Review by New York Times Review
The 43rd president reviews his choices and finds them for the most part good. THEY call themselves, smugly, "41" and "43," meaning the 41st and 43rd presidents of the United States. You're supposed to prefer the father, all graciousness and handwritten little notes, over the son, who - even in memoirs written at age 64 after two terms as president - seems callow. But I would take George W. Bush's schoolboy petulance and solipsism, which at least seem authentic and human, over George H.W.'s grandee-with-a-switchblade any day. There is something very modern, almost New Agey, and endearingly insecure, about the tone and posture the son adopts in "Decision Points." Even as he's bombing Baghdad back to the Stone Age, he's very much in touch with his feelings. In college, he says, he was appalled to learn how the French Revolution betrayed its ideals. While George the elder talked a good "kinder, gentler," but did little about it, George the younger has two real achievements along those lines: first, his many efforts, only partly successful but starting immediately after 9/11 (and therefore, it seems, instinctive) to prevent an explosion of anti-Muslim prejudice; and his leadership in the fight against AIDS in Africa. I believe the Texas term for what George W. tries to do in this book is "country-boying." That is, pretending to be an unsophisticated hick who can smell a phony a mile away. Memories of the French Revolution may help to explain Bush's dislike of Jacques Chirac, the president of France, for example. God knows, Chirac did his Gallic best to charm. At a G-8 summit, he patted Bush's arm and said flirtatiously, "George, you are so unilateralist." But instead of considering this a compliment to his "cojones" - a word, possibly even a concept, that surely makes here its first appearance in any presidential memoir (it means, roughly, "unilateralist") - Bush says coldly: "It was my first Chirac drive-by. I was not amused." But it's not all country-boying. Although he never says so, Bush clearly resents the widespread suspicion that he's not too (choose your euphemism) intellectually engaged, and loses no opportunity to clear that up. Referring to a book about Lincoln, he boasts that it is just "one of 14 Lincoln biographies I read during my presidency." Elsewhere he reveals that "I read a lot of history," from which he has concluded that presidents "who based decisions on principle . . . were often vindicated over time." Bush and his Rasputin, Karl Rove, even had a bookreading contest, measuring their reading by number of books, number of pages and square inches of type. That's how much he loves books. Asked at one of the presidential debates who his favorite philosopher was, he thought of answering Locke or Mill, he says, but felt mysteriously compelled to answer, "Christ." George W. Bush's presidency was not one of America's greatest, but judging from Bush's own retelling, it surely was the most lachrymose. In this memoir, people are constantly breaking into, or barely suppressing, tears. Among them are Donald Rumsfeld; the wife of Justice Samuel Alito; the president of Slovakia; Bush's daughter Barbara; ground zero workers ("tears running down their faces, cutting a path through the soot like rivulets through a desert," he writes, in a rare striking image); wounded soldiers; the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia; and of course Bush himself - often. When he heard that American soldiers had "severely mistreated" prisoners at Abu Ghraib, "I felt sick, really sick." Twice he reports feeling "disgusted": when people accused him of racism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (it was "the worst moment of my presidency"); and, oddly but admirably, when he was flooded with pardon requests in the last days of his administration. Bush is man enough to regret some of his most egregious Clint Eastwood moments. He blames his staff for the notoriously premature "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him when he spoke on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in May 2003, but concedes that "it was a big mistake." Likewise his swaggery "bring 'em on" that July, referring to attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. Nor should he have said, he now sees, that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Having campaigned in 2000 against the Clinton administration's policy of "nation building" (that is, using American soldiers to rebuild broken societies and not just to invade, make a mess and then leave without cleaning it up), he now handsomely concedes that "Afghanistan was the ultimate nationbuilding mission." (He doesn't apologize to Al Gore for his previous criticism - or for stealing the 2000 election for that matter. But given how much Bush cherishes his reputation as a stubborn durned cuss, he deserves credit for conceding error at all.) Bush does add a few items to his testosterone collection. Like howzabout when Vladimir Putin told our guy that he, Putin, was "hot-blooded." Bush says, "I stared back at him. 'No, Vladimir,' I said. 