Jeff Greenfield is one of the few television talking heads worth watching, and he's proven why in this witty and astute political analysis of last year's presdential election. He ripped through the arguments on both sides, particularly the sham that went on in Florida from both camps.

However, my only criticism of the book is Greenfield's refusal to judge too harshly the media's role in the debacle on Election Night. As a journalist myself, and a sportswriter to boot, I'm used to hearing a voice come over the loud speaker telling me at a football game that rooting from the press box is strictly prohibited. After all, it is supposed to be a working media environment. Greenfield doesn't dispute that he and his colleagues were cheering the closeness of this race, which I believe influenced the networks lag time in calling Bush states. When it comes to calling back Florida, Greenfield doesn't criticize the media. Greenfield asking for crow comes off as if he said, "Oops, our bad."

Greenfield's analysis clearly shows that the frenzy surrounding this election was media driven. Only 2 percent more of the public voted in the 2000 race than it did in the 1996 election, and that can probably be attributed to the Democrats get-out-the-vote effort. The irony of it all is that the networks still cut corners and were ultimately exposed in the VNS debacle.

Greenfield pulls no punches throughout book when the topics are politics. I wish he had delivered a more critical rebuke of his industry.

If you're a news or politics junkie and weren't totally exhausted by the news coverage of America's 2000 presidential election, you'll love Jeff Greenfield's "Oh Waiter! One Order of Crow!" Greenfield's affable personality comes through in this quick, enjoyable account of last November's craziness. At times it's "laugh-out-loud" funny, and at other times you'll just shake your head as you recall the events from not that long ago. The most interesting part of the book is the

author's description of the election night coverage: who knew what when, what they were thinking when things went wrong, and how they felt about it afterwards. He also does a great job bashing the partisans on both sides who so blatantly and obviously stuck to their absurd talking points during the Florida court fights.

Greenfield's enthusiasm for the whole affair is evident throughout (it's a political analyst's dream situation, his laundry emergencies due to long hours

notwithstanding). The book's key points, aside from the fascinating explanation of what caused the network glitches, are: (1) The primary reason Gore lost the election was Bill Clinton; (2) After the votes were cast on Nov 7, there was *no way* the machinery in place was going to allow Gore to become president; and (3) the Republicans "wanted it" a whole lot more than the Democrats, who didn't have the same energy invested in the outcome.

Greenfield, as usual, is both objective and witty in his writing. He is able to share thoughts he couldn't say on TV (though he never gets particularly shocking or controversial). At just over 300 pages (with very clever "butterfly ballot" page numbers), "Oh Waiter! One Order of Crow!" is a very quick, enjoyable read for anyone who won't get too riled up by an objective and nonpartisan review of last year's election.

There's an old 19th century joke: If you are lost in the woods, catch a crow and boil it with one of your boots. After cooking both for a week, eat the boot. The title of Jeff Greenfield's book refers to that embarrassing predicament but you don't need to follow 19th century sayings to follow this book. This follows the 2000 Presidential Election from the point of view of a Political Analyst. Greenfield was a Democratic Speechwriter but that in no way taints this book. It is one of the most balanced books on the subject. Of course, Republican's who are seeking "Every vote was counted" and Democrat's seeking "Bush stole the election" would probably disagree. Greenfield chronologically follows the election, which resulted in a Bush Presidency. He does acknowledge partisan opinions but in no way does he support them.

As a Political Analyst on CNN, Greenfield is a fine talking head with just a touch of sardonic with that came in handy while writing for National Lampoon. His wit is put to good use in this tome. The political focus aside, the book offers a unique perspective of working with CNN and Political Analysis in general.

This book is well written, although the footnotes frequently break the flow. HOWEVER, the book is wretchedly biased against George W. Bush. It starts out describing George's feelings about grade school and high school without a scintilla of authenticity. This book is loaded with footnotes, but when it comes to telling George W.'s thoughts and motives, the author takes great liberties, again without any footnotes to support them. If you want to learn about George W. Bush,Jr. don't stop at this book.

This book is about a man who was born to privilege and extreme affluence. Who has been cushioned from the struggles of austerity and poverty. Yet he beleives himself a excellent candidate for not just the presidency but also denial of abortion rights to the raped and poverty stricken members of the female underclass. To which he has never belonged and would never want to meet.

