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. \u201cA president must be able to get a clear-eyed, unbiased assessment of the war,\u201d\u009d he writes. \u201cThe 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.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter ordering the invasion,\u201d\u009d Mr. Woodward goes on, \u201cthe 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.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
In this respect, Mr. Woodward\u2019s portrait of Mr. Bush in \u201cThe War Within\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d a book Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, has called incomplete and misleading \u201d\u201d amplifies the one he drew in his last book, \u201cState of Denial\u201d\u009d (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, \u201cBush at War\u201d\u009d (2002), which depicted the president in Rovian terms as a strong, resolute, even visionary leader.<\/p>\n