'You're cold-blooded.'" Speaking of blood, on 9/11: "My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass." He was in Florida at the time, you will recall, and wanted to return to Washington. The Secret Service wanted him to go to an Air Force base in Louisiana. "I told them I was not going to let terrorists scare me away. 'I'm the president,' I said firmly. 'And we're going to Washington.'" So Air Force One went to Louisiana. There, Bush insisted once again that "the American people needed to see their president in Washington." So they went to Nebraska. There, "I put my foot down." And they went to Washington. BUSH claims to have been the first president to really get tough on terrorism. "My decision" to invade Afghanistan "was a departure from America's policies over the past two decades." President Reagan withdrew American forces from Lebanon after Hezbollah bombed our Marine barracks there. President Clinton withdrew from Somalia when warlords shot down an American helicopter. He doesn't mention his own father's decision to stop the Persian Gulf war of 1991 at the Kuwait-Iraq border rather than proceed to Baghdad and take Saddam Hussein down. Bush concludes: "Terrorists had interpreted our lack of a serious response as a sign of weakness . . . . I was determined to change that impression." So he made a serious response. A pugnacious determination to be taken seriously is about half an inch below the surface of "Decision Points." It's poignant that even as a former two-term president, Bush should feel the need to strut the way he does. The book is full of maxims and advice. "I prided myself on my ability to make crisp and effective decisions," Bush reveals. And here is his secret for hiring a White House staff: "I started each personnel decision by defining the job description and the criteria for the ideal candidate. I directed a wide search and considered a diverse range of options. For major appointments, I interviewed candidates face to face. I used my time to gauge character and personality. I was looking for integrity, competence, selflessness and an ability to handle pressure. I always liked people with a sense of humor, a sign of modesty and self-awareness." "Timeliness was important" to make sure an organization does not get sloppy, Bush reveals. And: "I learn best by asking questions. In some cases, I probe to understand a complex issue. Other times, I deploy questions as a way to test my briefers' knowledge." Like every president, Bush believed he could bring peace to the Middle East, and he even had a notion about how to do it: "My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security." What a good idea! So that's settled. Speaking of a sense of humor and the Middle East, when Bush called for a new Palestinian leadership, Barbara Bush the elder ("Mother," he invariably calls her) rang up to say, "How's the first Jewish president doing?" Maybe I'm deficient in humor, but I don't see why this is funny, as her son clearly believes it to be. I might even find it alarming if Bush didn't crowd this book with maybe-you-had-to-be-there witticisms. After his first meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, "a British reporter asked what we had in common. I quipped, 'We both use Colgate toothpaste.'" Huh? Wanna hear more? Sure you do. So 41 (George the elder) is at the Mayo Clinic, recovering from hip surgery. He says to the nurse, "Are my testicles black?" Pause for reaction. "I said, 'Are my test results back?'" The son reports, "His medical team roared with laughter." O.K., O.K., one more: "We had a saying in West Texas: 'Last night he thought he was a 10, when in fact he was an ass.'" Whatever that description means, exactly, Bush applies it to himself until the day after a 40th-birthday celebration, when he stopped drinking with the help of God, who spoke to him while he was out jogging. (I make light, but this part of his story is actually fascinating, gutsy and very well told.) Thirteen years later, after he had made a quick fortune buying and selling a baseball team and then had been elected governor of Texas, God told him to run for president. "I felt a calling to run," Bush writes. "I was concerned about the future of the country, and I had a clear vision of where to lead it. I wanted to cut taxes, raise standards in public schools, reform Social Security." Bush never indicates where this laundry list of views came from. He had no political views he deems worthy of mention before the age of 40, but a few years later he has a complete set. You do have to wonder how deep they run. Doubts arise about the depth of Bush's principles in part because he so often clung to them even as he violated them. A typical Bush mind change goes like this: (1) I have always believed deeply that X. But (2) in this case X would cause vast human suffering or higher taxes or some other terrible tragedy that I couldn't, as president, allow. Therefore (3) I will abandon X on this occasion. But (4) I still believe deeply that X. For example, Bush says he was "furious" when his Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, said the government would have to bail out the banks that had overindulged in home mortgages. "In a normal environment," Bush writes, "the free market would render its judgment and they could fail. I would have been happy to let them do so." But in this case, "the consequences of inaction would be catastrophic." So Bush ducks into a closet and comes back as commander-in-chief. '"Get to work,' I said, approving Hank's plan in full. 