In this fourth volume of his quartet of books on the Bush White House, Bob Woodward reaches a damning conclusion about the presidency of George W. Bush. “A president must be able to get a clear-eyed, unbiased assessment of the war,” he writes. “The president must lead. For years, time and again, President Bush has displayed impatience, bravado and unsettling personal certainty about his decisions. The result has too often been impulsiveness and carelessness and, perhaps most troubling, a delayed reaction to realities and advice that run counter to his gut.”
“After ordering the invasion,” Mr. Woodward goes on, “the president spent three years in denial and then delegated a strategy review to his national security adviser. Bush was intolerant of confrontations and in-depth debate. There was no deadline, no hurry. The president was engaged in the war rhetorically but maintained an odd detachment from its management. He never got a full handle on it, and over these years of war, too often he failed to lead.”
In this respect, Mr. Woodward’s portrait of Mr. Bush in “The War Within” ”” a book Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, has called incomplete and misleading ”” amplifies the one he drew in his last book, “State of Denial” (2006), in which the president emerged as a passive, stubborn and intellectually incurious leader, given to an almost religious certainty about his decision making and inclined to make instinctive gut calls. It stands in striking contrast to the laudatory portrait in the first book in this series, “Bush at War” (2002), which depicted the president in Rovian terms as a strong, resolute, even visionary leader.
The book seems more of a commentary on Woodward than about Bush.
Bob’s clearly well into his 16th minute.
Please correct me if my memory is wrong, but isn’t Bob Woodward the one who revealed Valerie Plames identity, while his employer “The Washington Post” wrote page after page trying to lay the blame on Karl Rove?
“It’s a picture of an administration riven by internal conflicts (between the Pentagon and State Department, between defense department civilians and the uniformed military, between hard-line neoconservatives and more pragmatic realists), an administration in which the advice of experts was frequently ignored or dismissed, traditional policy-making channels were routinely circumvented, policy often took a backseat to electoral politics, accountability was repeatedly evaded, and few advisers dared speak truth to power.”
The book is a portrait in mediocre leadership.
Woodward’s judgments are political and should be viewed as such.
Betty See, in fairness to Woodward, the person who first mentioned Joe Wilson’s wife in print was Robert Novak, not Bob Woodward.
“The book is a portrait in mediocre leadership. ”
Thank God that we have just experienced a “regression to the average” type of administration. Living through “exceptional leadership” terms could be disasterous. Statistical outliers tend to make life just too exciting.
Katherine, I don’t see Woodward as political. If he’s wrong, give evidence. And if he’s being paid by the Democrats, then I’ll examine him more critically.
Of course, he’s not reporting anything differently than a comprehensive view of what what Paul O’Neill, Bunnatine Greenhouse, Larry Lindsay, John Kiesling, General Shinseki, James Zahn, James Furnish, John J. DiIulio Jr., Richard Clarke, and David Kuo have all said in different ways at different times about the Bush Administration.
Woodward’s book will probably provide cocktail party gossip that will fill the Style pages of the Washington Post for some time to come.
Katherine, post 5,
When I evacuated to Maryland after hurricane Katrina, I read the Washington Post every day, it was quite an eye opener to see how much (anonymous source) gossip influences politics in Washington D.C. The following story about Woodward was just breaking when I left.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501857_pf.html
In order to be fair to both Robert Novak and Woodward and the other reporters who recklessly spread the word about Valerie Plame’s identity without fear of prosecution because of constitutional protection of freedom of speech, I think people who read Woodward‘s book would be wise to read this Washington Post article.
Incidentally, in case everyone has forgotten, Karl Rove was not convicted of anything.
so in order to be fair to Robert Novac
Please ignore that last line I posted by mistake.