Product Description

The first true character study of a lost president and his disastrous legacy

In this fascinating, timely book, Glenn Greenwald examines the Bush presidency and its long-term effect on the nation, charting the rise and steep fall of the current administration, dissecting the rhetoric, and revealing the faulty ideals upon which George W. Bush built his policies. Enlightening and eye-opening, this is a powerful look at the man whose incapability and cowboy logic have left America at risk.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49351 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-08
• Released on: 2008-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Booklist
Bush's rise and fall are most evident in the 2002 election, which brought him control of both houses of Congress, and the 2006 election, which reversed that triumph. The president's chosen Manichean worldview and his rigid refusal to consider other viewpoints have resulted in a disastrous administration and damage the nation will be living with for generations, according to Greenwald (How Would a Patriot Act? 2006). Greenwald begins by documenting Bush's political collapse and then explores the core beliefs that have driven Bush's decision making, as well as the broader philosophical and political dangers of such strong convictions. He details how the president's absolutist moralistic worldview, the simple identification of good and evil, overshadowed decisions that required more nuanced views in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Advisors with other points of view were ignored as Bush's strong ends-justify-the-means approach resulted in such decidedly un-American practices as indefinite detentions, use of torture, and preemptive war. This is a compelling examination of how moral beliefs can drive political decisions, with disastrous consequences. Bush, Vanessa

Review
“This is the best book about the worst president. Glenn Greenwald is to this administration as they've been to the country: devastating. This is more than a book: It's an act of patriotism."
—Alan Colmes, Hannity & Colmes, Fox News

“Glenn Greenwald’s excoriating analysis of the Bush presidency goes much deeper than mere polemics. His layered interpretation of the Manichean mentality that defines the Bush White House describes a disastrously inappropriate mindset for a modern power in a time of global turmoil. This early portrait of the Bush presidency and the right wingers who cheered it on will be read and appreciated for many years to come.”
—Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative

“In the bare-knuckle cacophony of the blogosphere Glenn Greenwald has been a beacon of clarity chronicling President Bush’s unfolding war on the rule of law.  No one is better placed to explain how the president’s embrace of extremism in the battle against extremism has put the country’s most sacred ideals, even the country itself, under the gravest threat.”
—Josh Marshall, editor of Talking Points Memo

“Glenn Greenwald has emerged as one of the nation’s most incisive and articulate exponents of the critique of the Bush Administration. In admirably clear prose and with the ferocity of a former litigator, he is day in and day out building a powerful case against an undeniably consequential and radical presidency.”
—Dan Froomkin, WashingtonPost.com White House Watch columnist

“A compelling examination of how moral beliefs can drive political decisions, with disastrous consequences.”
—Booklist

“In A Tragic Legacy, [Greenwald] wrestles with much more significant and amorphous material as he attempts to trace the dangerous, stark philosophy underlying the most pern...

Review
“This is the best book about the worst president. Glenn Greenwald is to this administration as they've been to the country: devastating. This is more than a book: It's an act of patriotism."
—Alan Colmes, Hannity & Colmes, Fox News

“Glenn Greenwald’s excoriating analysis of the Bush presidency goes much deeper than mere polemics. His layered interpretation of the Manichean mentality that defines the Bush White House describes a disastrously inappropriate mindset for a modern power in a time of global turmoil. This early portrait of the Bush presidency and the right wingers who cheered it on will be read and appreciated for many years to come.”
—Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative

“In the bare-knuckle cacophony of the blogosphere Glenn Greenwald has been a beacon of clarity chronicling President Bush’s unfolding war on the rule of law.  No one is better placed to explain how the president’s embrace of extremism in the battle against extremism has put the country’s most sacred ideals, even the country itself, under the gravest threat.”
—Josh Marshall, editor of Talking Points Memo

“Glenn Greenwald has emerged as one of the nation’s most incisive and articulate exponents of the critique of the Bush Administration. In admirably clear prose and with the ferocity of a former litigator, he is day in and day out building a powerful case against an undeniably consequential and radical presidency.”
—Dan Froomkin, WashingtonPost.com White House Watch columnist

“A compelling examination of how moral beliefs can drive political decisions, with disastrous consequences.”
—Booklist

