Showing posts with label failed presidency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failed presidency. Show all posts

Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove Review

Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
Are you looking to buy Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove ReviewAt times journalist Paul Alexander's book MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW: THE RISE AND FALL OF KARL ROVE reminds me of psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank's BUSH ON THE COUCH, a study of the emotional troubles that make George W. Bush what he is. As MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW recounts, Rove, the infamous political adviser of Bush, learned the man he thought was his biological father was a stepfather when the stepdad, announcing he was homosexual, dumped the family. Rove's mother then committed suicide.
Karl Rove lost two fathers to rejection and a mother to suicide. The homosexual father went on to pose in body piercing magazines. MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW does not suggest what psychological effects all that had on Rove, who toiled in the direct mail business while repeatedly failing to make a name for himself as a political adviser. But with all the rejection he experienced in his family and career, it's as if Karl Rove attempted to deny reality, trying to make winners out of fellow losers such as George W. Bush, as no one with any credibility wanted him around. Rove often proved them right, falling on his face more than he would admit. According to this book:
- the late political hatchet man Lee Atwater, whom Rove claimed to be his mentor, hated him.
- Rove did not have the close relationship with George W. Bush he purports started when they met in the mid-1970s. They spent little time together until Bush hired Rove for his 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign.
- George Iran-Contra Bush fired Rove from this 1988 presidential campaign for spreading lies about a political opponent.
- Rove was one of the gang that couldn't shoot straight at the Florida elementary school September 11, 2001, as George W. Bush, Andy Card and he froze up after learning the second plane hit the World Trade Center, confirming America was in crisis. No political adviser worth his salt allows a client - a U.S. president, no less - to look as stupid as Bush did those long six-plus minutes after Card whispered the news, yet Rove could not think on his feet.
Karl Rove, the man they deem "Bush's Brain," is in reality Bush's lame brain.
In 2000 George W. Bush seized the White House not on account of Rove's savvy but because of Ronald Reagan's and George Iran-Contra Bush's partisan Supreme Court appointments. Without the five "justices" who stopped the 2000 Florida recount that would have awarded the Sunshine State and the presidency to Al Gore, Karl Rove would have gone back to licking postage stamps for a living, one more failed campaign under his belt.
Naming every egregious Rove/Bush move would be like detailing each home run Hank Aaron hit; there were just too many to elaborate on all. Some that MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW neglects include:
- regarding Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush knew the storm was to devastate New Orleans, as a meeting videotape proves. But after the warning Bush did nothing and, as MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW reminds us, the Bush White House's inept response was too little too late as flooding killed hundreds and stranded thousands.
- Rove accidentally sent voter caging lists to the wrong e-mail address, inadvertently breaking the story for the journalist Greg Palast, whom the e-mail recipient contacted after getting Rove's unintended missive.
- While MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW says the George W. Bush administration decided to attack Iraq after 9/11, it's well-documented they actually started planning the invasion in January 2001 while the White House staff was still washing egg and tomato from Bush's inaugural limousine.
Karl Rove is not a comic book villain, one who commits crimes alone. While MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW names accomplices as it recounts the offenses Rove orchestrated, the corporate media deserve much blame for not pressing Rove and George W. Bush harder on their scandals. The best example of that does not even involve Bush. Working for a Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1986, a few days before a televised debate Rove calls a press conference to claim he found a listening device in the candidate's campaign headquarters, implying the Democratic opponent was eavesdropping. The reporters promptly laugh in Rove's face, dismissing the stunt for what it was but several nonetheless write about the accusation. The corporate media act as nothing more than "He said, she said" stenographers instead of doing their job by investigating the matter. Rove's candidate wins the election. Too often journalists, like Karl Rove, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
It all reminds me of Michael Moore's 2003 Academy Awards speech, when he said, "We live in fictitious times." Read MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW.Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove Overview

Want to learn more information about Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
Read More...

The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future Review

The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future
Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)
Are you looking to buy The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future ReviewProbably the more appropriate photos for the dust jacket would have been those that appear facing page 215: George H.W. Bush breaking down into sobs while discussing his son. Ostensibly meaning son Jeb, although no one watching could help believe his anguish was with son Dubya.
How did George W. turn out so differently from his father? How did he go from drunken, failure-prone frat boy to a "born again" self-styled "compassionate conservative" and twice-elected President of the United States? Author Unger lays out his case, starting with a brief history of American-style evangelicism, especially the "Rapture"-based theology and fundamentalism, and follows with a chapter on the origins and philosophy of the neoconservative movement. The two seemingly disparate groups provided the ideological underpinings of the George W. Bush administration, as well as the reliance on purity of faith over rational and objective analysis.
Much of the background material has been long available, but there are some curious new revelations. In spite of what Bush (or his ghost-writer) wrote in "A Charge to Keep", Bush was "born again" not under the guidance of Billy Graham, but by a far sketchier character named Arthur Blessitt. (Blessitt once ran a "Jesus coffeehouse" on the Sunset Strip, until he was evicted in 1969.) When Bush senior came in behind Pat Robertson in the 1988 Iowa caucuses, he had Dubya act as his liason to the growing grass-roots evangelical vote. In that role, he took delight in denying "access" to his father and got his first taste of power. Although his parents had long counted on brother Jeb to be the political heir, Dubya had other plans.
This isn't a biography, and certainly isn't a military history - only 55 pages from the start of the war in Iraq to the last page. It IS very well researched, with 49 pages of footnotes and a 9-page bibliography. I can't say how much overlap there is with Draper's book "Dead Certain", the book it is most likely to be compared with. Unger does go into detail on the Bush-Cheney relationship that Draper seems to have skimmed past. (Unger includes "Dead Certain" in the footnotes and bibliography.)
With so many books out on the Bush presidency and the Iraq war, what does this contribute? Most of all, it traces the alliances of the forces behind the scenes, and provides new insight into the motivations of the key players. It really is fairly objective in its assessments, but I was surprised (and disappointed) in the petty visciousness displayed by both Bush and Cheney towards subordinates and critics in example after example. (One of the better lines comes from Bob Strauss, who said, "Bush senior finds it impossible to strut, and Bush junior finds it impossible not to.") It also makes it easier to understand how the events so well documented in "Fiasco" and "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" came about. It is very disconcerting to see that George W. was holding secret, "no press allowed" meetings with assorted Christian Zionist/ evangelical groups before and during his 2000 campaign. The catch-phrase "compassionate conservatism" takes on an entirely different meaning when it is shown to be part of the agenda to smash down the church-state barrier. There's some pretty interesting background on a particularly skeezy schlub (Michael Ledeen) whose fingerprints seem to be all over the infamous Italian "Niger yellowcake" forgery. (This character also asserts that "my mother was the model for (Disney's) Snow White".) Unger makes it abundantly clear why the current Republican "base" will never, ever allow Israel to establish anything like a Palestinian state, at least not on land on the West Bank. (That would effectively block their end-time Rapture fantasies.)
I'd recommend the book to those who haven't followed the rise of the evangelical (and most especially the Christian Zionist and "Dominionist") voting bloc, the move of the neoconservatives (or "the crazies", as Bush senior referred to them) from the margins to hands on the levers of power, or the direction they may take next. This administration has larded every conceivable federal agency with these kinds of people, and it will take many years to repair their damage.
The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future Overview

Want to learn more information about The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now
Read More...