Review of "Decision Points": George W. Bush and the Politics of Decision

Bush in his own words: he explains himself without apology, for better and for worse.George W. Bush is not so simple as my liberal friends claim.

There is no doubt in my mind that he'll go down as one of America's political mediocrities, a man of small and narrow vision and few ideas but enormous political charisma.

There is more to say about him, though, and what's remarkable about his memoir Decision Points is that he doesn't seem all that anxious to say it.

That is, in the book's 512 pages he is never inclined to apologize for his decisions.  Liberals of the sort for whom Bush is the enemy of the Republic should save their money, but those interested in the humanity behind Conservatism, and in the values that make it what it is, had better attend to it closely.

Bush's story is an explanation of himself, not an apology for what he has done or the course he sought to steer the United States. 

And this is for better and for worse.

It's the oddest presidential memoir I've ever read, folksy, casual, and unabashed.  It describes decisions based on principles as though those decisions were ciphers in an algebraic equation.  "The principle is X, and so the decision is Y."  Decide and move on.

I suppose there are people who take comfort in that kind of leadership.  I'm not one.

As much as my own liberalism would like to demand that Bush own up to the travesty of the invasion of Iraq, he would prefer to explain the principles that decreed (I'm tempted to write "fated") that he would do what he did.  It would be a very foolish and doctrinaire liberal who could not hear in his description of his reasoning that Bush made his decisions from a root that is deeper than many of us would think; but it would be a very silly person who didn't stare dumbfounded at the page wondering, "Was that really the basis of your decision?"

But it's a story really of small virtues writ large: family and nation over humanity, economic opportunity over sound communitarian policy, instinct over reasoning, and narrow perspectives that hold nuggets of important truth.  

Bush's supporters would say that such virtues are what separate us from both the apes and the Nazis, and it would be dishonest to suggest that they are wrong.  Those virtues, those small truths, are not enough, and never could be, in the vast agonized politics of the United States.  

Failing to understand them, and Bush, would be a great mistake.

But they are not nearly big enough.

Briefly, the thing that ties together the Bush decisions (both personal and public) is an almost childlike belief in one or two good ideas.  Depressed by China in the 1970's, Bush rightly concluded that economic and personal freedom was a great boon to the growth of the human spirit; and much in the same spirit that he renounced alcohol as being bad for his personal life, he led the nation in fiscal tee-totaling for eight years.

Bush's evangelical faith also plays a significant role in the book, but there are some surprises, most notably how focused he is on individuals.   Bush found in a conversation with Billy Graham the seeds of a dim faith that would grow with time; and without much theological depth threw himself into his new faith.  But, as he himself tells it, it was not unreflective or divorced from his attraction to and respect for persons.  Indeed, one of the most intriguing parts of the book is the description of Dick Cheney's selection as running mate in the 2000 elections.  Bush reports that Cheney bluntly tells him about his daughter's homosexuality as though challenging Bush to evaluate its importance.  Bush writes that he "couldn't care less about" Mary Cheney's sexual orientation, a claim made believable by the book's constant attention to people as people.

It's a truism that you can count on liberals to give people rights and on conservatives to actually value them as people, and while Bush is not above painting himself in those colors of compassionate conservatism a little too self-consciously, it's also clear that it's people that really do matter to him.  He had decided on Cheney.  And while it would be hateful and false to suggest that he is not genuine in his acceptance of Mary Cheney's orientation, one gets the feeling, as Bush catalogues Karl Rove's political arguments why Cheney was not the best choice for a running mate, that there would be no reason at all short of Cheney's Chinese citizenship that might have made Bush change his mind.

The most morally disturbing part of the book, which will make many readers livid, is the frank and unapologetic account of his authorization of torture against Islamic militants.   Bush writes, "History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it."

And as much as one might cavil at torture, Bush's explanation of himself undeniably puts one in the decision-maker's chair:  What would you do? the book seems to ask.    In the shadow of September 11, what risks do you take with innocent American lives?  If waterboarding thwarts one Al-Qaeda plot, it's the right thing to do... Right?

The question has easy answers only for the intellectually and morally lazy.  

For Bush, what matters is that you make the decision based on a principle.  His principle is that American security and lives matter ultimately, even more than American character, and his politics become the politics of decision. He makes the case that the seriousness of the danger, and his charge to protect American lives, trumped other concerns.  

The argument is not silly.

What might be is the casual good humor in which he makes it.

That he did not labor trying to outplay that trump or to finesse it shows a lack of moral subtlety, but a heightened, even over-developed, sense of moral clarity. 

And yet, in my view, no leader should permit the practice of waterboarding without undergoing it, as The Sun's reporter Oliver Harvey has done.

It's Bush's concentration on family, on nation, on "Us," that makes him effective as a decision-maker.  There are literally "decision points" for the nation's 43rd president.  But the greater scope of our humanity, and the larger obligations that we can assume to better ourselves and our race, are of little interest to him.

Among the 10th grade level sentences of George W. Bush (he admits early in the book that English was not his best subject), I found a renewed reason to keep teaching the humanities.

Without them, we become effective, calm, and content in the business of being inhumane.