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The Bush Tragedy Hardcover – January 15, 2008

by Jacob Weisberg (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 103 ratings
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This is the book that cracks the code of the Bush presidency. Unstintingly yet compassionately, and with no political ax to grind, Slate editor in chief Jacob Weisberg methodically and objectively examines the family and circle of advisers who played crucial parts in George W. Bush’s historic downfall.

In this revealing and defining portrait, Weisberg uncovers the “black box” from the crash of the Bush presidency. Using in-depth research, revealing analysis, and keen psychological acuity, Weisberg explores the whole Bush story. Distilling all that has been previously written about Bush into a defining portrait, he illuminates the fateful choices and key decisions that led George W., and thereby the country, into its current predicament. Weisberg gives the tragedy a historical and literary frame, comparing Bush not just to previous American leaders, but also to Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, who rises from ne’er-do-well youth to become the warrior king Henry V.

Here is the bitter and fascinating truth of the early years of the Bush dynasty, with never-before-revealed information about the conflict between the two patriarchs on George W.’s father’s side of the family–the one an upright pillar of the community, the other a rowdy playboy–and how that schism would later shape and twist the younger George Bush; his father, a hero of war, business, and Republican politics whose accomplishments George W. would attempt to copy and whose absences he would resent; his mother, Barbara, who suffered from insecurity, depression, and deep dissatisfaction with her role as housewife; and his younger brother Jeb, seen by his parents as steadier, stronger, and the son most likely to succeed.

Weisberg also anatomizes the replacement family Bush surrounded himself with in Washington, a group he thought could help him correct the mistakes he felt had destroyed his father’s presidency: Karl Rove, who led Bush astray by pursuing his own historical ambitions and transforming the president into a deeply polarizing figure; Dick Cheney, whose obsessive quest to restore presidential power and protect the country after 9/11 caused Bush and America to lose the world’s respect; and, finally, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, who encouraged Bush’s foreign policy illusions and abetted his flight from reality.

Delving as no other biography has into Bush’s religious beliefs–which are presented as at once opportunistic and sincere–The Bush Tragedy is an essential work that is sure to become a standard reference for any future assessment. It is the most balanced and compelling account of a sitting president ever written.
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  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Random House
  4. Publication date
    January 15, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 1.1 x 9.55 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1400066786
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1400066780
  8. See all details
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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
103 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book provides a thorough and detailed biography of the Bush family. They find it informative and interesting, providing insights into Dubya's mentality and motivations.

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13 customers mention "Information quality"10 positive3 negative

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the detailed account of the Bush family's history and the level of investigative journalism rarely seen in print. The book provides a comprehensive timeline detailing George W. Bush from early family days to present, with hard evidence backing up the author's claims.

"...He accomplishes his task quite nicely. There is plenty of hard evidence to back up his claims..." Read more

"...insight to Dubya's mentality, his motivations, and a serious level of investigative journalism I've rarely seen in print...." Read more

"There is a good deal of information about the Bush family with in this book. its by no means a complete history...." Read more

"...Who's next in line? Right. A very good and comprehensive trail detailing George from early family days to present...." Read more

5 customers mention "Biography"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the biography interesting and revealing. They say it provides an interesting look at the Bush family's history and gives insight into the president's mentality and motivations. The book also presents an informative history of the Bush family.

"...I think Rove saw 43 as amiable, charismatic and, more importantly, VERY pliable...." Read more

"...evidence of Dubya's many follies; this book is an interesting start on explaining his mental, moral and muddled absence of rigorous thought..." Read more

"...This book is hardly political but gives such insight to Dubya's mentality, his motivations, and a serious level of investigative journalism I've..." Read more

"An interesting review of the life. Again, the author has dug deep and it depends on the politics of the reader whether it is of value." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Bob Hoskins
    4.0 out of 5 stars Angry priviliged kid + scheming madman + huge army = ???
    Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    I have to admit to being apathetic during both of 43's terms in office. I remember in 2004 many of my friends disclosing "If he gets re-elected I'm headed to Canada". I wasn't taking any notice .... After 43 left office I started to see more and more how his legacy is a trail of devastation that will resonate around the world for many years to come.

    The Bush tragedy starts by defining one very pointed moment in Bush's two terms when, as passenger, he landed on the deck of the USS Abe Lincoln and came waddling into view in his flight suit. Remembering that moment and delving into Bush, the more relevance that moment has in defining Bush, his politics, his personality and his view towards leading the free world. Basically, "hey look at my crotch".

    This book is probably the third or so I've read about the whole farce that was 43, Rove, Cheyney, Rice etc ... and, the overwhelming feeling is one of Bush wasn't really ever at the helm of his presidency other than symbolically.

    The Bush Tragedy goes further than the others I've read in so much as it paints a very good picture of the Bush "dynasty" via it's history and melding with the "Walkers". Seems that the off springs all basically did the same thing in their search and quest for "independence". Which becomes apparent as you read through.