What does George Bush junior care about ? Well not women's rights that's for sure.. Mr Bush is exposed here as being an incompetent business man. Not one of his worst failings as far as I am concerned by far his greatest error of judgement is to believe that every one who refuses to "accept Jesus as his(her)savior will go to hell"

Having George Bush Junior with his scant intellectual abilities and his reinforcment of the exploitation of natural resources for profit would be the real hell... This is a man without a shred of compassion who deserves to be exposed.

I really enjoyed this book. The research is thorough and the stories are well-documented. I will recommend this book to anyone looking for unbiased information about George W. Bush.

Crossfire Commentator and former Clinton Adviser Paul Begala's book "It's Still the Economy Stupid" is an excellent examination of what is wrong and will continue to be wrong with the Bush Administration's economic policies. It is well-written, has a cutting sense of humor, and its assertions are well-supported by hard evidence. However, don't let any of that fool you: Begala has an agenda, and this book IS propaganda.

I think it would be instructive for anyone who likes reading books like this to read some Republican and Democratic propaganda back to back. The differences really come out. As a general rule, the Dem propaganda very rarely tells direct lies or makes outrageous fabrications about anything. Instead, they simply OMIT the material that they would rather not deal with. Begala's book definetely fits that mold - if you read his book, you would think the 90s were peaches and cream for everyone in America. They were not. However, this does not change the plain fact that they were pretty good, and better than anything Republican policies would have resulted in. Furthermore, you would believe George Bush caused the current recession. He did not - however, he did make it worse and has done nothing to correct the true difficulties confronting the economy.

Dems also usually are easy to read and have a friendly sense of humor about what they are doing. Compare that to say, Ann Coulter. Her footnotes, if you bother to check them out, are a literal papertrail revealing just how much lying she has to do to make it look like there is a factual basis for anything coming out of her word processor. Furthermore, if the spirit of Dem propagana is humor, the spirit of Repub propaganda is hate.

The book is surprisingly light reading, given how full of hard facts it is. It is an excellent little bit of propaganda concerning Clinton's positive accomplishments and Bush's lack of them. Anyone who reads this book and walks away without serious questions regarding what Bush is doing to the wallets of 98 or 99% of all Americans is either stupid, blind to the facts, or has been listening to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh for so long they have forgotten what facts actually look like.

When George Bush took the oath of office under extremely controversial circumstances, I was prepared to give him a lot of slack. I think he handled the tragic events of 9/11 very well (although, seriously, wouldn't any president have acted the same way...even a Carter or Ford? I think so), but I haven't been impressed by anything he's done other than that. This book helped me understand why.

One of the reasons I respect Begala's work is because he documents his sources so well. Virtually every paragraph is footnoted to a credible (repeat...credible) media source (often a conservative one) or official U.S. government entity. I have checked out many of these sources myself...and they're accurate. That's what makes me appreciate Mr. Begala's book so much.

Apart from the accuracy of his information, it's a darn good read. Funny, angry and fast-moving. It's the straw that broke this reader's back in terms of no longer giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. I now believe that everything that was said about Bush being a devious lightweight is frighteningly true. The one exception would be his flawless ability to say "yes" to any corporation who will line his party's pockets (the Democrats, to be sure, are not immune from this themselves, but I've never seen a president jettison the well-being of the population as a whole with such reckless abandon...and lie about it so often, as Begala painstakingly documents).

This is a book that needed to be written, yet I fear it only scratches the surface. I look forward to Mr. Begala's next book.

This book was absolutely right on the mark. Fast reading and backs up its claims with references.

Can people really be that misinformed about reality and what really matters? Why waste your time even reading these reviews. This is a Joke, nicknamed a book.

Seek the truth in all matters, not the perception of the truth...this is very likely only someone's false perception of the truth.

As a previous reviewer stated, if edited correctly, this book would have gotten the highest rating possible, and even more. The author successfully shows how GW is an oil-addicted, old-time republican, sort of a fox let loose in the chicken coop. Anyone who doubts that this administration is corrupt should this book. Anybody who does will see through the evil Bush Empire.

