Decision Points

Listened to this as an audio book on one of my drives to Little Rock while at RS Dallas. Was given to me by my mom in 2020 as part of the CCHS library collection. I already had a lot of respect for George W, but this book increased that even more. I was afraid this book would come from the perspective of him defending himself and trying too hard to explain certain decisions, but instead it came across as someone who acknowledged many areas where he had to make very difficult decisions and how his moral construct to include his childhood and entire background, his friends and family, and other key influencers like his faith, helped guide him in his decision making process. I think each president should be required to write a book like this at the end of their presidency and the people of America should pick the specific decision points we want the president to write about. Highly recommend this to others.

I got it from the library. Hahahaha.

I've only started reading this book and am enjoying this more than I thought I would. ( )

The is George W. Bush's memoir of his time in office. Here he explains what he considers to be some of the most important or dramatic events of his presidency. Bush approaches each situation in a matter of fact way, explaining the information that he had at the time, the steps he took to gain more information and how he came to his decisions whether they be right or wrong.

I found some of the stories heartbreaking such as Bush's experiences of 9/11, his visits to Ground Zero, and the decisions he had to make after that. I also found many parts enlightening; in particular, more of the story was revealed relating to the Federal government's slow response to Katrina that shows that there is more than one side to every story. Or how the "Mission Accomplished"

I appreciated Bush's candor in the book in overcoming his own personal demons such as alcohol. I also enjoyed reading about his obvious love and devotion to his wife and family.

Parts of the book got bogged down with details about the minute decisions in government that would probably bore the most avid political science major. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
( )

He comes across as a little superficial, but not as unsympathetic.

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I think it’s interesting that Bush says that right when he was starting out in politics, he was hurt by being painted as the liberal outsider in Texas because of his Ivy League background. (Not that he comes across as a big student, but you know how ads are.) There’s something very intimidating about being called an outsider by a conservative. Sometimes liberals do it, and sometimes liberals call you cruel/oppressive, and I could be wrong, but there’s this real primitive Darwinian intimidation to being called an outsider or a weirdo by a right-winger.

I realize that doesn’t make Republicans sound good, but it makes Bush’s story more comprehensible if you think that that’s what he was afraid of more— because you can’t out-threaten against that.

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I was surprised how many Democrats there are in Texas state politics, although they sound distinctly Texan. “Tough and earthy”, working-class people.

.... Bush won over a quarter of the black vote to become governor of Texas; it was obviously a weakness of his comparatively but some conservative (perhaps conservative religious) black people did support him. I think that marks him as a different style of candidate than one that virtually no black people support.

.... I mean, I wouldn’t vote for him because I don’t see him making things better, but I don’t think—with the possible exception or two— that he made things worse. Even the things he did poorly (foreign policy) were old patterns; America had been a military spender for a long time; it’s not like he cooked it all up from scratch.

.... At the time, everything seemed new. “Anti-terrorism”. But a lot of Americans don’t trust each other, and the police naturally have some role in preventing people from destroying each other and starting a civil war, which at least did not happen during 2001-2009. There’s more division now, perhaps, but the roots of it can be traced back to historical times, and a past that people still disagree about— it didn’t all start in the age of Twitter.

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The Bush sort of president is far less crude than your average right-wing internet hater.

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It might have benefited from being more chronological, as it's not really a book of theory, but narrative.

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He may have been right about stem cells.

I mean, I support abortion rights because I think some people lack sympathy for girls who get “in trouble”, as they used to say. The whole thing just seems like a way to connive them out of a career.

But to just use human tissues as a resource to be exploited does seem like an extreme position, on a slippery slope to “Brave New World”, and I know that Aldous Huxley was not a stupid man.... I don’t really support this idea of amoral science that’s going to compromise our values, make us feel like anything can be bought. [It’s a scientist’s idle desire for power.]

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He had a difficult job to do after the attack.

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He did what appeared right, but without realizing that for an American president to go to war requires far less courage than to disappoint those who thought it obviously right for foreigners to die.

.... I just don’t think that it was top-down, with the president or some advisor discovering some threat and then telling other people who went along. I think it was bottom-up, with common people who wanted blood, and the president or whoever scrambling to keep up.

It’s not just politics; that’s just the surface. It’s culture. And it’s not a culture of peace, relatively few cultures are, but certainly not such a young culture as this one.

Among the working class, opinion is still mostly male, mostly conservative and mostly fearful, fear covered by anger, of course, because that’s easier. The only even noticeable alternative is mostly a desire for comfort, for wealth, and even that tendency is a little ashamed of itself, and when the wars start everyone just tries to keep up with the cowboys.