    "W" seems to have been the laziest in terms of academics and self motivation. Stumbling into most of his life by way of privilege and "unseen" guiding hands (Mainly daddy's). His character is one of zero inquisitiveness, limited intellect and more suited to the ranks of the Armed forces as he's really just one of the boys. What sets him apart though is his overwhelming self-confidence and arrogance. In his mind he doesn't need what it takes to succeed as he just "knows" he knows how to.... some how.

    When Mr Rove first met Bush, the sight of Bush in his Texan garb gave Mr Rove a political boner and the relationship that moved and shaped the free world into a tailspin had begun. I think Rove saw 43 as amiable, charismatic and, more importantly, VERY pliable. Rove had the skill to manipulate Bush in a way as to make Bush think he was driving when he was really 3 - 4 rows back.

    Another feature of Bush that had Mr's Rove & Cheyney foaming is the fact that once W has made up his mind, either manipulatively or otherwise, he will not waiver and, should popular or public opinion go against him he just digs in deeper. Very powerful for those in the shadows trying to further their own agendas.

    You get the feeling George is a sad person in so much as his whole adult life has been about proving himself either To his siblings, his father or pretty much everyone who knew him back in the early days. He really is a privileged nobody kid who, via his connections, gentle patting and nudging, made it to the most powerful spot in the world and then set it all on fire.

    Highly recommended.
    22 people found this helpful
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  • Glenn M. Thompson
    5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to understand this presidency, rather than just bash it...
    Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    Make no mistake, I am no Bush supporter. I read this book, though, on the premise that it would explain what happened in a serious and sober way. This is a bit of a leap, given that author Jacob Weisberg is also the writer of several volumes of Bush malaprops (the Bushisms series). He accomplishes his task quite nicely. There is plenty of hard evidence to back up his claims (most interesting is the take on Cheney's imperial presidency aspirations -- the press never picked up on it because, as the author says, Cheney made them in the plain light of day...too obvious for our clever press corps, I guess).

    Weisberg uses a parallel to Shakespeare's Henry IV and V, a literary device I thought might be a distraction. It does suggest, though, that there is precedence for the psychology of the Bush family. The father-son relationship was also there in plain view for us to observe, but no one took it seriously enough to think it could be an indicator of future direction.

    Nothing Weisberg says can resurrect the Bush presidency in its waning days, nor can it correct any mistakes they have made. It can serve, though, as an important cautionary tale as we elect new leaders. While we can never really know what they will truly do if elected, understanding their past a little more deeply can give us some substantive clues that, next time (hopefully) we can take seriously.
    11 people found this helpful
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  • Theodore A. Rushton
    3.0 out of 5 stars The tragedy of Bush - - - is Bush
    Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    Who was Albert Einstein's son?

    Hans Einstein, a thoroughly decent chap, reflects the fate of many children of high achiever parents. George W. Bush could have been much the same, except for an almost insane desire to prove his father wrong. Weisberg nicely sums up the career and foibles of Dubya and his efforts to be a complete opposite of his father by citing Shakespeare's wastrel 'Prince Hal' who grew up to be King Henry V. (Suppose Hans had devoted his life to drinking and disproving the Theory of Relativity, instead of becoming a successful civil engineer?)

    It's a nice sympathetic simple biography, aptly summing up a pile of newspaper and magazine clips with an added bit of pop psychology. The "tragedy" is blamed on neoconservatives and principal enablers including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, First Lady Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush, who should have told him to "straighten up or I'll leave". Laura warned him once before and it sobered him up. Where was Laura when America needed her most?

    The strange element is repeated references to King Henry V, who spent 10 years commanding troops in the field before becoming king. President "Dubya" is more like the man Hal defeated, King Charles VI of France who ruled weakly, led his nation into deep divisions and ended up insane.

    The glaring omission is any analysis of why, in an increasingly globalised world, President Dubya wanted sycophants - - such as "Bush's Poodle" in England - - willing to follow his follies into Cloud Cuckoo-land. Weisberg cites Bush's admiration for Sir Winston Churchill, but ignores the years of careful and often crafty diplomacy Churchill used to build the World War II alliance with a largely isolationist United States.

    All in all, it's not a "bad" book. Dubya is smart, but unwise. His fans will like it for the blame it places on others; his foes will like its descriptions of his limited acumen. It portrays Dubya as a man who lives by intuition rather than intellect, a contrast to his father who ruled by caution instead of nonchalance and Bill Clinton who ruled by schmooze instead of subtlety.

    Tragedy? By all means. Sen. John McCain has repeatedly detailed Dubya's many failures, and been duly rewarded as the presumed Republican presidential nominee. No one needs to ask Democrats for evidence of Dubya's many follies; this book is an interesting start on explaining his mental, moral and muddled absence of rigorous thought processes.

    Next time, instead of using Shakespeare and King Henry V as a benchmark; think of Jonathan Swift and the fate of Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
    6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • DAVID BRYSON
    5.0 out of 5 stars IGNORANCE IS BLISS
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2008
    'He doesn't know anything. He doesn't want to know anything. But he's not dumb.' That was Bill Clinton on his successor, quoted here. No author assessing the 43rd presidency of the USA at this late stage could be starting without a definite opinion of it. Weisberg has form, of course, as an anthologist of Bushisms, and the book's very title is a dead giveaway. For all that, this is a serious piece of research and analysis. Bush's multifarious shortcomings are never alleged to include low IQ. If he has a 'tragic flaw' it is depicted as self-deception and distorting the processes of reason to shore up preconceived views, and I give Weisberg credit for not falling into the same trap.

