Bush Paperback – July 18, 2017

I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and am proud of those votes. My wife and I were two of those 537 Floridian votes who elected him President in 2000. I was part of the larger majority that re-elected him in 2004. I rate him a “B+” president, even though I’ve since come to believe that his economic policies intensified the Great Recession.I’m not a rock-ribbed Republican voter. I voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and blogged for him during the campaign. I feel that Obama was the right President for his time, and has run a wise administration that did what was necessary to recover us from the economic debacle, hand off the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the locals, and implement an imperfect but necessary healthcare reform.Being bipartisan, I may be a somewhat objective reviewer of this book and its view of Bush’s administration. I knew from the outset that Mr. Smith was going to crucify “W” for his interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, I won’t fault him for that view, even though I’ll never agree with it.But what about the rest of the “W” Bush’s life story? It turns out that Mr. Smith is fair-minded in documenting all those other interesting facets of “W’s” allotment of the Bush Dynasty turf.He tells the well-known stories of Bush the Party Animal, but also makes it clear that “W” wasn’t handed anything on a silver platter. He had to work difficult jobs as a young man and put his own money at risk in developing his business. He praises Bush for working with heartfelt enthusiasm in doing community service in Houston’s poor African-American neighborhoods. He makes it clear that “W” was one wealthy White guy who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty working with poor inner city Blacks in ratty neighborhoods. It seems that he had a genuine affection for urban Blacks and they for him.Nor is his portrayal of Bush’s domestic policies unkind:======… the Bush administration was not without its accomplishments. Because of his Texas roots and his admirable freedom from racial prejudice, Bush was far more sympathetic than Clinton or his father to the plight of illegal immigrants, particularly those of Hispanic origin, and he pioneered the nation’s first prescription drug program for seniors.No Child Left Behind may not be a perfect solution, but it reflected the president’s concern to improve the nation’s schools. “The biggest difference between me and my father,” George W. was fond of saying, “is that he went to Greenwich Country Day and I went to San Jacinto Junior High.”=====However, the crux of the book comes down to this proposition:=====Accordingly, September 12 was a defining moment in American history: the United States was not only an economic powerhouse and a military superpower but also enjoyed unprecedented moral authority. Bush could have capitalized on that support but instead he squandered it. He strutted around like a cowboy and then picked a fight with Iraq.=====Back in 2011 I reviewed Condi Rice’s book NO HIGHER HONOR, which boiled down to the same question. In reviewing Dr. Rice’s book I wrote:=====…foreign policy during President George W. Bush's administration will remain controversial for the rest of our lives. Bush and his people are judged primarily in terms of the overwhelmingly polarizing Iraq War. Either you believe that the war was justified because Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the USA or you believe that "W" was at best a dumb cowboy and at worst a "war criminal" who led us into a gratuitous war. Because people have already hardened their positions either supporting or opposing the Iraq War, the book isn't likely to be read with an inquisitive spirit of trying to learn anything new.=====The same is true of Smith’s book. Those who agree with his assessment of Bush as “a strutting cowboy” will swoon over the book. Those who believe Bush acted prudently, as I do, will be more skeptical of it. But is there anything that a Bush supporter can learn from the book? Yes, there is. For me, the worthwhile part of the book was the first 20% that describes "W"s life before the dreadful events of 9/11:=====This book relates the life of George W. Bush— his family heritage of investment banking and public service, his childhood in Midland, Texas (which by the late 1970s had the highest per capita income of any city in the United States), Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School, the Air National Guard, oil business, and the Texas Rangers baseball team.=====In private life, Smith shows that Bush was a lot smarter, savvier, harder working, and more personable than the diehard “Bush Bashers” think.Another interesting facet is that Smith gives the best account I’ve ever seen of why Bush was elected President during the controversial vote count of 2000. According to Smith, it had relatively little to do with Bush being “selected” President by the Supreme Court, and everything to do with Al Gore’s arrogance that led to his making mistakes that cost him the electoral votes of several states other than Florida. He lost his own home state of Tennessee, Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, and Democratic-heavy West Virginia. If he’d won any of those other states that he should have won, he’d have been elected President without Florida. So, according to Smith, Democrats shouldn’t blame the Supreme Court for supposedly deciding the election of 2000. Place the blame on Al Gore, where it belongs.As is true of Condi Rice’s book, Smith captures the sadness that enveloped Bush’s administration after 9/11. Bush and his people had begun the first seven months of his presidency with so much promise: tax cuts, education reforms, and a fruitful meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He and his staff were looking forward to an era of peace abroad and domestic tranquility at home. The roof was blown off that dream by 9/11. The remaining years of Bush’s term were war and controversy, followed by the financial collapse and Great Recession that began in 2008.The 9/11 attacks begin around the 20% marker of the Kindle Edition, and that is where I began to lose interest. From that point on it becomes an opinion piece. For example:=====Bush’s personalization of the war on terror combined with his macho assertiveness as the nation’s commander in chief were a recipe for disaster. Rather than adhere to constitutional values, treaty obligations, and the rule of law, he chose to rule by presidential prerogative.=====Expect to wade through long diatribes about how Bush supposedly misrepresented the 9/11 attacks in order to foment a “War on Terror.” It ventures into unadulterated speculation, even going so far as to state with certainty what Smith imagines “W” was thinking in his silent thoughts.It’s not my place in this review to defend Bush’s decision to topple the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, or to question Mr. Smith’s view that the Bush-orchestrated military interventions were gratuitous. His opinions don’t change my view that Bush acted prudently and by necessity to protect our homeland. I’ll only say that it is jarring to see the book switch from such a fair-minded view of Bush before 9/11 to such an opinionated one-sided view afterword.I’m rating this book three stars, not on the basis of disrespecting Mr. Smith’s views, but on these two points:1. It’s jarringly inconsistent in perhaps bending over backward to portray Bush fairly in the beginning and malevolently at the end. Prior to 9/11 Bush is portrayed as savvy, compassionate, and street smart. After 9/11 he becomes “dynamically ignorant” --- a cruel ignoramus who cares nothing for the Constitutional laws of the USA, or the unwritten rules of humanity.2. It could have been edited much more tightly. Smith is a great story teller, and I never felt like he was intentionally “padding” the book with boring material in order to inflate the page count. But he does pack in a lot of backstories that aren’t all that interesting. So, I did a lot of skimming. Other readers, with more time on their hands, may enjoy them, though.This really two books in one. The first 20% is an enjoyable, deeply researched, and fair view of the Bush family and “W”s pre-2001 years. The remaining 80% is a diatribe (except at the very end when fairness returns with an even-handed view of the financial collapse. Smith doesn’t try to allocate all or even most of the blame to Bush on that one). You’ll enjoy Smith’s opinionated 80% of the book immensely if you’re agreed with his view, but won’t think much of it if you don’t.