It’s not a war of principles, if there is such a thing. You can’t explain it to a monk. It’s pride. “My honor has been slighted; only blood can make it right.” “Gee wiz cowboy, that sounds terrible. On TV, can’t I talk about freedom instead?”

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“We don’t want to put captured terrorists on trial like civilians because they’re not really civilians.”
“So you’ll follow the prisoner of war rules.”
“War? Rules? Well, it’s not *really* a war.”
“So what are they?”
“They’re people who would mistreat us if they had the chance.”
“But you wouldn’t mistreat them; you want justice.”
“Are there rules to justice? I don’t know. But I know I have the moral high ground.”
“Because you’re an American.”
“Land of the free.”
“And you’re fighting a war.”
“Right, but they’re not soldiers.”
“Nor civilians.”
“Exactly.”
“They’re the trolls who live in the swamp.”
“And we’re gonna drain the swamp, praise Jesus!”

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The decision to go into Afganistan was reasonable, despite the risks, although I do think that Bush underestimated his task there by relegating it quickly to secondary status compared to Iraq, because you just don’t transform a place like Afganistan overnight. Even a decade or two in Afghanistan is a short time, winning a battle or two is nothing.

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There was some fuzzy thinking in the Bush White House. I wouldn’t say that there was the fear and loathing of Trump, but there was fuzzy thinking. “Here’s this thing; it’s great; did we plan it No; will it Solve All Problems: Yes!”

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I don’t think that Bush intentionally lied or that every criticism of him is equally just. But I do think that he had some fuzzy, self-deceptive thinking. Basically, “Iraq would be better off if America invaded.... therefore, Iraq is a threat, and America Must invade!”

Invading Iraq wasn’t exactly a vengeance strike, either, despite the fact that Saddam wasn’t behind 9/11 but the US invaded in a decidedly post-9/11 atmosphere when almost everybody in Washington was afraid of terrorism and afraid of looking weak. America had to prove it wasn’t weak; it had to do something great and grand, and Iraq is an important player in the Middle East, while Afghanistan is mostly in the backwoods.

It is true that in light of these grand Middle Eastern narratives Bush granted citizenship to soldiers of Mexican and other foreign national origin, while for Trump, for whom race stands in the forefront, there’s no way that filthy blood can earn anything, not even through the army.

But not having a strategy to avoid civil war after deposing a sectarian regime and sectarian privilege is just lazy. Intellectually lazy. Got-through-school-because-I’m-rich-and-connected-not-because-I-had-to-study lazy. And if Bush wasn’t seeking blood, what he was seeking was flattery, commander’s flattery, war flattery. You go to war, you marshal the troops and they give you their war yell, you’re a hero; it goes to your head. It doesn’t work equally well everywhere, but it works in Texas, and in the army. Although it’s ultimately them who pick up the tab for the president’s fancy night out.

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It’s hard not to overreact.

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His education policy was probably okay.

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Most of the time a single administration doesn’t cause a landslide change in domestic policy.

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While I don’t really agree with this attitude, I think that the militarism of the Bush administration abroad made Democrats perceive everything he did as an attack, even when he was just throwing out ideas for something important like Social Security that seriously needs some long-term thought.

I also think America got way too excited over 9/11, in general. It wounded our pride as the invulnerable superpower, but we really let it divide us.

People are way too eager to have enemies.

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He was not a great president.

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Heathcliff in love.

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The reason why nobody saw the compassionate Bush is that he put up the front of being the tough guy. That’s what he let people see.

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I can’t admit that I made a mistake, and, in the name of all the people I’ve gotten killed, I forbid you to tell them.

.... Because if you’re not a cowboy, you’re not an American.

.... Golly if a few more people die, I’ll never have to admit I was wrong.

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I feel a little conflicted reading the book, because my goal is to be more tolerant of conservatives, but the book doesn’t make me more of a conservative—quite the opposite.

Bush at his worst is quite arrogant, I can’t avoid that. But everyone inevitably acts out their patterns, regardless of how visible they are internationally.

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I get irritated; it passes.

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The Israeli cause is sympathetic.

Freedom in the world in general is a big sell, although I suppose it’s better than anti-communism (or Trumpist nationalism).

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If he hadn’t invaded Iraq, he could have talked about freedom without it sounding like some kind of euphemism; that was the ultimate price he paid for the military adventure— the values price.

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On the one hand he was a bad president; on the other hand, he wasn’t radically different from other presidents.

And we don’t need a civil war right now— as fun as that would be, for the first few hours (of the movie).