David Frum worked as a Bush speechwriter and had five minutes of fame for coining the phrase "axis of evil." He wasn't a supporter of President Bush when he campaigned for President and many of his friends were skeptical of Bush when he took a job as one of his speechwriters. "The Bush-mokers were not all Democrats. In the summer of 2001, I was invited to a large dinner party in New York City in honor of Governor George Pataki. It was a hot July evening, and the guests were standing on a brick terrace that ran the length of our hosts' apartment....'I realized,' Pataki quipped, 'that if he can be President, I certainly can be governor.' The crowd tittered appreciatively. As the the others laughed, the few Republicans present exchanged weary glances. If Bush's old Yale acquaitance and the most prominent Republican governor in the country endorsed the dismissive view of Bush's abilities, how was anybody to be convinced otherwise, " so Frum writes.
As Frum writes about the first 8 months of Bush's Presidency he reminds us of how it just seemed to drift. What I took from this book is that Bush had no overwhelming goals he wanted to accomplish when he got in the White House - accept to be the opposite of Clinton and try to bring a moral tone and respect to the White House. Bush it seems wanted to BE President - not act as President. In the first few months that is. Caught in the worst of circumstances - an election no one won and an economy and stock market going down the toilet - Bush had no real mandate from the American people and found that doing much of anything was difficult. Frum thought the political enviroment would get worse. He left for a vacation in August of 2001 and thought about not returning to the White House.
Then came September 11th and Frum gives an insiders account of what it was like to be a White House staffer during the attacks and in the months that followed.
The book explains why those first impressions of Bush were wrong and what type of leader he really was - or became. He doesn't gloss over his personal shortcomings and explains how his quirks make him "the right man."
I read this book not looking for a Bush puff piece or looking for reasons to tear him apart. I wanted to get a feel for how Bush operates and this book delivered. - "Bush was not a lightweight. He was, rather a very unfamiliar type of heavyweight. Words often failed him, his memory somtimes betrayed him, but his vision was large and clear. And when he perceived new possibilities, he had the courage to act on them - a much less common virtue in politics than one might suppose." - he writes.
On foreign policy leading up to the Iraq war:
"He would not commit himself to any one course of action until he must...sometimes, instead of trying one course of actions first and another later, Bush would allow both to develop, to give himself more time to decide which was superior."
No other book gives you this close of a look at Bush than this one. Woodward's Bush at war comes close, but is colored by the people who were interviewed for it. Unlike the Woodward book, this one tries to give some analysis of what makes Bush tick. The author inserts his own voice into it - which is approriate in this type of work.
Good crisp writing. Although most people will focus on the narrative and events of September 11th in the book, I found that what I took away from the book was the portrait of Bush. In the end - like Bush or not - Frum shows how those first impressions of him were wrong. It also gives the reader a good idea of what Bush's strategy in the war on terrorism is and how he believes Iraq fits into it. Frum notes that Bush became taken in by historian Bernard Lewis's views of the Middle East - the Muslim world has been in decay for centuries and terrorism will continue until Islam changes. We have to keep fighting back until Islam changes. Eventually it will. Bush desires to nudge history forward by bringing Democracy to Iraq and trying to plant a seed that will begin to modernize the region.
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