| THE BOOK ON BUSH How George W. (Mis)leads America Eric Alterman Mark Green New York: Viking, 2004 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-670-03273-5 | 419p. | HC | $24.95 | |
| Page 29: | "The weakening of the Clean Air Act was clearly no 'misunderstanding'. That landmark 1972 legislation arose when citizens, having seen children sickened by drinking water, sludge in Lake Erie, and the Cuyahoga River ablaze, finally decided enough was enough." |
| The subsequent sentence (and the rest of the paragraph, not reproduced here) make it clear that this phrase should be "Clean Water Act". |
| Page 35: | "But defying his father's legacy, President Bush 43 himself has pulled far back on the actual enforcement of these laws, ignored global warming, and preferred drilling in Alaska to auto fuel efficiencies..." |
| Missing comma: S/B "But, defying his father's legacy,". |
| Page 39: | "While this gap has slightly shrunk recently due to the decline of hot IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and the stock market, the 2003 economic recovery and current federal policies mean it won't remain there for long." |
| Poor wording: S/B "shrunken". |
| Page 39: | "During the 1930s President Roosevelt finally rejected Hoover economics..." |
| This is the first mention of "Hoover economics"; the term is not explained. (But, it obviously sucks. <cough>) |
| Page 41: | "Recessions often occur when higher interest rates, established to cool off inflation, have the intended effect of reducing investment and spending, thereby slowing the economy." |
| Probably S/B "unintended effect". |
| Page 43: | "In a congressional hearing, OMB director Mitch Daniels himself admitted under questioning that 'averages can be misleading,' which did not stop his on-message boss from repeating and repeating the $,1083 figure." |
| Typo: S/B "$1,083". |
| Page 44: | "Nor did all children enjoy the childcare tax credit increase to $1,000. After enactment, it was discovered that nearly 8 million children in poor families had been omitted entirely. . . . After a media firestorm hit, the White House said it 'preferred' to [but was unable to] include these children. But all President Bush and congressional Republicans had to do to fund this increased child-care credit for all children was reduce the tax rate on the top tier down to 35.3 percent instead of to 35 percent—the slight difference being enough to finance the tax credit for 8 million children." |
| Poor wording: I suggest "move the bottom bracket for the top-tier tax rate reduction from 35 to 35.3 percent". |
| Page 46: | "From 'can't miss' to record shortfalls, what went so wrong?" |
| Poor wording: S/B "From a 'can't-miss' surplus". |
| Page 48: | "National Economic Council director Stephen Friedman was once a member of the bipartisan Concord Coalition pleading for balanced budgets." |
| Presumably, Friedman changed his tune after Bush 43 took office. But nowhere is this explicitly stated. |
| Page 54: | "Indeed, although Bush kept using the example of a family farm taxed into extinction with the frequency of Ronald Reagan's welfare queen, it, too, proved apocryphal." |
| Poor wording: S/B "Ronald Reagan's welfare-queen reference". |
| Page 57: | "Actually, the sentiment involved is not envy, but fairness, which requires no apologies." |
| Poor wording: S/B "a desire for fairness". |
| Page 62: | "His father was not only the forty-first president of the United States but also the scion of senators, Wall Street bankers, captains of industry, and wealthy New Englanders..." |
| Definition: "scion" means a descendant of a notable family. (e.g. Poul Anderson's character Dominick Flandry was "scion of the House of Hermes".) A better word would be "peer". |
| Page 67: | "According to Curtis Hebert, Jr., then the chairman of the FERC, [Ken] Lay offered him Enron's continued support if '[Hebert] changed his views on electricity deregulation.' Hebert refused the offer, told the press of the incident, then resigned his post by the end of the summer." |
| This is one of those incomplete accounts. Why did Hebert resign? Presumably he was forced out by Bush (or Cheney), on Lay's request; but this is never stated. |
| Page 68: | "The indiscretions of former army secretary Thomas White..." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Army". |
| Page 96: | "This Republican appreciated a truth about government uttered decades earlier by a congressman during the debate over the 1917 Espionage Act..." |
| Cite: which congressman? which party? |
| Page 109: | "Representative Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who tracks the drug and health care industries as closely as any member of Congress, says the administration is 'carrying out a twenty-year intellectual jihad against Medicare...' " |
| Incomplete account: How can a four- or eight-year administration carry out a "twenty-year jihad"? |
| Page 115: | "Arthur Levin ... observes that what those who complain of 'frivolous' lawsuits seem to be saying is that any lawsuit in which there exists doubt about whether the defendant was wrong is 'frivolous'." |
| I admit I'm having trouble parsing this. In the context of Bush administration warnings about excessive numbers of 'frivolous' lawsuits, it seems that "right" would fit better. In such suits, the defendant is likely to be big business; therefore, anyone who protests suits where there's doubt of the defendant's wrongness is advocating the converse: suits where it's certain they're wrong. And that would be contradictory. On the other hand, change defendant to plaintiff and I'd say it works as written. |
| Page 120: | "The flat amount provided by the block grant program ... would also be a hugh hindrance..." |
| Typo: S/B "huge hindrance". |
| Page 122: | "On March 1, 2003, the 171 nations composing the World Health Organization (WHO) approved a historic Framework Convention on Tobacco Control." |
| Typo: S/B "191 nations", as shown on the next page and later in the book. (Also, I have the impression that this paragraph and the next "aren't talking to one another", because the latter seems to start afresh telling us about the Framework Convention, and tells a different story. Did the U.S. finally capitulate, after holding out for months, or did it manage to water down the treaty the way the Philip Morris lobbyists requested?) |
