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President George W. Bush is an avid reader of the newspaper sports section but tries to stay away from hard news. That is one of the revelations of
Washington Times senior White House correspondent Bill Sammon’s book
Misunderestimated. "I don't watch the nightly newscasts on TV," says the President, "nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things. I don't read the editorial pages; I don't read the columnists. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion." Bush's reading habits prompted world-wide headlines when
Misunderestimated came out, but interestingly, Sammon doesn't think they speak badly about Bush. In fact, he cheers Bush for ignoring the journalists who, he believes, have misrepresented and underestimated the president. In this angrily written book, Sammon attempts to set the record strait and expose the media for the left-wing "Bush-hating" cabal he insists it is. Sammon allows that the leader of the free world may not be a genius of grammatical English. But he argues that Bush will be remembered not for his malapropisms (the best example of which is probably his coining of the term "misunderestimated") but rather for setting the U.S. on a new aggressive path of "pre-emptive" self-defense and disdain for international bodies like the United Nations. Sammon is incensed by anti-Bush attitudes he sees in the media and among Democrats, who he says are "hopelessly mired in the gutter." Yet, Sammon himself comes off as devotedly partisan, too, as he breathlessly writes of hiking at the president’s ranch in Texas and being playfully teased by Bush at a White House briefing.
Misunderestimated will appeal to the President's supporters, but others may find it too strident and wonder whether all of Sammon's tract can be taken at face value.
--Alex Roslin
Rush Limbaugh, May 5, 2004
"It is an excellent book...far beyond any book yet written about the Bush administration."
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