    'Tragedy' in the title is used in two senses, one the diminished modern sense of 'disaster' the other the traditional use to denote a type of drama. At the head of each chapter and periodically in between Weisberg quotes from Shakespeare's Henry IV and V. His citations are neat and apposite, but I'm not inclined to labour them or treat them as more than a literary device. The real burden of Weisberg's argument starts with his delving into Bush's family history and tracing character traits that he thinks reappear in the person of his tragic hero. This is a very tricky area, and once again I'm not disposed to tread too hard on it but rather see how I react to the personality as depicted (from what I can make out of it from this distance), whatever its alleged genetic origins.

    Broadly, the narrative here makes sense to me. To understand Bush, we have to have some picture of the other actors. Some are fairly two-dimensional. Rumsfeld comes across as a bullying know-all, Rice as a toadying hero-worshipper. Much more interesting are the depictions of Rove and, particularly, Cheney. Weisberg is at pains to stress that while Bush was probably manipulated by both, the only way to manipulate him was to flatter his sense of his own significance and give him ownership of the ideas being suggested to him. Rove was put in his place when he showed signs of getting uppity, and Cheney comes across as a grey eminence, ambitious not for himself but for his political agenda. In fact Weisberg has made me revise my notions of Cheney entirely. His alarming concepts of a presidency that can do more or less what it likes are not, it seems, any consequence of 9/11 but reflect a siege mentality that Cheney has held, or that has gripped Cheney, throughout his political life. In particular, the story of the anthrax letters and the Cheney-led panic they induced in the White House was a revelation to me because, in Rumsfeld's phrase, policy since 2001 has 'been seen through the prism of 9/11'. Looking at anything through a prism tends to give a distorted view, but where have the anthrax letters gone from the prism? Cheney's congenital paranoia leapt to certainty that Saddam must have sent them as a prelude to a mass onslaught, but we have heard little of them since. Presumptions and prisms.

    For Weisberg, Bush is driven by a craving to be distinctive and historic, measured against his father or Churchill or Reagan or the cosmos or whatever, but handicapped in this ambition by having no understanding of history. Weisberg finds 'narcissism' in Bush's attempts to put Churchill's head on his own shoulders, and his brazen proclamations that the people of Iraq are pursuing his agenda and fightin' for freedom, let alone that they ought to be grateful to America, are what fill me with disgust at the man. As far as Churchill is concerned, Weisberg has a phrase 'historical cliché' that fits the bill. In the unlikely event that Mr Bush reads this notice, let me inform him that over the longer view Churchill's career was marked by inconsistency, changes of political party, quirkiness and self-doubt. Churchill's greatness lay in his colossal energy and his power of persuasion. He was the man for the hour, but not for many other hours, and he was a consensus politician - Mr Bush please note. He was a patriot given a job to do when his country was under dire threat, and he was the right man. It was not his doing that Britain was actually a little better prepared, and Germany a little less well, than believed in 1940, and it is caricature to allege that he stood by some overarching political 'principles' come what might. In passing, the only obvious error I spotted in the book was the statement that the British 'fleet' was trapped at Dunkirk. It was the British expeditionary army. If my figures are right from memory, Admiral Canaris and others had a job persuading Hitler that his invasion of Britain was not on because the slow-moving barges carrying the troops would need an escort of destroyers, of which Germany had 10 and the British home fleet 90-100.

    It's an interesting question how well a non-American can understand America post-9/11, but as I have visited America frequently since 1962 I must have as much insight into that as I shall ever have, so I'll have a go in the light of this illuminating book. Bush got where he did by appealing to something in the national culture. In a brilliant recent piece the columnist Gary Kamiya identifies this as 'national etiquette' which assesses truth and probability on an index of nationalistic fervour rather than on what might be expected normally. To oppose some policy is not to be supportive of it - a proposition that Kant would call 'analytic' (i.e. self-defining), but gaining force from the emotional connotations of 'non-supportive'.

    That has kept Bush going, wearing his lapel-flag - keep it analytic in that sense but strictly in no other. I don't know what's left of his tumbledown tabernacle of make-believe, nor who except himself believes any of it, but today's news (3/28/08) suggests not much and not many other than Mr J McCain. I have known the romantic self-admiring form of American patriotism since 1962, and what Kamiya says was doubtless ne'er so well express'd, but I know that it was oft thought among more rational Americans. People may or may not empathise with the Peerers through the Prism after 9/11. The point is more - they have less sympathy than Americans expect, and will continue to have less until Americans stop romanticising themselves.

    Back to tragedy. Weisberg opened the bidding with Shakespeare, I'll reply with Aeschylus. Of the condition of mankind before Prometheus Aeschylus tells us, and I find it replicated in the Bush presidency and its intellectual sympathisers, 'ephyron eike panta' - 'they were muddling everything together indiscriminately'.
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