If you have any doubts about Bush's attitude toward the environment this book will eliminate them once and for all. It never ceases to amaze me, a book written factually with supporting evidence is always maligned as the commie, pinko, or liberal media by corportists, incidentally defined by Mussolini as fascists . I give the book five stars for anyone wanting a clue about who and what is running the country, and the ground they are running it into.

The irony of a President who believes in maintaining a healthy body but has no regard for maintaing the health of our living planet earth is beyond comprehension. We overpopulate the earth, strip and mine out the land, suck the oil up from the ground, only to spew it back into the atmosphere increasing the hole in the ozone, thereby raising the temperature of the planet. We contaminate our water supply and soil by dumping toxic chemicals and nuclear waste. Deforesting the Amazon decreases the earth's ability to produce vital oxygen we need to breathe. I don't exactly see the correlation between exercise and a healthy body as long if we continue to pollute the earth as we do.

A healthy body needs fresh clean air, water, and a proper atmosphere that will effectively filter out harmful radiation from the sun in order to live. Our planet is no different than our bodies. Global warming is akin to a human running a fever, a sign that we are not living on a healthy planet.

Money can't buy a new body anymore than it can buy a new earth to live on. It's probably time to put homo sapiens on the endangered species list. It may just be that the earth we live on will begin to consider man a virus and start fighting to eliminate the virus in order to ensure it's survival as any living organism does. Mother Nature can pack a powerful punch, something to ruminate on.

Bruni reveals nothing new or very interesting about George W. Bush. By now, his nicknames and mangling of syllables are legendary. We all know how much he values loyalty, how his campaign--and now administration--remained tightly focused on its message, how his deep faith influences him. But anyone who has watched the evening news, even off and on, for the past several years knows all this. There are no really penetrating insights, no revelations or new understandings of Bush as man or Bush as president.

Still, it is nice to have these stories in one place, told and strung together by good reporting. Bruni does cover a broad (though not necessarily deep) range of Bush, and his attempt to show some sort of continuity or progression from candidacy to presidency is mostly successful--but, again, not too groundbreaking. Bush easily steals the show, and the laughs in the book come from him rather than from Bruni's sometimes strained efforts to be humorous. The book also provides fascinating insights into the lives of reporters on the road, as they follow candidates and presidents all across the country and the world, trying to meet deadlines, trying to tread a middle ground between honest, fair reporting and remaining on good terms with the subject.

Overall, Ambling Into History is too much retelling, too little analysis.

He refuses to travel anywhere without his cherished feather pillow. He has a habit of addressing individuals around him by affectionate pet names-even those he has only known for a short time. He enjoys drinking non-alcoholic beer, having given up the real thing over fifteen years ago. Once, he almost lost his temper at a reporter for accidentally eating his peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

Observations and anecdotes such as these are the focus of New York Times reporter Frank Bruni's "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush". Bruni was among a select group of journalists who had been permitted to accompany Bush on the 2000 presidential campaign trail. Wherever Bush traveled, whatever rallies and events he attended, Bruni and his colleagues were there, notepads and tape recorders at the ready. They rode with him on the campaign bus, flew with him on his chartered plane, and slept in hotel rooms close to his. Being in such close proximity to "Dubbya" over such an extended period of time gave Bruni a rare opportunity to study the man up-close, providing him with insight to the finer details of Bush's character that few outside of his family and campaign staff ever got to see. Thus, rather than offer an examination of Bush's campaign strategy or revisit the election scandal that will forever remain an unpleasant footnote in our nation's history, Bruni instead chose to make his work an exploration of "the personality behind the policies and the often offbeat character that flickered through the frippery and pomp."

"Ambling into History" is certainly less interested in the politics than in the politician. Bruni is particularly fascinated by the little quirks exhibited in Bush's behavior throughout the campaign, character traits that in Bruni's view simply beg interpretation. Hence, Bush's frequent bouts of homesickness while on the road equate to a longing for traditional and familiar values. His recovery from alcoholism and fondness for daily exercise makes him a model of personal discipline and self-improvement. His penchant for mid-afternoon naps and insistence on a certain amount of "personal time" each workday indicates an inherent understanding of the need to properly pace oneself to get through the long haul.

