by Jacob Weisberg
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Product Description
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A View for a Soldier's Mother, 2009-01-01
I will make this short and to the point. I despise George Bush and this book only substantiates my opinion of this man. As the mother of a soldier in the National Guard who never in a million years thought we would be involved in something of this magnitude, this book only re-enforces the lunacy of the Iraq War. My son and my family have spent the last five years in this hell and I only wish George Bush and his family could have expierenced his incompetence first hand. I think the overriding thing about this book is what it shows in terms of the total lack on Bush's part of any understanding of what his actions could and did result in. I have attended the funerals of some of the fine young people who have died because of his arrogance, his stupidity, his ignorance, and his narcicism. I just hope what goes around comes around when it comes to this poor excuse for a human being. This book does an excellent job in trying to diagnosis the sickness that is George Bush. I truely feel for his father who I know understands what his son has done to this country and to this world and for that reason he cries.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
The Letter Hiding in Plain Sight, 2008-12-23
In The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe imagines a story where a damning letter that can bring doom to the monarchy is hidden in plain sight, available for everyone to see but escaping the police's gaze because of its obvious location and minor changes in its appearance. This story was later taken up by psychoanalysts as a metaphor of their own method of enquiry. Marie Bonaparte, Freud's French disciple, stressed that the purloined letter in the story symbolizes regret for missing maternal penis and reproach for its loss by the son-detective. Jacques Lacan, rebellious heir to the Freudian tradition, saw the letter as the sign of the constitutive lack which forms the keystone of the symbolic order.
Although he cautions his reader against what he calls "psychobabble", Jacob Weisberg also claims the Freudian legacy. The Freud he refers to is the co-author of Woodrow Wilson's biography, in which he argues that Wilson's inability to process aggressive feelings towards his father left him increasingly messianic and detached from reality: "facts ceased to exist for him if they conflicted with his unconscious desires".
But Weisberg also implicitly refers to Poe's narrative to characterize his method of investigation: "In pursuit of leaks and scoops, we journalists often miss what's hiding in plain sight. The key that unlocks the mystery of political motivation is seldom hidden in a locked vault. It's usually right in front of us".
Indeed, there is a purloined letter in almost every chapter of The Bush Tragedy. The elusive letter is most obviously revealed in the opening chapter, where the key to George W. Bush's destiny is to be found in his middle initial. According to Weisberg's version of the family story, "W" is the product of two family traditions, the Bushes and the Walkers, and he is in many ways more a Walker than a Bush. As is well known, only one letter separates him from his father, and the towering figure loomed large on everything he did to gain recognition or assert independence.
Weisberg also exposes the plans of the two most controversial characters of the Bush presidency: Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. As he demonstrates, they were not driven by a hidden agenda or a secret plot to take over America: they acted in plain sight, and their intentions had been publicized all along. Rove's grandiose historical ambition was to achieve nationally what he had done in Texas: operate a major political realignment and ensure Republican dominance for decades to come. Cheney, otherwise secretive and manipulative, never hid his intention to expand executive power and limit interference by the legislative branch. The writing was on the wall for all people to see.
Another version of the tell-tale letter is the wave of anthrax letters that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Weisberg greatly reevaluates this episode: without the anthrax attacks, Cheney would never have gained such ascendency over the president, and Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq.
I have read several biographies of American presidents and I thought the genre improved with the passage of time, with history providing a decanter that allowed the best wine bottles to mellow. But Weisberg's Bush Tragedy proves that a portrait could be written on the spur of time and still claim a commanding place on history's bookshelves.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Taking a Stab at Bush's Brain, 2008-11-24
Mr. Weisberg makes a very credible attempt at deciphering our 43rd President plus some of the key movers and shakers in his administration. Viewing President Bush as similar to Shakespeare's "Henry V" play is an insightful and unique take on the nature of power in search of identity and validation. The Bard reminds us that the human condition doesn't change all that much through the ages. I believe Mr. Weisberg's assessment about this Chief Executive man-child is certainly plausible. The author's book is not as much a hatchet job as a serious attempt to understand why Bush is Bush. It is a thoughtful and wonderfully written analysis about an intellectually lazy gentleman that personifies the Peter Principle.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Highly Biased, 2008-11-18
I'm a conservative who did not know very much about Jacob Weisberg before buying this book. I heard his take on George W. Bush's religious views and they really intrigued me. I myself am no fan of the 43rd President. I consider Bush to be a big spending liberal so am more open to leftist critiques concerning him than I would be for other politicians. And to be fair, Chapter 3 "The Gospel of George," was quite strong. I think Self-help Methodism is a solid way to describe Mr. Bush's religious perspective. That he is not a doctrinaire evangelist is quite evident and Weisberg does a good job in stating his case. He was the first I heard to do so and should be given credit for his insight.
Overall, however, The Bush Tragedy is a very poor work. I do object to the cover's claim that the author has "no political ax to grind" because he obviously does. Furthermore, he has no respect for conservatives whatsoever. I know this to be true due to an article he penned over the summer claiming that the reason people like me didn't back Obama was due to his race. This is preposterous. The real reason is that no true conservative would ever back Obama because he's a leftist. Weisberg also refers to himself as being a "liberal hawk" in these pages; although, nothing hawkish about his worldview is discernible. He admits as well to penning six books on Bush's linguistic mistakes which is not an indicator of ideological neutrality. Further, Weisberg--a journalist--suggests that the president has a language processing deficit similar to dyslexia even though the author demonstrates no evidence that he is qualified to make such a statement.
