Last updated on December 28, 2015
That is the nature of the presidency. Perceptions are shaped by the clarity of hindsight. In the moment of decision, you don’t have that advantage.
You may, or may not, like George W. Bush very much, and Decision Points won’t change your mind. Due to his involvement in so many things that people tend to hate on – you know how it goes in politics, after all – Bush has become emblematic of what both Democrats and Republicans hate in some measure. Either he’s some dumb idiot that happened to stumble into the Presidency due to his family name (not true at all; the guy is clearly well-read), or he’s the “compassionate conservative” and warmonger that ruined the GOP’s chance of ever winning an election again (both of which aren’t true, again as the book says). In either sense, George W. Bush deals with a massive number of stereotypes from both sides of the aisle, mostly because he doesn’t really fit into a “box”. Decision Points, at the very least, will shatter your notions of the man a little bit.
The President of the United States during a defining moment in world history – 9/11 – Decision Points details the second Bush’s times in life where he made key decisions, both in and out of office. In Decision Points, you learn about Bush’s alcoholism, his attempts to work with foreign leaders (and his thoughts about international diplomacy in general), and the events that led to a complete revolution in national defense. The book remains engaging regardless of the fact that it jumps around a lot and the language is, shall we say, workmanlike. Bush writes in a largely terse and straightforward style; you get the impression that it’s George W. Bush speaking, rather than some guy paid to put big words in there.
Most of this comes down to W. having a concern with arranging the book topically, rather than chronologically. Whereas most memoirs seek to cast the author as the central character in a narrative, Bush is content to let a lot of little stories add up. So, we get George W. Bush making decisions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (he was surprisingly concerned that the intelligence was not right!) separated from his attempts to help AIDS victims in Africa (something I knew nothing about until I read this), neither of which come in chronological order. In one way, this helps the reader simply view the events as isolated instance in a vast, multifaceted presidential process. I can’t imagine being the leader of the free world is easy, as things constantly happen and you need to make a decision on ALL OF IT, and it echoes that scattershot nature better than similar books.
The thing is, presidents make decisions based on the information available to them. You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room to be a leader; rather, you need the willingness to make the best decisions at the time with the best information available to you. It’s often a misnomer that we need “smart” leaders, but anyone can look up something on the Internet these days; rather, making hard, fast, and informed decisions in the right way often proves to be the more important part of leadership. Bush does this a lot in the book, and while he (by his own admission, and certainly via the reader’s own biases) makes good and bad choices, they often don’t contain a primarily political motivation. Bush seems to make decisions out of convictions he has personally, and this makes Decision Points rather compelling as a result. Bush makes the decisions he believed were right, and he lets history be the judge.
It’s strange, in a way, to read a book about a politician who doesn’t actually advocate for one party or another. Usually in these sorts of books, people try to justify their decisions from a political angle or denigrate their opponents in some way. George W. Bush does not appear to harbor much ill will except towards America’s enemies (or his own!); rather, he repeatedly emphasizes how people outside the office twist and malign his good intentions. Presidents suffer the weight of close scrutiny and analysis from outside, even those who don’t hold all the facts, and this frustrates Bush to no end. If people could only know what exactly he believed and wanted to do, perhaps they’d understand why he did certain things. Lies frustrate Bush more than anything else, and especially judgments based on a lack of information.
Just remember that everyone criticized Bush’s decisions on the mortage-lending crisis! The Kanye West moment especially was, in his words, “the most disgusting moment of my presidency”, and even Kanye West took back what he said. Bush says he made plenty of mistakes there too! It’s all very honest. You get a good inside look of that, and the collapse of so many things that happened at the end of his presidency:
I reflected on everything we were facing. Over the past few weeks we had seen the failure of America’s two largest mortgage entities, the bankruptcy of a major investment bank, the sale of another, the nationalization of the world’s largest insurance company, and now the most drastic intervention in the free market since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time, Russia had invaded and occupied Georgia, Hurricane Ike had hit Texas, and America was fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was one ugly way to end the presidency.
He’s not proud of that, but who is? He made decisions in the moment, and they are his, good or bad. Hindsight is 20/20, after all; I imagine we would feel just as frustrated as Bush if we were in the same situation, constantly analyzed for what we did. It’s amazing a person can even deal with so many issues at once! The guy seems to have a good heart and a good head, even if errors of judgment crop up (again, that’s your personal judgment of him).
I found Decision Points a very fascinating introduction into George W. Bush’s head space, and I imagine you might like it as well. Take away your political biases, and you will find yourself empathizing a little more with presidents as they navigate through the tumultuous world of political and military discourse.
