Decision Points

"Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it." This book's penultimate sentence exemplifies three points of George W. Bush: His unwillingness to face criticism, his inability to learn and his egocentricity. Sheltered and pampered, nobody will shatter his delusions of being a modern Abraham Lincoln (about whom he says to have read fourteen biographies during his presidency). I have read about Abraham Lincoln too and Shrub is no Lincoln. He isn't even a Nixon. His place among the worst US presidents is guaranteed. This book will soon end up in the remaindered books section and join Milosevic's and Saddam Hussein's oeuvres in the libraries.

One interesting aspect is that George show more W. Bush now fully embraces and is fully embraced by the Bush clan. In order to revive the tarnished family name, all internal dissent is airbrushed out of existence. The whitewash and start of project "lost cause" has started with a vengeance.

Even Jon Stewart considers it impolite to call Bush a war criminal. You see, the US doesn't torture. George W. Bush said "damn right" to enhanced interrogation to break people, whereas the actual breaking was preferentially outsourced. Many of Bush's victims were innocent, kidnapped far from any war zone (El-Masri in Macedonia, Maher Arar in NYC, ...). In relation to FRAGO 242, the Guardian wrote that "US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing, while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners." Nixon at least acknowledged that his actions were evil. Bush fails to show any contrition, any remorse, to feel any guilt. Only he himself feels wronged from Kanye to Putin. This makes reading this book so painful. In order to keep up his cocksure facade, Bush has to airbrush out major elements of all the stories he tells. The model for this book is less the classic presidential memoir but a dictator's vanity project. Bush ridicules Kim Jong-Il's and Saddam's pomposity he is equally guilty of. This book is similar to the Lenin and Marx memorabilia one could buy after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

Apart from his two commendable personal but (inter)nationally disastrous decisions to quit drinking and running for office, Bush selected, out of the over 300 scandals and the rather limited successes of the Bush administration, the following topics as chapters for his book: VP Dick Cheney, stem cells, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, No child left behind, Katrina, AIDS, Iraq II: the surge, Israel-Palestine-Lebanon, financial collapse. Unfortunately, his account of these issues is not complete, fair nor balanced. Any element which might reflect badly on Dear Leader is cut out of the picture. This might be sufficient for his authoritarian fans and talk show hosts. All others should wait for an annotated edition.

For those that have already forgotten the Bush years and need a refresher about some of the events not found in this book: Bush sat around on 9/11, played air guitar and shared a cake with John McCain while Katrina loomed, he joked about searching for WMD in his office and about the execution of Saddam Hussein, he started two wars, torpedoed Global Warming initiatives, he corrupted, stuffed and disabled governmental agencies, curbed civil liberties, enabled torture, and he repeatedly lied to his citizens and to the world. And he failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. A miserable failure indeed. show less

One of W's predecessors had this to say about the marvelous wonder of writing (and reading): "Writing - the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye - is the great invention of the world ... great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space." That was the voice of Abraham Lincoln, and W has taken those words literally; since he seems to be writing exclusively for "the dead, the absent and the unborn." Certainly anyone who happened to have been alive and present during W's tenure could not possibly be expected to take seriously what W has to say in this memoir. Saddam was actively seeking nuclear weapons? This isn't re-writing history, it's show more de-writing history. I am not a book burner. But if ever my house is on fire, I would not hesitate to try to put out the flames by beating them with this book. show less

It's not that I didn't vote for Dubya the second time he ran, I actively voted against him. Still, when I heard of him saying things like "‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideals show pro-Trump Republicans ‘want to be extinct’", I felt I would like to revisit and consider his reflections on his two terms.

I give him four stars for an engaging political memoir and acknowledging many missteps. He hasn't converted me to being a supported as I feel he falls short of (1) seeing hypocrisy in his own core beliefs and (2) finding sufficient responsibility for an apparently poorly managed administration.