“In A Tragic Legacy, [Greenwald] wrestles with much more significant and amorphous material as he attempts to trace the dangerous, stark philosophy underlying the most pernicious policies of the current administration and to tease out their implications for the character of this nation. To say that he succeeds is a massive understatement. From every aspect—writing, clarity of thought and most importantly, structure of the book (often neglected in similar works)—he pounds his argument home about the utter bankruptcy of thought behind the president’s words and actions: This is extremism. This is immoral. This is, ultimately, un-American at its core.”
—Daily Kos

"[Greenwald] has constructed an impressive argument about the basic template of the Bush Administration, and how it has tried to permanently alter America and our relationship to the world. Anyone who wants to successfully challenge and change that legacy owes it to themselves to read this book as an indispensable guide to how to proceed."
—Paul Rosenberg, AltWeeklies.com

"Greenwald has crafted for us and the world a moving, cathartic, and insightful book that hopefully will give the non-blogging public a new level of comprehension as to the dangers we face under an unbridled chief executive whose view of the world is not much more nuanced nor a great deal less fanatical than that of, say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also just so happens to believe that he’s on a personal 'Mission from God'. Ignore this book at your peril."
—FireDogLake.com


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Superb Detail
An excellent book with numerous examples of how the Bush regime faltered throughout. The references are credible and from well known sources.

Don't miss this read. You'll learn more about the Bush-43 mentality and the ignorance that has ruined the U.S.

This should bring you a step closer to understanding some of the deceit in DC and how the neocon proponents indirectly used executive authority to wage war. The manipulation of religion by a members of a party that consider themselves to be religious persons is interesting and sad.

Tells it like it is.....
We have just experienced 8 years of the worst president in American history.

This book offers some insight as to how and why it happened.

RK

An interesting, if repetitive, polemic
Mr. Greenwald has introduced to the political lexicon a new word - "Manichean". I notice that even the main line press have taken it up. As far as I know, this is actually not correct usage; the Manichean heresy believed that the forces of Light and Dark, Good and Evil were in balance in the universe and the world, as opposed to the Christian belief that God was all-powerful and that his triumph is assured at a time and place of his choosing. Its most famous manifestation was found in the Cathars of the Languedoc in mediaeval southern France, annihilated in a Crusade of unparalleled ferocity. I'm sure that, as a Christian believer, Mr. Bush is not really Manichean.

What Mr.Greenwald really means is that Mr. Bush sees things in stark black and white, with himself as white. There are no subtle shades of grey. If you're not with him, you're against him. This is the view of the fanatic, be s/he religious or political. These are terrifying creatures, completely blind to reason and logic, determined only to force their view on others. In this, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are well-matched.

However, it is frankly terrifying that such a person can be President of the USA, the world's only superpower and possessor of its mightiest arsenal. It's like letting children with a box of matches loose in a fireworks factory. But then, the USA is a religious country, the official religion being the USA itself, a belief in its essential goodness and rightness and its destiny to spread this to other less enlightened places, whether they like it or not. Mr. Bush, a not very bright scion of East Coast privilege who got religion, has, in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity, used this official religion to take the USA down a perilous road to aggressive war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and to threaten to go to war with another. Saddam Hussein was indeed a most unpleasant individual, but then so are many of the US's current allies. And by removing Saddam, the Arab world's counterweight to non-Arab, nearly 100% Shi'ite Iran, Bush strengthened Iran enormously and enriched it at the same time with high oil prices. Not bad going.

Mr. Greenwald makes his case in vast, indeed overwhelming, detail and he lays it on thick and fast. He makes it again and again - and again and again and again. Sometimes one feels like crying, "Enough! No more!" as example succeeds example, each more outrageous than the last. While this is all very well for committed Bush bashers, some of us would prefer a more measured discourse, such as, where does the US go from here? But of course Mr. Greenwald appears to be at heart a polemicist, a Democratic version of the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the Republican side, but being somewhat of an improvement over their 100% fact-free vituperative ravings.

Can facts, measured debate and mature reasoning win in the USA against soundbites and rabble-rousing? I'd like to think so. As things currently stand, the USA represents the greatest danger to world peace on the planet. We can only hope that the US electorate comes to its senses in November and votes out the catastrophe called the Republican Party, and that the Party spends a long time in the wilderness recovering from its self-inflicted wounds and learning how to be sensible again. The tragedy of the Bush years is that the Republican Party has turned from a responsible party to a collection of assorted loonies. I wish it a speedy recovery, so that it can again become the party of that greatest of US Presidents, Abraham Lincoln.