Governor Pataki was a fairly liberal governor of New York from 1995 to 2006, serving 3 4-year terms. It appears that author sets out 2 main goals in writing this book.
1. He conveys his personal and behind the scenes view of the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center buildings and the aftermath.
2. He assesses the merits and demerits of various other politicians from his perspective as moderate Republican, who sees the harsh division of this country between liberals and conservatives as hurting the USA in many ways.
I confess that I did not thoroughly read the details of Pataki's perspective on 9/11. I was more interested in and focused on the 2nd goal of the book. Pataki describes the successes and the major failures of other politicians, particularly presidents. He gives presidents Regan, George H W Bush, and Clinton fairly high marks. He feels that George W Bush provided good leadership immediately after 9/11, but made a terrible mistake is going to war against Iraq (and I would agree), but he mostly blames Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the horrible blunder.
When he comes to President Obama, Pataki has much criticism and no praise that I could detect. He criticizes him for the Affordable Care Act for no Republican input (Republicans opposed any form of universal health care), ineffective stimulus bill (it stopped the recession), Obama’s criticism of police arresting a prominent black professor in his Harvard home (somehow the white policeman was just doing his duty), and Obama’s sympathy for Michael Brown after a white officer killed him in Ferguson MO. Pataki focuses on a report showing that a store owner had called the police because Brown had brazenly stolen merchandise and that the officer was later exonerated for acting in self-defense. Pataki somehow overlooks the fact that the same report also detailed years of abuse of the black community by police and the courts in Ferguson.
Pataki gives a kid glove treatment to Donald Trump, despite Trump’s misogyny, racism, and his anti-environmental actions. In chapter 11, Pataki emphases his support for “sensible” agreements to reduce global warming such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. At the same time Pataki avoids criticizing the decisive steps the Trump administration has taken that increase planetary warming, such as pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, scrapping the EPA Clean Power Plan, loosening clean air regulations, weakening fuel economy standards, dropping efficient lighting standards, and lowering EPA enforcement.
If you’re hoping for some middle ground in this book, you will be disappointed.
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