For (1) he details a lot of respectable soul-searching and consultation leading restricting Federal funding of stem cell research based on the idea that show more "destroying an embryo for the vague and indirect purpose of scientific research" is immoral. Ok. I can respect that and his compromise where he "authorized federal funding for embryonic stem cell research—but solely for existing stem cell lines". But then, just after, came a decision Bush had never imagined he would have to make. A hijacked plane was headed toward Washington. The president ordered that it be shot down by American fighter aircraft. "Hijacked planes were weapons of war. Despite the agonizing costs, taking one out could save countless lives on the ground. I had just made my first decision as a wartime commander in chief," Bush writes and misses an opportunity for rigorous self-analysis of what, surely, are difficult decisions. Well, he seems to be unable to get out of the box he put himself in as The Decider-In-Chief. ("I'm the decider, and I decide what's best.")

Handling TARP and contravening his own free market principles feels also like it is truly absent close examination for how that reality challenges his prior assumptions and, to some extent, either negates them or was an error in need of explanation.

As for (2), from the "Mission Accomplished" banner to Comey to the Patriot Act it feels like Bush stumbled through a a lot of "didn't know" and should have known situations that points to poor leadership and ineffectual administration.

Reading this is a good reminder of his accomplishments and impact on making the U.S. lead the effort to combat AIDS in Africa.

While it is never stated, it feels to me like this enshrining of two terms of Texas Republican style over substance nudged the GOP on the Trump trajectory. show less

"Great events and personalities are all made small when passed through the medium of this small mind." - Winston Churchill
While Churchill, when writing to Eisenhower, could not have known about Bush the President, let alone the writer or Decider, I can find no better way of describing this book.

There is a terrible problem in life; we are all so damned self-forgiving. We all find ways of abridging our faults and accentuating our successes. Fortunately for us all, most of us learn this and mitigate it; George Bush wrote almost an entire book embracing it. The book is full of gosh-darnit-if-I-didn't-do-my-best moments that make you feel like you are watching a small child give it their best shot. Occasionally, when he stumbles on show more something and does assign some self-blame the moment is so rare and fleeting that you hardly notice it (ex. his looking into the soul of Vladimir Putin, later realizing he wasn't a great guy).

The New Yorker review also pegged the exact nature of the "Decision Points," namely that they aren't really decisions, so much as conclusions. For instance, the Chapter on Stem Cells includes the fairest, most intellectual debate of the book doesn't even have significant quotation (more than 4 lines) from either side. You are left wondering if he just opened his mouth and he said what came to the top of his brain.

The lasting opinion, the feeling that stuck with me the most, is just an overwhelming feeling that I'm looking at some piece of genius here. That, like the City of the Ladies, you need to dig deeper and you will see an achievement of true ingenuity. But then I re-read a chapter and think, "Nah." show less

This took me almost a week to read. Way longer than it normally takes me to read a book. I was surprised by how much I liked it. His personality really came through and it was formatted in a way that you went from one important point in his presidency to the next. Pages weren't filled with names or particulars that weren't relevant. His deep faith and his humor both came through in perfect balance. Also his mother's humor peppered the book and she cracked me up. I think Ill add her book to my tbr list as a result.

In one of the debates during the 2004 election, President George W. Bush famously encapsulated his elected position in one short sentence, "I'm the decider." However inelegantly stated, it aptly sums up the modern presidency. As others, including other presidents, have admitted, by the time an issue reaches the Oval Office, all of the easy or noncontroversial decisions have been made by lower level officials. The thorny problems that remain, often seeming to be choices with only bad options, are the ones that demand the president's attention.

In his post-White House memoir, "Decision Points," Bush (43) offers his perspective on such significant problems that he faced, including 9/11 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the show more response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 financial crisis. While not a traditional autobiography by an ex-president -- which, it should be noted, his father refused to write after he left the White House -- it offers a clear vision of how the former president believes his administration should be judged.

As much as Bush is interested in justifying his decision-making to an American public that overwhelmingly viewed his job performance negatively by the end of his second term, it is clear that this book is largely motivated by an urge to provide thorough "on the record" accounting of his presidency for future historians. In many ways, it seems an attempt to balance out the popular "behind the scenes" books written by Bob Woodward, which grew increasingly critical of Bush's decisions.