Not that Bruni's observations are always flattering. Indeed, the overall portrait Bruni paints of Bush resembles something of a cross between a frat boy prankster, an overly sensitive man-child and an uncultured yahoo. That is not to say that Bruni dislikes Bush. In fact, when compared to Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore-who Bruni portrays as "someone so intent on success that he would shift shapes and betray his principles to achieve it"-Bush comes out looking downright wholesome. It is quite apparent that Bruni has developed a certain affection and respect for Bush after spending over a year in his constant presence. He describes Bush as "fetchingly down-to-earth", someone who can often seem childishly playful but also serious and focused when the situation (such as Sept. 11) demands it. He describes a man with commendable family values, a solid display of integrity, and yes, even a strong sense of compassion. And if he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, well, at least he gets points for trying.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in the book, however, is Bruni's observation that Bush may not have been as zealous in his quest for the presidency as one might imagine. Bruni contrasts Al Gore's near-obsessive drive to win the election with Bush's at times almost "half-hearted" attitude about becoming president. Bruni furtively suggests that Bush's decision to run was not so much driven by political ambition but rather by a desire to gain approval from his parents (who, it is hinted at, had always thought of brother Jeb as the brainier, more motivated one out of the two) and restore a sense of pride to the family name-specifically referring to the elder Bush's defeat to Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election.

But the most important question of all is whether Bush has the makings of a great president, for as we currently enter into a protracted war against a new kind of adversary and our homeland security is under constant threat, we cannot accept anything less than greatness from our Executive-in-Chief. Bruni's answer is indecisive at best. He demonstrates that at times Bush can be a lot smarter than he appears but, more often than not, when the media suggests that he is doing a good job, it is merely a euphemistic way of saying he hasn't screwed up, that he has exceeded the expectations of his detractors. He may be competent, but is George W. Bush capable of leading our country in these uncertain times? Bruni is content to let history decide that. Meanwhile, the fate of our nation sits in the hands of a man who is decidedly decent and respectable but, ultimately, is still untested in his potential for true leadership.

George W. Bush has plenty of his presidency left, and there is much history ahead of him. How great of a president he will have been is yet to be seen. However, in Frank Bruni's chronicle of GWB, in "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush," we get a look on the stupidity, and at the greatness. GWB has lived a paradoxical life, and we've gotten the good with the bad. Bruni helps us sort through some of it.

There is a fair chance the conservatives will cheer this book, but a similar chance the liberals will love it as well, for entirely different reasons. Like in the extremely popular "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News," this book gives us insight on how presidential campaigns are covered.

This might be a great tool for high school teachers to help bring to life the current occupant of the Executive Office.

Regardless of differing views, Gore and Bush probably get along better privately than their supporters would like to admit. And Bush might come across plain-spoken, but he is far brighter than his occasional spoken fumblings.

Buy "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush" and benchmark Bush. Go back in five years, and see if Bruni was on target, or full of baloney.

I fully recommend "Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush," by Frank Bruni.

Anthony Trendl

I though this was George W's gaffes, but it turns out his father mispoke quite a bit himself. A little bit too politically motivated, these people obviously had no idea how much worse things could get when his son would be elected, er, annointed, or ah, democratically- you know what I mean!

Is intelligence learned or inherited? It's a question that has puzzled scientists and philosophers since the beginning of time. On the one hand, you can argue that this book proves the latter conviction, since it's obvious that Papa Bush is as grammatically challenged as baby Bush, but on the other hand, who taught Baby to speak? Seriously though, this book is hilarious, a welcome companion piece to more recent versions attacking the more recent Bush. I've owned it since it came out and it still makes me laugh. If you can find it, buy it.

If you are looking for symbolism or imagery I might suggest a different book, but for some of the funniest quotes this side of Yogi Berra I definitly recommed "Bushisms". (Of course if you are a big Bush/Republican fan AND have NO sense of humor this one may not be for you.)

People have been quick to dismiss this book as right wing apologia written by a sneaky Bush supporter under the guise of analysis. However, those same people see Dershowitz's "Supreme Injustice" as an objective, non-partisan account? Dershowitz is a defense lawyer. What do they use? Rhetoric. Posner is a judge. What do they use? REASON.

