519 of 567 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive, sobering, poignant, November 6, 2003
This review is from: The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Hardcover)
For those of us who have devoured the recent books outlining the depradations of the Bush Administration such as those by Vidal, Ivins, Franken, and Moore you will find little revelatory here. However, David Corn is a fine journalist and serious scholar with evident professional integrity. So, what is rewarding about "The Lies of George W. Bush" is its comprehensive, well documented, and scholarly approach -- making it above reproach in terms of research and accuracy.
Corn's basic point and most poignant observation is at the book's beginning. There is nothing unique about Bush as a politician being a liar; in that respect he is in good company. However, he campaigned on a self righteous, moralistic platform asserting that he would maintain clean campaigns and straightforward, honest leadership. It was on this basis that he proclaimed he was entitled to the mantle of leadership rather than Al Gore, whose occasional bending of the truth the Republicans branded reprehensible and immoral. His constituents also assert that unbending commitment to the truth and morality is their quest, yet they relentlessly lie in their ruthless quest for power and profit as they trample the rights and exploit the majority of Americans, and endanger the safety of the planet.
Probably the best, and most telling chapter in the book deals with Bush's "White Collar Lies". He comprehensively outlines Bush's violations of SEC regulations, outright lies, and theft during his involvement in Harken Energy and substantial profits from insider trading, which foreshadowed the later Enron scandal that mirrored this scandal. Corn skillfully compares the two and, in an understated fashion, points out the glaring irony.
Corn very effectively and eloquently outlines that George W. Bush is a well established liar, and on the basis of his widespread, pervasive, and menacing lies, and his ruthlessness in pursuit of any of his objectives that he is unfit to be the President of the United States.
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257 of 280 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Despite agreeing with the author, a very disappointing book, October 5, 2003
This review is from: The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Hardcover)
I completely agree with David Corn's assessment of George W. Bush's struggle with personal honesty, and would go a step further and insist that is his most probably the most dishonest president in the history of our nation. When he writes, "So constant is [Bush's] fibbing that a history of his lies offers a close approximation of the history of his presidential tenure, " he makes as profound a statement about the nature of this administration as is possible. Moreover, I found myself virtually never disagreeing with any statement that he makes in the course of the entire book. Also, as one of the key figures in covering the current (as I write this) story of two White House senior aides blowing the cover of Joseph Wilson's CIA agent wife, I am grateful to his superb journalist efforts over the years.
So why am I not thrilled with the book? Because it is more or less just a laundry list of lies, and not a great deal more. It is a one-note song. My complaint is not with the book that it is, but with the book that it should have been. After cataloging Bush's lies for over three hundred pages, I think only the most partisan of individuals could deny that Bush has a problem with truth telling. The man is patently dishonest, and the book performs a valuable service by articulating all the ways that he engages in dishonesty.
But at the end of the book, I found myself dissatisfied in many ways. Why this enormous reliance on disinformation in the Bush White House? Does it originate from him or from his advisors or from some ongoing movement in the Republican right wing (I believe it is all three)? What does this reliance on distortion and misleading the public say about American culture? Why has the media, until recently, been unwilling to call Bush to the carpet on some of his more outrageous errors? Or why couldn't Corn have discussed the question of whether it is possible to be honest in today's political climate? This is not nitpicking: these are the kinds of questions that would arise for any reasonably intelligent person reading the book.
I also have some trouble with using "lie" when in fact Bush's struggles with the truth are far more multifarious. For instance, often what he says, while wrong, may be things he actually believes, for instance when he calls Ariel Sharon a man of peace. No one who knows anything about Sharon could possibly make that assessment (indeed, his political base in Israel supports him precisely because he is not a man of peace), but when Bush says that, it is a lie, or a belief based either in ignorance or self-deception? For something to qualify as a lie, one must consciously know that what one is saying is not true. In other words, I believe a lot of the untrue things that Bush says is based on an inability to assess the truth of a situation. Not every mistaken statement qualifies as a lie.
Mind you, Bush does lie, but many of his false statements are not, as such, lies. Some are mistakes of fact. Some result from his ability to convince himself that something is true that isn't. A gigantic amount of what he says is simply PR or propaganda, such as calling his deregulation of environmental standards a "Clear Skies" program (whereas it is in fact merely a license to pollute). This is clearly dishonest, and while there is a bit of the lie in all propaganda, it doesn't come up to the level of a lie. Spinning a situation isn't lying so much as attempting to color the facts in a way that is more sympathetic to one's own agenda. Dishonest, yet, but a lie, no. I would have been more comfortable if the title of the book had been THE DISHONESTY OF GEORGE W. BUSH.
Nonetheless, the book is very definitely not without value, but of the recent spate of books critical of the Right and the Bush administration, this is not one of the best. Paul Krugman in THE GREAT UNRAVELING deals with much of the dishonesty inherent in the Bush administration (Krugman was, in fact, the first journalist I know of to explicitly call Bush a liar). Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose in BUSHWHACKED go into great detail about not merely the dishonesty of the Bush policies but the concrete ways in which they harm real human beings. On a humorous level, Al Franken tackles Right wing (including Bush) dishonesty in a way that is both accurate and hysterical. I would recommend all of these before Corn's book.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall a pretty good book, January 11, 2005
This review is from: The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Hardcover)
Though I think the author overstates some things in the book, it is effective in showing a pattern of deception with George W. Bush that preceded his advent to the Whitehouse and characterizes his administration today.
What is most alarming about the book is the lesson that lying actually can work. With a propaganda machine of neocon pundits running interference for him, this President has taken more liberties with the truth than even Nixon.
One thing that would have greatly strengthened the book was the use of footnotes. I find it likely that the author has good sources for his statements, but the lack of footnotes severely weakens book as a means of clearly showing the lies told by George W. Bush.
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