Unashamedly, it is a careful argument for seeing the president's eight years in office much more sympathetically. Therefore, those with preconceived notions of Bush are unlikely to have those views changed in this favorable self-assessment. Even so, the president comes across, at times, as a much more thoughtful and considered person here as he describes the context within which he governed at key points.

Little in this book will surprise most people who pay attention to political news, and much familiar territory is covered about the response to 9/11 and the decisions to go to war. At the outset, Bush also tells, again, of his decision to give up drinking alcohol. The book's high point is likely the discussion around the surge of forces in the Iraq War, where Bush's decision had little popular support and went against the support of key people in his own administration, but which ultimately proved successful. The unexpected decision to significantly increase US funding to fight HIV/AIDS, with many examples of positive consequences, also makes a strong impression.

On the other hand, chapters on the response to Hurricane Katrina -- almost certainly the low point of Bush's presidency -- and the worldwide "Freedom Agenda" that was touted in his Second Inaugural Address are disappointing. Despite a shiny gloss on each story, there is ultimately little to commend about either aspect, and Bush seems unwilling and unable to offer a candid assessment of shortcomings in both instances. Frequent pointing to various communication problems does little to explain the problems with the response to Katrina, and repeatedly insisting that the world is freer does not make it so.

Most interesting, at least to me, was the final chapter on the economic crisis at the end of Bush's tenure. In contrast to the surge, where the unpopular president made a confident, "Damn the torpedoes!" decision, here the beleaguered president caves to advice contrary to his guiding principles. Perhaps history will show that there were simply no good decisions to be made at the time, only less catastrophic ones, which is Bush's assessment. In any event, this discussion offers a glimpse of the frustrating limitations that all presidents must feel when approaching large problems.

If at times too implicitly self-congratulatory, the book is certainly a reasonable presentation and justification of the Bush presidency. Far less over-the-top than Bill Clinton's memoir, the book is ultimately a satisfying read for political junkies, with a conversational tone that is largely successful (but occasionally downright hokey). show less

I had two reasons for wanting to read this book; firstly, to better understand the decisions that saw a Western alliance fighting in the Middle East again, and secondly, because George Bush is portrayed as some sort of hick fool and, I did not believe that the United States would be daft enough to elect a fool.

Having read Bill Clinton's autobiography immediately before this, there is no question that Bill wins, hands down, on the literary front but, what of the 43rd President?

It is well known that the book was, if not ghost written, then heavily influenced by its editor. I wonder if the idea of starting with a personal battle was the editor's idea. Whoever came up with George's battle with the daemon alcohol, it was a bad one. The show more erstwhile president is not comfortable with going the whole hog and sounds po-faced as he decries his weakness. One little clue as to whether this was a fight against alcoholism comes when he declines a drink from a world leader. George is shocked at the idea of touching hard liquor before noon!

Interestingly, my points of departure from Bush-thought did not occur at the points at which I had imagined that they would: Mr. Bush puts across a strong case for the use of 'waterboarding' and, if he is telling the truth when he says that it was only used upon three occasions, each sanctioned by the President, personally, it is hard to see what else could be done. Naturally, a known al Qaeda leader is not going to hand over information because of a polite request and, accepting thousands of deaths because we did 'the decent thing', seems stupid, not moralistic. Where Mr Bush is a little less forthcoming, is over the 'ordinary' prisoners in Guantanamo. Britain is in the process of handing out millions of pounds of compensation to mistreated individuals who are such a threat, that they are now back in this country leading ordinary lives. WHY?? Innocent Muslims were, unquestionably, not simply arrested but tortured. This IS unacceptable.

When I was younger, we did not find out what our leaders had thought for thirty years. Now, the final counting of ballot papers has hardly been concluded before the self-justifying book hits the reading desk. History will, as Bush himself so rightly says, need time to form a firm opinion. Mine is that the man is certainly no fool, nor the religious bigot that some portrayed. He did some good things around the world but, I retain my belief that the President, and a lot of America, panicked when deaths occurred upon their own soil. There is all the difference in the world between sending brave lads abroad to die, and having death on one's doorstep. show less