New Bush bio says he's rigid
Three years after the American invasion of Iraq, after endless searches had found no sign of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush still believed that Saddam Hussein had had them. He expressed that conviction repeatedly to his chief of staff, Andrew Card, until Card left the White House in April 2006.
So writes Robert Draper in his unusual biography of George W. Bush. It is unusual because Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, was given extraordinary access to this press-averse president and his aides, including six private meetings with Bush, surely in the belief that he would be a friendly biographer. Draper is friendly, at times admiring. But he also unhesitatingly supplies devastating evidence of the characteristics that have helped to produce the disasters of the Bush presidency.
“Dead Certain,” the title, conveys one of those characteristics. Bush knows he is right. When facts turn out to get in the way, he brushes them off. When “Mission Accomplished” turned sour in Iraq, when various supposed bench marks of success did not stop the bloodshed, the president remained utterly confident of victory. He was sure, Draper writes, that “history would acquit him.”
Read entire article at Anthony Lewis in the NYT Book Review
So writes Robert Draper in his unusual biography of George W. Bush. It is unusual because Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, was given extraordinary access to this press-averse president and his aides, including six private meetings with Bush, surely in the belief that he would be a friendly biographer. Draper is friendly, at times admiring. But he also unhesitatingly supplies devastating evidence of the characteristics that have helped to produce the disasters of the Bush presidency.
“Dead Certain,” the title, conveys one of those characteristics. Bush knows he is right. When facts turn out to get in the way, he brushes them off. When “Mission Accomplished” turned sour in Iraq, when various supposed bench marks of success did not stop the bloodshed, the president remained utterly confident of victory. He was sure, Draper writes, that “history would acquit him.”