Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane
- Book Review,
by John Podhoretz
Amazon.com
New York Post columnist John Podhoretz has equal amounts of love for George W. Bush and scorn for Bush's prominent liberal critics. In this energetic defense of the president, he paints a picture of Bush as being much cagier and politically clever than some of the more well-known voices on the left give him credit for. As Podhoretz describes it, Bush's classic maneuver is to take up a position thought to be unpopular among Washington insiders, such as not one but two rounds of sizeable tax cuts. He then rallies public support behind the idea, thereby outflanking possible opposition, scoring political victories, and increasing his political capital. Bush Country presents chapters on what the author says are some of the most common "crazy liberal ideas" about the President and then sets out to disprove them. But by using the most incendiary descriptions possible ("Bush is a puppet," "Bush is a moron," and "Bush wants to bankrupt the government") to describe the ideas, Podhoretz makes the disproving that much easier. And one does get the sense that he's trying to eat his cake and have it too as he complains about liberals' hatred and viciousness even as he attacks them right back and calls them crazy. But Podhoretz does not necessarily march in lockstep with every Republican official. He has much scorn for the first President Bush and talks openly about his initial misgivings as "Dubya" rose to power and prominence. The book is at its best when describing the ways in which the son has made efforts to learn from the father's mistakes and distance himself from George H.W. Bush's legacy. Written with plenty of passion and humor, Bush Country will likely please Bush supporters who have watched the president take hits from the Al Franken, Michael Moore, and others on the left. --John Moe
From Publishers Weekly
Over the past three years, liberals have been far from shy in expressing their distaste for George W. Bush. Now conservative commentator Podhoretz (Hell of a Ride) offers up a thorough defense of the president as well as a scathing attack on his most vocal detractors. Podhoretz takes a series of the more popular attacks on the presidentâ€"what he calls "crazy liberal ideas"â€"and debunks them one by one. These include "Bush is a moron," "Bush is a fanatic," "Bush is Hitler" and "Bush is a liar," charges he cites as being made by some leading liberal writers: Paul Krugman, Michael Lind, Maureen Dowd and Todd Gitlin, among others. Podhoretz claims that the president is, in fact, an intelligent, savvy, principled and honest leader, who responded to the September 11 tragedy with inspiring courage and determination. Bush's presidency will be remembered as "one of the most consequential... in the nation's history." Podhoretz even claims that Bush is "the best presidential speaker" since Franklin Roosevelt. Moreover, he says, the intensity of the Bush-bashing cannot be attributed to "mere partisan rancor," but is the result of Bush's defiant and infuriating success as president. Podhoretz's book is polemical, written for a specific niche: conservative political junkies who relish cutthroat partisan politics. Considered in this light, the book is well done: provocative, witty, in-your-face and honest. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In this riposte to Bush bashers, New York Post columnist Podhoretz takes two tacks: ridiculing the denigrators of Dubya and extolling him as a great president. Naturally, the author's red-meat sections will entertain aggrieved Bush supporters, as Podhoretz runs with journalists' or politicians' quotations to the effect that Bush is stupid, illiterate, a ventriloquist's dummy for the oil industry, too religious, out to destroy the welfare state, and a lying liar who tells lies, to paraphrase a certain apoplectic comedian. These and other accusations Podhoretz slams under chapter headings as "crazy liberal ideas" and, for good measure, questions Bush critics' logic or even mental condition. Interest in political pugilism lasts only so long, however, as every library that has weeded last month's it-book knows. Yet the spotlight on Podhoretz may linger because, when drawing breath between punches, he dwells on reasons Bush, from the technical viewpoint, has prevailed on most matters in which he has invested presidential prestige. That accent on the mechanics of Bush's strategy slightly widens Podhoretz's immediately obvious readership. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"If you want to understand America, read Alexis de Tocqueville---then read John Podhoretz, who not only is one of the most perceptive journalists in today's America, but who's very funny, too. In Bush Country, Podhoretz brilliantly harpoons those pompous twits---the 'enlightened' ones, many of them journalists---'who consider themselves the most intelligent people in America.' They may, but no one else will after reading this thoughtful and provocative book."
---Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias and Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite
"Warning: If you like your politics mealymouthed---stay away! John Podhoretz has written a tough, shrewd, don't-give-an-inch defense of George W. Bush that should give the president's critics heartburn, or maybe a heart attack."
---David Frum, author of The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush
Review
"Podhoretz has written a tough, shrewd, don't-give-an-inch defense of George W. Bush that should give the president's critics heartburn."
Review
"If you want to understand America, read Alexis de Tocqueville---then read John Podhoretz, who not only is one of the most perceptive journalists in today's America, but who's very funny, too. In Bush Country, Podhoretz brilliantly harpoons those pompous twits---the 'enlightened' ones, many of them journalists---'who consider themselves the most intelligent people in America.' They may, but no one else will after reading this thoughtful and provocative book."
---Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias and Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite
"Warning: If you like your politics mealymouthed---stay away! John Podhoretz has written a tough, shrewd, don't-give-an-inch defense of George W. Bush that should give the president's critics heartburn, or maybe a heart attack."
---David Frum, author of The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush
Book Description
In this rousing, persuasive, and hugely entertaining book, John Podhoretz says that George W. Bush has earned a place in the pantheon of great American chief executives---and shows in one amazing detail after another how Bush's success has driven some of his critics into a pathological frenzy.
Podhoretz is the first to acknowledge that the odds were stacked against Dubya, the inexperienced Texas governor who took up residence in the White House lacking an electoral majority, dogged by widely publicized verbal mishaps, and widely viewed by the American elite as a lightweight.
But to the delight of his friends and the teeth-gnashing frustration of liberals, George W. Bush has proven himself an immensely effective president. Throughout his three years in the White House, as Podhoretz explains, Dubya has outsmarted, out-maneuvered, out-articulated, and outshone adversaries and critics. Steeled by the tragedy of September 11, the new president took a nation more obsessed with reality television than with the reality of international terrorism and girded it for the long struggle that lay ahead. He has presided over two major military campaigns to stunning success, initiated tax cuts whose dimensions have awed critics and fans alike, and brought his party into the twenty-first century. He has been resourceful, disciplined, and independent-minded---so much so that he was able to reject his own father's governing style as president to find his own voice and his own place in history.
Bush hasn't hoarded his political capital, but has used it in bold and unexpected ways. Instead of bowing to conventional wisdom and carving out a centrist position, he has remained true to his ideological roots. Instead of deferring to established Beltway thinking, he has done what he thinks is best for America and the world. As Bush has grown more presidential, the criticisms of him have grown more intense---and, in Podhoretz's view, crazier and crazier. In a series of short chapters, Podhoretz takes a rhetorical scalpel to eight of the wildest caricatures of Bush and leaves them in hilarious shreds.
In a season of broadsides being fired from both sides of the aisle, here is a book that distinguishes itself by the force of its arguments and the ringing clarity of its thought. Impassioned, insightful, and convincing, Bush Country is an analysis of a presidency gone right and a celebration of a 0man who has already earned his place in history.
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