Reading Into Bush's Book List
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In what without a doubt is the most astounding op-ed piece of the year, Karl Rove reveals that his friend and former boss, George W. Bush, has read probably hundreds of books over the course of his presidency. One of them was Albert Camus' "The Stranger," with its unforgettable opening lines: "Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don't know." After reading Rove's Wall Street Journal column, it's clear there's much we all don't know.
Bush's choice of the Camus classic is odd on the face of it. It is a novel about estrangement, about an amoral, irreligious man (Meursault) who never shows emotion. It is a book out of my Gauloise-smoking youth, read in the vain pursuit of women of literary bent, and not something I would think an over-60 president would read. Maybe this is what happens when you have to give up jogging.
In his column, Rove says that Bush read 95 books in 2006 alone. In 2007, he read 51 books and as of last week, he had read 40 in 2008. The numbers are precise because Bush challenged Rove to a contest: who could read the most books. Rove always won, but Bush had the ready excuse that he was, as he put it, busy being "Leader of the Free World." This, though, is not an excuse. As Dwight Eisenhower once told me (I'm not making this up), he had more time as president to dabble in painting than he did in retirement. Such is the virtue of The Bubble.
Rove appreciates that he's written a caricature-buster. "In the 35 years I've known George W. Bush, he's always had a book nearby," he writes. "He plays up being a good ol' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader."
As might be expected, most of Bush's books have been biographies and histories. Biographies are usually about great men who often did the unpopular thing and were later vindicated. As for histories, they are replete with cautionary tales. That might explain how the 1961 classic, Hugh Thomas's "The Spanish Civil War," made it onto this year's presidential reading list. Had Hitler (and Mussolini) been stopped in Spain, much misery would have been avoided. Substitute Iraq for Spain and you have, for the president, some reassuring bedtime reading.
Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.
It is awfully late in the day for Rove -- and, presumably, Bush -- to assert the president's intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol' boy persona and picking up the ol' bifocals one. But the books themselves reveal -- actually, confirm -- something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks -- and sees -- vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.
The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake, one that metastasized into a debacle. Absent is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Tom Ricks's "Fiasco," George Packer's "The Assassins' Gate" or, on a related topic, Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" about "extraordinary rendition" and other riffs on the Constitution. Absent too is Barton Gellman's "Angler," about Dick Cheney, the waterboarder in chief.
Bush read David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter," which is about the Korean War, but not on the list is Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," which is about the Vietnam War. Bush read some novels, but they are mostly pre-movies, plotted not written, and lacking the beauty of worldly cynicism. I recommend Giuseppe di Lampedusa's "The Leopard." Delicious.
My hat is off to Bush for the sheer volume and, often, high quality of his reading. But his books reflect a man who is seeking to learn what he already knows. The caricature of Bush as unread died today -- or was it yesterday?
But the reality of the intellectually insulated man endures.
살아 오면서본 것 중 하나가. 유럽 미국의 레스토랑이나 고급 접객업소의 단골이 되면 그들은 출입하는 손님의 취향을
아주 정확히 깜짝 놀랄만큼 정확히 기억을하고 있기에 정말 무슨 vip라도 된듯한 기분이 든다. 그런데 우리네는 너무
틀린다. 단골이되고 얼굴이 익혀지면 친해서 그런지 아님 친한 척을 해서 그런지 아주 정말 아무렇게나 대한다.
어떤 때는 오히려 무시 당하는 기분까지 느낀다.
20c말 남미 페루와 거래할 때 페루의 buyer를 접대할려고 청계천 룸살롱을 간적이 있었다. 한 참 술 기운이 오를 때
그가 이런 얘길 했었다. 몇일전에 다른 거래처의 접대를 받았는 데 술 먹다가 잠깐 다른 방에 가서 여인과의 정사를
즐기고 와서 자기 보고도 가서하라고 하더라면서 자기는 그게 이해가 안된다고 했다. 부인과의 성관계는 거대한 위대한
작업인데 어쩜 그렇게 빨리 후딱 아무렇게나 해치우느냐고 했다. 결혼하기 전 연애하고 데이트할 땐 공주처럼 모시고
그렇게도 충실히 봉사 헌신 충성 희생하다가 결혼 하고 나면 대충대충관심을 표하는 건 또 왜그럴까.
하다 못해 갖고 싶던 만년필 하나를 새로 사도 날마다 끄내 보고 쓰보고 간수하고 자랑스러우ㅓ하는 데
사랑하는 여인을 만년필보다 흘대하고 있다.
동네 깡패처럼 보이고 그냥 건달처럼 보이는 무지해보인 조지 w 부시 대통령이독서광이란 게 wp 포스트 컬럼에
실렸다.그의 친구이자 ‘핵심 참모’였던 로브에 따르면 부시는 2006년에 95권 2007년엔 51권, 올들어 지금까지
모두 40권의 책을 독파했다고 한다. 그와 많이 읽기 시합을 했기에 이것은 정확하다고 덧붙이고 있다.
까뮈에 이방인같은 소설도 있지만 대개는 전기나 역사물이라 한다.그의 손 가까이는 항상 책이 있었다 한다.
대통령이 되고 더 많은 책을읽은 미국인 조지 w 부시.
우리네 이론대로라면 대통령까지 되었는 뭐할려고 책읽나가 맞지않을까.
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