Another thing alarming about The Bush Tragedy is that Weisberg's 2008 release pretends that the Iraq War has been lost whereas the evidence has suggested otherwise for over a year. Aside from a page 218 mention, The Surge is not cited at all. It's as if it never happened. A more honest narrator would admit that the final chapter on Mr. Bush largely depends on what happens in Bagdad. History's final pages are not yet written but they are on this work...which is infinitely forgettable.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 The Bush Tragedy, 2008-11-18
To say that I am not a Bush supporter would be an understatement. I have endured the last eight years with gritted teeth and the knowledge that the nightmare of this administration would end on January 20, 2009, one way or another. The question had always been just how much damage to our civil liberties would be done, how far the Constitution could be bent like a pretzel before it actually broke, and how far would America's stature in the court of world public opinion sink before that date. So for me to even read this book is somewhat bemusing. I already knew the Bush/Cheney administration was a tragedy. The fiasco treatise was read daily in the press and watched on the news channels. We had elected someone who could barely speak intelligent English and we had given him the codes to the arsenals. I did not have to read a book to tell me what we American's had been living through the past eight years was a tragedy. It was like the quintessential Greek play, only it was real life. You had to laugh at times, or eat Prozac or Lexapro or whatever your flavor.
I must have read a review of this book in Newsweek that caused me to order it from Amazon.com. I remember I was intrigued by two things, the review said the author approached his subject (Bush) not as a joke, but in a serious attempt to explain the man and the reasons of the actions taken. And the author is the editor in chief of Slate magazine, a web portal that I have been known to frequent. Then there is the "Bushisms" series that the author has been associated with. Given the fact that Jacob Weisberg is said to try and write a serious work about the court jester, I decided to give it a go.
Overall the book is a fairly good read. The author takes some leaps here and there trying to tie his take on the actions of the man and pin them to what he feels is the motive behind them. Sometimes they stick, other times not so much. Weisberg does take some of his own armchair psychoanalysis a bit to far at times, pointing backwards inside the Bush family tree one and two generations as to why something was done. Then there are other times when he is able, due to his access to back door information and background, to provide some insightful revelations about the man Dubya and those around him, specifically Karl Rove. There should be no doubt that Karl Rove was the evil puppeteer who worked the marionette and got him into the oval office in 2000.
The first chapter is meant to introduce you to the family tree and who is who in the grand scheme of things. However this is probably the weakest chapter written by Weisberg, and very hard to follow, even with the photo family tree provided. Weisberg insists of calling the same person multipule names, often on the same page. At one point he refers to George Herbert Walker Bush as George H. W., #41, Poppy, Pop, and little Pop all within a matter of sentences. Being a somewhat amateur genealogist, this is taboo. You designate a name, one name for a person, and refer back to that name at all times. This constantly changing of monikers to reference the same individual gets confusing fast, and it did. And of course everyone in the family had to have at least two names, and two different nick or pet names as well. Take it slow, refer back to the photo family tree, and you will make it through.
Jacob Weisberg is at his best however when providing details on Dick Cheney, the vice president, revealing the real authority behind the administration. A good bit of background information is given on where Cheney came from, who he had worked for and why, and how he came to be the #2 man in the administration. Let there be no doubt, Dick Cheney has done more to undo the Constitution and personal liberties of American's than any other man in the 232 years of our history. Dick Cheney is so powerful (or so he would assume) that he singlehandedly took the office of vice president out of the executive branch of government and moved it to the legislative branch!
Something that did surprise me that came out in this book was the basic revelation that George H.W. Bush was a better statesman, president and leader than he has been given credit for in the court of public opinion. Bush senior was able to take advice from different sources, reflect on them, and eventually formulate a plan or make a decision based on several different points of view, and in particular, based on facts. Dubya on the other hand, has little use of facts, or briefing points, or other bits of empirical evidence. Even Dubya's wife, Laura Bush, makes comment that her husband is not able to retain facts and information, instead bases his decision making process on some form of "I got a feeling about ..." Like the time Bush looked into the eyes of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and seeing into his soul, found goodness. Possibly the citizens of Russia are wondering just where Dubya looked, for they are still searching for the goodness.
There are many personalities that come into play in the development of Dubya and who he is today. His mother, Barbara, who does not fair well in this book; an great-uncle, George Herbert "Herbie" Walker Jr., who favored Dubya's father more than his own sons; a grandfather that insisted the grandchildren call him "Senator"; and of course Dubya's brother, Jeb, who was favored to be a president until Dubya wrestled that away.
If you want some family background and insights to THE.WORST.PRESIDENT.EVER than this book is a read for you. If you are just so glad the nightmare might be coming to an end soon (notice I said might, as it will take years, possibly decades to undo the damage done by this administration) than take a pass on this book.
Either way, I am just glad we will soon be able to talk about President Bush in a past tense form.
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