| Page 144: | "And in data that point to the philosophical alignment behind high-stakes tests, Amrein also discovered falling scores were concentrated in the South and Southwest, in areas with higher poverty rates, higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics, and with lower per-pupil funding." |
| This statement concerns me. If this book were a trial, and I the defense counsel, I might say, "Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence." What is this "philosophical alignment", and where in the book is it documented? |
| Page 173: | "The NRA felt that Bush's 2000 candidacy was so important that they initiated a media (and fund-raising) campaign effort two to three times bigger than any it had ever undertaken." |
| Error of number: S/B either "they" or "it" both places. |
| Page 183: | "Unionized federal employees are on the front lines of the war against terrorism and work in the Department of Defense, Air National Guard, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and Customs Service, as were the municipal employees of New York City's fire and police departments on September 11, 2001." |
| This sentence has its clauses out of order: S/B "Unionized federal employees are on the front lines of the war against terrorism, as were the municipal employees of New York City's fire and police departments on September 11, 2001, and work in the Department of Defense, Air National Guard, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and Customs Service." |
| Page 186: | "...the U.S. Navy boasts nine supercarrier battle groups ringed by cruisers and guarded by nuclear submarines, with a tenth under construction. The world's closest competitor has zero." |
| Poor wording: S/B "has none". |
| Page 195: | "What Rice had dismissively termed the 'reflexive appeal ... to notions of international law and norms' proved to be congruent with the administration's own demonstrated contempt for the rule of law domestically, as it applied to the conduct of foreign affairs." |
| Here's another sentence that reads as self-contradictory or confusing. |
| Page 198: | "It was almost as if the hard-liners in the Pentagon and elsewhere were seeking to promote confrontations to pick fights here, there, and everywhere..." |
| Missing comma: S/B "promote confrontations, to pick fights". |
| Page 209: | "Americans are vulnerable in thousands of ways to deadly attacks that cannot be prevented by the enormously expensive and politically provocative construction of a missile delivery system." |
| Typo: S/B "missile defense system". |
| Page 217: | "The Bush administration suspended its cooperation with the FATF in May 2001, when Secretary O'Neill complained that it contradicted the administration's tax and economic priorities."" |
| Typo: The book has an extra, un-paired closing quotation mark after "priorities". |
| Page 219: | "Nor did it travel across the Potomac to the CIA."" |
| Typo: Another orphan close-quote mark, after "CIA". |
| Page 224: | "One of the least attractive impulses of the Bush team, given the enormous number of mistakes they were later demonstrated to have made, was to attempt to blame the nation's vulnerability to attack on its predecessors." |
| Error of number: S/B "their predecessors". (In this case, the sentence as written could be taken as grammatical; but if it were so taken, it would be nonsensical.) |
| Page 226: | "This is all the more curious when one considers the fact that September 11 is among the most exhaustively chronicled days in human history and Bush, among the most heavily covered individuals." |
| Misplaced comma: S/B "history, and Bush among". |
| Page 231: | "No doubt that those who claim Bush grew in office following the attacks could make their case." |
| This is not a sentence. To make it one, start it with the word "There's" or, alternatively, remove the word "that". |
| Page 242: | "In early October, the first of at least five envelopes containing deadly anthrax was opened at news organizations in New York and Miami." |
| This wording is clumsy. Obviously, the first envelope was opened in just one location. |
| Page 266: | "The Niger story had originated a year earlier; when someone in Cheney's office received a packet of documents from a British source—via Italy—allegedly proving the Iraq-Niger uranium deal." |
| Typo: change semicolon to comma. |
| >Page 276: | "He... instructed officials on his staff to 'get hold of Laurie Mylroie's book [Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America], which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and see if you can prove it.' " |
| Misplaced bracket: S/B "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America, which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center]". |
| Page 292: | "...indicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi." |
| Confusing or contradictory: earlier in the book, Chalabi is described as a convicted embezzler. |
| Page 299: | "In Jordan democracy advocates were barred from running for the (until recently, dissolved) legislature." |
| Poor wording: Obviously, the legislature of Jordan was not dissolved while the democracy advocates were seeking to campaign for seats in it (but being barred from doing so). I would strike the parenthetical phrase entirely; it adds nothing to that sentence. If it's relevant that Jordan's king dissolved its legislature (and it certainly is), the authors should tell us why it was dissolved, and when. |
| Page 306: | "Not only was Bush taxing the military's capabilities near to its likely breaking point..." |
| Error of number; he's taxing the capabilities: S/B "their likely breaking point". |
| Page 317: | "The Chinese remain by far the North Koreans' most important trading partner, supplying for instance 70 percent of its crude oil needs and much of its foodstuffs." |
| Error of number: Change "the North Koreans'" to "North Korea's". |
| Page 317: | "But hopes of concluding the deal—which would have required a presidential trip to Pongyang—collapsed..." |
| Spelling: S/B "Pyongyang". |
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