How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, 2006 M08 30 - 420 pages

In a series of columns and essays that renowned journalist and former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal wrote in the three years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unifying theme began to emerge: that Bush, billed by himself and by many others as a conservative, is in fact a radical--more radical than any president in American history. In How Bush Rules, Blumenthal provides a trenchant and vivid account of the progression of Bush's radical style--from his reliance on one-party rule and his unwillingness to allow internal debate to his elevation of the power of the vice president.

Taking readers through pivotal events such as the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the rise of the foreign-policy neoconservatives, Abu Ghraib, the war on science, the Jack Abramoff scandal, and the catastrophic mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, the book tracks a consistent policy that calls for the president to have complete authority over independent federal agencies and to remain unbound by congressional oversight or even the law.

In an incisive and powerful introduction, Blumenthal argues that these radical actions are not haphazard, but deliberately intended to fundamentally change the presidency and the government. He shows not only the historical precedents for radical governing, but also how Bush has taken his methods to unique extremes. With its penetrating account of a critical new era in American leadership, How Bush Rules is a devastating appraisal of the Bush presidency.

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

The Radical President
1
HUBRIS Mission Accomplished From the Victory in Iraq to the Defeat of John Kerry
25
The Intelligence Wars
27
Lessons in Leadership
31
How George Transformed Tonys World
34
The Good Soldier
36
An Unlikely Dissident
39
The Hunt for WMD
41
The Good Soldiers Revenge
181
The Incredible Shrinking President
184
Damage
189
Guantánamo
192
The Truth about Torture
199
Deep Throats Lessons
204
A Broken Body
207
Blinded by the Light at the End of the Tunnel
211

311 Meets 911
44
The Counterterrorism Czar Comes In from the Cold
46
The White House Has the Last Laugh
48
The Road Map to Nowhere
50
The President Goes Blank
52
The Silence of Colin Powell
54
Pulp Fictions
57
The Secrets of Abu Ghraib
60
The American Military Coup of 2012
63
The Holy Warrior
66
Riding the Trojan Horse
68
The Specter of Vietnam
71
The Reagan Legacy
74
Reagans Funeral and Clintons Portrait
76
Cheneys Mask Slips
79
The Senates Da Vinci Code
82
Code Orange
85
The Oath of True Believers
87
The Rule of Chaos
89
The Republican National Convention Day One
92
The Republican National Convention Day Two
95
The Republican National Convention Day Three
98
The Republican National Convention Day Four
100
Staring at Defeat
103
Falls the Shadow
106
The Right God
108
The Lowest Grade of Ignorance
110
Colin Powells Final Days
112
Dedication Day
115
NEMESIS I Catastrophic Success From the Death of Terry Schiavo to the Vigil of Cindy Sheehan
117
Mission Misconceived
119
All Hail Caligulas Horse
122
Medals of Failure
124
Purging Poppy
127
Metrics
129
Regime Change
132
A Broken Force
134
The March of Folly
137
Spending Political Capital
140
A Hireling a Fraud and a Prostitute
143
The Plot against the New Deal
145
Orwells Clock
150
The Brilliant Career of Jack Abramoff
153
A Confederacy of Shamans
159
The Passion of the Culture War
162
Politics under Red Robes
166
The Keys of the Kingdom
169
Serial Abuser
175
The Last Throes
214
The Supreme Chance of a Lifetime
220
Roves War
223
Tunnel Vision
231
The Meaning of Words
234
Above the Rule of Law
238
The Informer
241
Unhappy Holiday
249
Question Time
251
NEMESIS II Heck of a Job From the Landfall of Hurricane Katrina to the Revolt of the Generals
257
Hurricane Katrina
259
What Didnt Go Right?
262
Heck of a Job
268
From Gulf to Shining Gulf
270
Karen Hughes Takes a Tour
275
TwentyFirstCentury Republicanism
278
Judy dArc
286
The Conservative Revolt
289
The Indictment of Scooter Libby
292
Cheneys Trial
295
Stab in the Back
298
The Long March of Dick Cheney
300
Bob Woodwards Coverup
307
Condis Tortuous Trail
310
The Law is King
316
Annus Horribilis
322
Bushs War on Professionals
325
Meek Mild and Menacing
331
The Republican System
334
The Proconsuls Apologia
343
Bushs Brezhnev Period
345
The Client
349
The Rules of the Game
351
Cheneys Coup
355
A Lincoln Portrait
358
Once More unto the Breach
362
Sex Police Chief Arrested
364
Blood and Sand
367
The Love Song of Francis Fukuyama
372
Apocalypse Now
375
Card Shuffle
378
I DeLay
382
Tethered Goats
385
The President of Truth
388
The Decider
395
The Passion of George W Bush
399
Index
405
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2006)

Sidney Blumenthal, former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, is a regular columnist for the Guardian of London and for Salon, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and other major publications. His books include, most recently, The Clinton Wars (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). He is currently a Senior Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. In 1999, he gave the Willard and Margaret Thorp Lecture in American Studies at Princeton University, speaking on American presidential history.

Bibliographic information