Clearly there's controversy stirring of late regarding this book, and I have to admit that when I read it there were times when I was taken aback by the vehemence of the author and his opinion/feelings regarding Bush and this is the main reason I can't go with a five star review - I just have this feeling that something's a bit too personal in what's going on when a book is written in the way this one was.Will Inbolden in his 15 August review of the book in Foreign Policy magazine had many negative things to say and as an outsider I had to say that some of those things rang true for me. I think Smith was fixated on Bush's religiosity, but at the same time I'm also of a mind that this was a genuine weakness of Bush, he truly believed he was on God's mission and that is a legitimate point to make though Smith seems to have over reached a bit in this regard.You can read Inbolden's review in Foreign Policy and take that and the other reviews and the comments of other historians and come to your own conclusions. The Bush I see in this book was very much the Bush that I knew during his time as President. I think he was/is a decent man, but he was woefully lacking in the qualities needed for him to be a great president. The Bush I knew:1. Was cocky to the point of hubris,2. Inclined to cowboy tendencies with his "I'm the decider" thinking that excluded input from people that one would hope would have kept him from making the mistakes that he did,3. He surrounded himself with neocons who were more interested in advancing their agenda by using a "muscular" American military than in diplomacy which seemed to inherently go against their notions of what this country was about regardless of the fact that what they wanted placed American service member's lives at stake and would otherwise expend an extraordinary amount of this country's riches,4. Had more than his fair share of sycophants around him so he rarely heard a contrasting view, but the truth is that due to #2 above he wasn't inclined to listen to such naysayers,5. Rushed to a "war" on terror without the slightest consideration of what this meant. No other nation was viewing this as a "war" and for good reason, but Bush, in his zeal and conviction of being on the right side of God in this issue, turned this into a "war" on terror,6. Was a president who stretched the Constitution and made it permissible for Americans to torture captives - I served in the military, I am ashamed that a man with the same sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and who fundamentally appreciated that Americans held themselves to a higher moral standard than those we go to war with, turned things the way he did,7. And lastly he created the mess we now see in the Middle East, the rise of ISIS and the tragedy of Syria, has his fingerprints all over it. These are by-products of a decision to go to war with Iraq that I will never understand. There were no connections between Iraq and 9/11 but Bush and the people around him insisted there was in spite of the voluminous evidence to the contrary and on the basis of that, and the potential for Sadaam Hussein to support terrorist activity (like Kadaffi, North Korea, or Iran, all bigger threats for which he did nothing), he invested American riches and lives in creating a bigger mess than anyone could have anticipated.That's what I see of Bush from my personal experience, and by and large that's the Bush I see in this book. Are there inaccuracies and some overblown rhetoric? I'm sure there is, and that's something Mr. Smith will have to contend with. But this book is not just a liberal smear job though I can easily enough see how some would look at it that way. It's a bit hyperbolic at times but on the whole this has been a good read, and I think it's a fair presentation of a man who will not be recognized as a great president, though I'm inclined to believe, as does apparently Mr. Smith, that he will be remembered as a great ex-president, which speaks to the man's fundamental decency.

Making a biography on a recent President is always risky. But Jean Edward Smith pulls it off with great success. It seems it was just yesterday that George W. Bush was a loathed leader overseas, while a divise one inside his country. In many ways, he changed history, although arguably not in a positive way. Jean Edward Smith is careful in not portraying Bush as a caricature (which is not easy, the character is full of traits which are laughable), but as a leader with great flaws- and some good decisions. Maybe only in Donald Trump's Presidency we can look back and recognize that as horrible as some of the decisions that W. Bush made- he was by no means comprable to what Donald Trump is. A very fair view of W. Bush, that can satisfy both his critics and admirers and that by itself, is a lot to say.

Have not finished reading the book yet. Extremely interesting - well written - certainly keeps the reader wanting to know more about the subject. Has changed my opinion of Bush and not for the better. Makes me really wonder how government functions with idiots in charge.

Excellent book. Extremely well researched. A real page turner that really provides solid insights into the Dubya Bush presidency.

Fantastic read for a Brit with a keen interest in American politis + history. Some of the paragraphs are so well-written and so deftly analyse George Bush, that I would reread them three times over. I have learnt so much. Jean Edward Smith, thankyou.

This is a brilliant and comprehensive review of the presidency of George W. Bush. Smith is genuinely a captivating writer who makes reading very easy. However despite the brilliant writing the book itself is in awful condition. The book appears 2nd hand from the outside and the first few pages have arrived creased. This is very disappointing especially considering the premium price paid for a hardback. I would appreciate if the seller would contact me with either an apology or an offer of a refund. This is of course unfortunate because I really enjoyed the book.