Just when you get your mind all made up about President George W. Bush, along comes Karl Rove trying to unsettle things.
The president is far from being the uncultured book-burner often portrayed by his critics, his former deputy chief of staff wrote in The Wall Street Journal Friday.
In fact, Bush is a voracious reader and lover of books, Rove insisted.
The president has gone through 40 tomes so far this year. That follows 51 in 2007 and 95 in 2006. Plus the Bible from cover to cover each year.
History, fiction, biography. You name it, he’s read it.
“Team of Rivals,” the book about Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet that is shaping President-elect Barack Obama’s thinking about his own administration?
Bush has been there, done that. Read it back in ‘06. Along with a Mao biography, Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower,” eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald and “The Stranger” by Albert Camus.
He went through “Khrushchev’s Cold War,” “Rogue Regime” and “The Shia Revival” in ‘07. That plus his daughter Jenna’s book “Ana’s Story.” And many others.
This year there’s been U.S. Grant’s “Personal Memoirs,” Hugh Thomas’ “Spanish Civil War” and James McPherson’s “Tried by war: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.”
“There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one,” Rove wrote.
“Like so many caricatures of the past eight years, this one is not only wrong, but also the opposite of the truth and evidence that bitterness can devour a small-minded critic,” he said.
If the reading part wasn’t shock enough for Bush naysayers, Rove has more.
“Mr. Bush loves books, learns from them and is intellectually engaged by them,” he wrote.
How, you may ask, would Rove know so much about Bush’s reading habits?
It seems they have been engaged in friendly competition to see who could read the greatest number of books each year.
And who won?
Not the president. Rove mopped the floor with him every year. He read 110 in 2006, 76 in 2007 and has 64 to his credit so far in 2008.
Bush’s excuse? Too busy with his day job.
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, prepare to board Air Force One en route to Texas Dec. 26); Reuters/Fred Prouser (Rove takes part in a panel discussion on Fox TV July 14)
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Not one thing you said has anything to do with what fascism really is.
As I was saying, and as a case in point, those on the left who say Bush is a fascist do not understand fascism. Again, read about Wilson, FDR and Johnson and you will see three administrations who used big government in an attempt to control the lives of the people they governed. For instance, Wilson used a civlian security force “goon squads” who arrested people who spoke out against government policies and WWI. The “Brain Trust” in the FDR administration looked at Stalin and communism as a model that should be used in this country. Look it up.
Again, fascism comes out during progressive democratic administrations, not conservative.
- Posted by TCGeorge Bush can read? I thought he was only good for being stupid looking…
- Posted by Bill WithersWhat’s so courageous about making war against a weak country unable to defend itself against “the last remaining superpower” as its leaders billed it at the time?
- Posted by jimboFascism: any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, (c) 1956. So how exactly was Clinton like a fascist, and how wasn’t Bush like a fascist with his disdain for the 4th Amendment, excitement for beginning a war on false pretenses over resolving the dispute diplomatically, and love of centralized media concentration and dissemination like Fox and Clear Channel? I could also bring up the love of guns that so many conservatives seem to have and the fact that the term Fascist derives from an Italian word coined to refer to Mussolini’s party that was part of the Axis of WW II, but that would be inconsiderate of the weak-minded, a.k.a. “politically correct”, so I’ll let that slide for now.
- Posted by jimbo