The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, An Inside Account (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

According to former White House speechwriter David Frum, George W. Bush is "a good man who is not a weak man. He is impatient, quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious, and as a result ill-informed." All the same--well, look at the book's title. Frum chronicles a tenure spent serving a president whom he comes to admire more after the events of September 11, 2001. It is after working with Bush in times of war that Frum says of Bush "outweighing the faults are his virtues: decency, honesty, rectitude, courage, and tenacity." The Right Man creates an arc in that Frum is originally dubious of Bush's leadership capacity and ends up sold on Bush as commander-in-chief. But in truth, Frum never has far to go. He's impressed with Bush from the start and when war comes, he's more impressed. And while the book is as much about the author as the president, sections, such as an argument with Barbra Streisand and a Washington Post gossip storm may strike the reader as somewhat petty. Fortunately, there are entertaining helpings of candor: the stringent White House dress code, infighting among cabinet members, and unbelievably cool Air Force One trips. Also of particular interest are events surrounding the controversial phrase "axis of evil": Frum helps coin it, his wife boasts of that fact in an e-mail to friends, the e-mail is widely forwarded, and, soon after, Frum resigns. While both he and the White House deny he was fired, Frum is so insistent on the fact that he quit on his own that it really makes you wonder. The Right Man is a multifaceted glimpse at the life of a White House insider and a president in a time of crisis; it should appeal to readers curious to learn about the inner workings of the American presidency. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

Frum, author of Dead Right and the phrase "axis of evil," looks back on a year as a speechwriter in the Bush White House in this affable and witty but slightly cagey account. Frum recounts the travails of crafting the President's public pronouncements and the ordeal of the terrorist attacks, and draws funny thumbnail sketches of White House personalities like communications director Karen Hughes, who "disliked verbs" because they "conveyed action, not feeling." Mostly, though, he keeps the focus on Bush, vigorously disputing the notion that the President is a dim-witted figurehead for powerful advisors like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and insisting that Bush is a commanding leader who came into his own after 9/11. But he also describes the president as "ill informed" and "sometimes glib, even dogmatic," with "a poor memory for facts and figures"; his strengths are "tenacity," "courage," a "large and clear" vision and a "Holden Caulfield streak" of sincerity. Frum was not part of the inner circle, so his evidence for Bush's leadership sometimes consists of the bold statements Bush made in speeches that were crafted by others to explain policies hashed out by his subordinates. His sketchy defense of Bush's policy-making is similarly unconvincing; concerns about the energy industry's influence on the plan to drill in Alaska are dismissed as "goofy," and his recap of the Bush tax cut doesn't answer the main criticism that it is skewed toward the rich. Frum is an engaging writer, but this is very much a speechwriter's book-packed with graceful sound bites, but ultimately more spin than substance.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (January 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375509038
• ISBN-13: 978-0375509032
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #844,155 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Personal Perspective, January 15, 2003

By	Fector Snackerton "Reader" (L.A.) - See all my reviews

My feelings are the opposite of the "Reader from Washington" who reviews Frum's book here. I in fact DID want the personal perspective of a White House staffer and that's what I got in this excellently written narrative. If anything, I would have traded some of Frum's political analysis (perceptive as it is) for still more anecdotes.

The account of the 9/11 experience of the White House staffers by itself makes the book a worthwhile read. Kaddish on a PalmPilot!

39 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, January 8, 2003

By A Customer

While "The Right Man" does offer a fair amount of insights into the Bush Administration (I liked the ground/passing game analogy to describe the relationship between Hughes and Rove), I must say I was a bit disappointed--even though it is still worth reading. This book has been hyped as an "insider's account" of the Bush Administration, but it reads more like an autobiography of David Frum's brief time in the White House. The Right Man is already a short book, but it would have been better had Frum left out some of his personal anecdotes and concentrated more on the inner-workings of the Administration. I agree with Frum's conclusion that Bush is the "right man" for president, but I fear Frum might not have been the right man to write this book (please forgive the pun).

29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well wrinten, thoughful and insightful look at Bush WH, January 9, 2003

By	David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is the first major work by a true insider from the Bush White House and it paints a very detailed and vivid picture of the nature of Bush's approach to both the Presidency as well as how his White House staff operates.

Frum is a former Wall Street Journal writer and has written on conservative social and political issues. He worked in the White House as a speech writer, focused on economic matters initially and then refocused on international issues after September 11th. While he's philosophically aligned with Bush he nevertheless was somewhat uninformed about Bush both personally and politically when he first appeared on the national scene (weren't we all) and somewhat ambivalent about him when he went to work for the Bush Administration. That sense of ambivalence comes through subtly throughout the book and lends it, to my mind, an additional layer of credence.

The boom is very detailed and wide ranging. It covers policy, Bush's personal leadership style, his political philosophy, the usual White House intrigues--pretty standard stuff for this sort of effort.

Several tings set this book apart, however. One is the simple dearth of genuine, detailed insider White House reporting that has emerged on this administration to date. Frum deftly explains that this is a function of several factors--this White House's penchant for security, the unusually close knit operating structure in the White House as compared to, say, the Clinton era, but most especially the incredible loyalty George Bush naturally inspires. Frum gives this penchant for loyalty the full treatment and it's a fascinating phenomenon to behold in this day and age.

Another truly interesting facet is the ways in which the deep Christian fundamentalism of many bushies affects both the policy aspects of the administration but also--much more interestingly to my mind--the general day to day operations and culture of the White House. Frum also gives this the full treatment and it is, again, a fascinating look at this extraordinary aspect of the current administration.

Frum also gives us an insider's insight into the wiles and intrigues of Washington politics. This is best exemplified in the "Axis of Evil" phrase, which Frum essentially originated (though his actual phrasing was "Axis of Hatred" modified to evil by Bush himself) and the aftermath of Frum's getting "credit" for it.

The only negative I'd voice--and it's why this gets 4 rather than 5 stars--is that Frum inserts himself into the meat of the book a bit too much for my taste. This is neither billed as or written as a memoir as much as an insider takes on the WH--not on Frum. It's a minor quibble but nevertheless a bit less focus on Frum's personal situations would have been welcome once his qualifications, bonafides and so on were established. It's not so much that what he writes isn't interesting (he tales about being a foreign national (Frum's Canadian) working in the White House and the complications that this causes are often interesting and even entertaining, but nevertheless distracting from the main focus of the book.

In the end though it's what he learned about Bush and what he came to believe about his abilities and destiny that are key, and they form genuinely fresh and enlightening look at the man, who he really is, and what he really stands for. What he has to say won't in general shock anybody who's read the title of the book, it's nevertheless firm and thoughtful insight about a man whose destiny is so critical and about whom we really, truly know very little.

Highly recommended.