A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

✍ Scribed by Greenwald, Glenn

• Book ID: 106901796
• Publisher: Random House, Inc.
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 215 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780307354280

✦ Synopsis

From

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 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.