to turn on the President because of all the hate being spewed by the media then you owe it to yourself to read this book so your final judgement of the President is based on the truth and not the liberal media hate.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pamphlet, December 7, 2011

By 

Felix "Felix" (Somewhere, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History (Hardcover)

I had the opportunity to read this book at a friend's house. Reading it shouldn't take you more than a couple hours, as it has no substance.
The ideological nature of this book should be evident in that the author considers "Democrats" and "Left" as synonyms.
Then there's the whole initial argument that Bush wasn't dumb because either him or Cheney decided that one of them would "move" (for electoral purposes) out of Texas as the Electoral College wouldn't award them electors had they been from the same state (this doesn't prove that either candidate was smart or dumb, just that their lawyers knew their stuff, as you should expect).
The author then launches on a misconstruction of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, arguing that Al Gore took the case to the Supreme Court because he lost the Electoral College but won the popular vote for almost half a million votes. This is substantially incorrect, as it was the Bush team that requested the Supreme Court to stop the recount. If you were to believe what the book says, Gore went to the Supreme Court to question the current electoral system as unjust. This is not at all what happened.
From then on the book gets worse. Take your pick, Iraq, Katrina, the economy, etc. everything is recounted in an alternate history version where the facts become irrelevant. What's worse, all these facts are easy to check.
Finally, I find ironic that a conservative uses the term "swiftboat" to refer to what used to be calling "mudslinging" (I guess) being that the term was coined when a conservative activist tried to denigrate John Kerry service as a swift boat commander. From the use of the term one would guess that there was no essence to the claims against Kerry, or so does the author of this pamphlet implied in choosing this revealing title.
I thought this book would give me some insight into the roots of the current political situation, but that's not the author's goal. If you believe that Fox News is the only reliable news source you may like parts of this book, otherwise try and find a book more in touch with reality.

28 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad title, December 11, 2009

By 

Joseph L. Shipman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History (Hardcover)

The thesis of the book is correct (Bush was made out to be worse than he was, to a greater degree than previous Presidents were made out to be worse than they were).

However, the author should not have validated the left's sneaky trick of using the word "swiftboating" to denote a form of lying, because the ACTUAL Swift Boat crews who criticized John Kerry were, in very large part, factually correct in their accusations. Their major criticisms of Kerry were completely unrefuted, and only trivial errors have been truly demonstrated (almost all the supposed errors found in the book involved misrepresentations of what the book actually said).