'We are going to solve this.'" Similarly with Hurricane Katrina. "By law, state and local authorities lead the response to natural disasters, with the federal government playing a supporting role." But when he started getting criticized for moving too slowly, he asked for permission to federalize the rescue effort. The Democratic governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, wanted 24 hours to think about it. '"We don't have 24 hours,' I snapped. 'We've waited too long already.'" (At this same meeting, "Senator Mary Landrieu interrupted with unproductive emotional outbursts. 'Would you please be quiet?' I had to say to her at one point.'") But if this episode planted any seeds of doubt about the Republican enthusiasm for turning back power to the states, he doesn't let on. The reason for this pattern of response, I think, is that Bush holds matters like federalism and free markets as articles of faith, not reasoned conclusions. Sometimes your faith fails. That doesn't mean that you abandon it. This attitude applies not just to ideology but to facts. Which brings us to Iraq. Bush admits to just two errors in prosecuting that war. One was to have been unprepared for the "contingency" of a law-and-order breakdown in Baghdad after the Hussein government was toppled. This surely was closer to a certainty than a contingency. "Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in ways we didn't fully understand," Bush says. But what country's capital would not descend into chaos and anarchy if it had no government and a steady rain of bombs was destroying its infrastructure? Bush's other error, of course, was those weapons of mass destruction. His defense is that virtually everyone - including his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and his 2004 rival, John Kerry - also believed there were such weapons, or the ability to build them. Bush is enraged by the slogan "Bush lied. People died." He wasn't lying! He honestly believed that Hussein had these weapons hidden away somewhere - believed it just like everyone else. Furthermore, Hussein was a stinker whether or not he had W.M.D. He deserved his fate. And wasn't bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq reason enough for our actions? To answer the last question: Bush himself apparently didn't think it was reason enough. That's why he and Dick Cheney and, most notably (and reluctantly), Colin Powell emphasized weapons of mass destruction in mak-" ing their case for war. There are a lot of stinkers in the world and a lot of oppressed people, and ordinarily we do nothing about it unless American interests are directly threatened. Bush regards the missing W.M.D. as an intelligence failure. He doesn't say whether in his mind the failure was in concluding that they existed, or in not finding them. But it's clear in this book that he was hoping to find them, and was bitterly frustrated when we didn't. Bush writes, "The reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false." A handsome admission, but it raises the question: So why were they still there, dying and killing, when he left office years later? "No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons," Bush writes. "I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do." But a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein would have been a bad thing, not a good thing, no? By his own lights, Bush should have been happy and relieved that Hussein didn't have those weapons, no? THERE is one big issue during Bush's presidency that he not only got wrong, but seems to have totally misunderstood. That is stem cells. "At its core," Bush writes ponderously, "the stem cell question harked back to the philosophical clash between science and morality." He announced to his aides that "I considered this a far-reaching decision," and "I laid out a process for making it. I would clarify my guiding principles, listen to experts on all sides of the debate, reach a tentative conclusion and run it past knowledgeable people. After finalizing a decision, I would explain it to the American people. Finally, I would set up a process to ensure that my policy was implemented." To call this a question of science versus morality is to stack the deck. Obviously morality wins. But what is immoral about stem cell research? Bush talks about how "new technologies like 3-D ultrasounds" will help "more Americans recognize the humanity of unborn babies." He seems to think an embryo is like a fetus - a tiny human being - rather than what it is: a clump of a few dozen cells, invisible without a microscope, unthinking and unfeeling. Nature itself - or God himself, if you're a believer - destroys most of the embryos it creates every year in miscarriages (usually before a woman even knows she's pregnant). Thousands more are created and destroyed or frozen in fertility clinics - which Bush has no problem with and may even have used himself. (He and Laura, he says, tried unsuccessfully to have a baby and were ready to adopt when suddenly they had twins.) A very few of those surplus embryos from fertility clinics are used in stem cell research. By what logic do you bar the use of those few to do some real good, while ignoring all the others that come and go without doing any good for anyone? Although President Obama lifted the ban on government-subsidized stem cell research, Bush's policy continues to do damage by leaving the impression that stem cells are controversial and require some sort of compromise between science and morality. They don't. And Bush seems to think that the advent of adult stem cells offers a morally uncomplicated alternative that vindicates his policy. It doesn't. You don't shut down one promising area of research just because another one has opened up. The stem cell decision came early in Bush's presidency. It would be nice to say that Bush grew in office - like Henry V, the wastrel youth and son of a famous father to whom he was often compared. But judging from this book, it didn't happen. Although Bush is admirable for stopping, he probably was more fun when he drank. 'I prided myself on my ability to make crisp and effective decisions,' the former president writes. Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Politico.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 26, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
George W. Bush's decisions were all correct. It was just the aftermath that sometimes became muddled. That, at least, is the impression one gets after reading this surprisingly robust memoir. For those who have missed 43 in the public eye (and for those who haven't as well), his voice is evident on every page. Cocky, defiant, and, at times (especially when speaking about his family), emotional, this is the George Bush who insists that everybody believed there were weapons of mass destruction, that much of the blame for the post-Katrina fiasco should be put on Louisiana's local governments, and that Harriet Miers would have made a fine Supreme Court justice, given the chance. He does admit some mistakes ( Mission Accomplished ), but he stands by his big decisions and backs up his claims, which is simpler to do when the other side isn't chiming in with their opinions and/or facts. Those who have followed Bush and his presidency will find many of the personal stories here familiar (how he stopped drinking; his whirlwind romance with Laura), but there are some fascinating reveals as well, including his affection for Ted Kennedy, his sometimes-complicated relationship with Dick Cheney, and his read-between-the-lines digs at Colin Powell. Some political memoirs (hello, Bill Clinton) are bloated journeys that devolve into pages and pages of, and then I met . . . Bush, smartly dividing the book into themes rather than telling the story chronologically, offers readers a genuine (and highly readable) look at his thought processes as he made huge decisions that will affect the nation and the world for decades. Many will ridicule his thinking and bemoan those decisions, but being George Bush, he won't really care.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Former President George W. Bush looks back at the personal and political decisions he made that impacted his life and our nation. Chapter 5, "Day of Fire," gives us a closer look at the events and decisions he made on September 11. (Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/10) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
W. has his say.In a page-turner structured around important decisions in his life and presidency, Bush surprises with a lucid, heartfelt look back. Despite expected defenses of past decisions, Bush is candid and unafraid to say when he thinks he was wrong. Critics on both the left and right are challenged to walk in his shoes, and may come away with a new view of the former presidentor at least an appreciation of the hard and often ambiguous choices he was forced to make. Aside from the opening chapter about his decision to quit drinking, the book is not chronologically ordered. Bush mixes topics as needed to tell a larger story than a simple history of his administration. Certain themes dominate the narrative: the all-encompassing importance of 9/11 to the bulk of his presidency, and how it shaped and shadowed almost everything he did; the importance of his faith, which is echoed in every chapter and which comes through in an unassuming manner; the often unseen advisor whom the president conferred with and confided in on almost every subjecthis wife, Laura Bush; and the wide array of people who helped him rise to the White House and then often hindered him once he was there. The book is worthwhile for many reasons. Even if many readers may not agree with his views on the subjects, Bush's memories of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and other major events are riveting and of historical value on their own. Additionally, Bush provides insight into the daily life of the president. The author accepts blame for a number of mistakes and misjudgments, while also standing up for decisions he felt were right.Honest, of course, but also surprisingly approachable and engaging.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