As one who did not voter for Bush, Gore or Nader, I can say that this is the most intellegent, thorough and fair accounts given of the 2000 fiasco. The one thing it's NOT is the most readable. If you don't want numbers, textual explanations of obscure state clauses and discourses on democratic theory, this one will be a doozy. If you DO want a beach read, I direct you to Bugliosi. Also, if it's conservative apologia you're after, do yourself a favor and just watch Fox News.

Posner is not a pundit, he is a judge. He does not defend Katherine Harris's decision not to accept late recounts as a 'conservative,' he does so because the law gave her discretion. He refrains from bashing the supreme court decision, not as a conservative (he correctly disagrees with their 'equal protection' reasoning), he does so as a judge realizing they did the best they could in the time they had.

The key thing to take from this book is that he doesn't slam anyone (except for some overzeolous pundits). Second guessing motive is a slippery slope and he admirably refrains from left or right bashing. What we are left with is facts. As mentioned earlier, Dershowitz, as a defense lawyer, has proven one of the most effective rhetoricists on the planet. My guess is that a major reason this book didn't sell so well is because the rhetoric is absent.

The major flaw is that if Posner wnated to write a book for the lay person, he failed. This book, if you've no coffee around will make you dizzy. My reccomendation, read Bugliosi for a warm-up, Dershowitz for a light jog, and these will have worked you up to Posner. This is serious business!!

This is another Posnerian tour de force in which he carefully analyzes both Florida and US election laws and demonstrates that, far from being a lawless body that stole an election, the US Supreme Court decision was right -- and that in any event Bush was better positioned to win any fight that would have ensued in Florida, Congress and elsewhere had the Supreme Court decision gone the other way.

But, readers may find his review of the performance of the so-called "experts" the most entertaining feature of this book. After you read how he takes apart Alan Dershowitz and others, you'll be sure to put less stock in their outlandish "expert" commentary in the future.

I highly recommend this book for those looking for a non-partisan, dispassionate analysis of the events in Florida.

The definitive book on the 2000 election crisis. Posner eviscerates the specious arguments of those extreme partisans like Bugliosi, Dershowitz and the FL "Supreme" Court. It is no wonder that they wither under his criticism.

The only problem Posner's book has is that it is apparently too cerebral for many of his critics to understand. So they rant about irrelevancies, like Gore allegedly winning the popular vote nationally. But do we really know that? One must wonder whether with all the Dem vote fraud, i.e., getting non-citizens to vote et al, that if only legal votes were counted, that Bush may have actually won the national popular vote too. Recent polls suggest that something like only 40% say they voted for the loser, Gore. (That also suggest that Gore has little chance to change his status in 2004).

As for Posner and the inability of his critics to penetrate his arguments, it's not for nothing that Posner is the most frequently cited federal judge. The late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan called Posner one of only two geniuses he had ever met. This book is the product of that genius.

As for the malcontents, George Bush was and is accepted as President by all but the 5% of the most partisan and ignorant Dems that are as vocal as they are stupid. And contrary to their imflamed assertions, the Supreme Court is held in higher esteem now than it was before they stopped the rogue Fl court and Gore from stealing the election.

I read this book before I decided just which candidate to vote for, being an "independent" politically. This book helped to sway me to vote for G.W. Bush. He is straight-forward, honest, decisive, with a deep sense of our country's heritage and a style of leadership our nation has needed. His entire life he has lived with a solid sense of true values, even during his far-overplayed "troubled years". His very broad life experiences have enabled him to relate to the "ordinary American" & international citizen as well, in spite of his priviledged beginnings. He has lived in poverty along with the wealth, dealt with failure as well as great success, overcome alcoholism with a stoic resolve, reached out to many with a true caring & compassion & charisma. He doesn't have to fake emotions because he feels them to the core of his being and he would never lead by polls or compromise of what is the correct action as he perceives it. His education at Harvard (MBA) gives him a unique perspective on management and a valuable skill that he combines with his many other past endeavors & impressive qualities. I finished this book deeply impressed with a quite sensitive, brilliant, versatile man with tremendous honor and a grasp of our history and needs as a nation.

Much has now been written and said about George W. Bush. In this book he has the opportunity to tell you firsthand his side of the story. His book reveals a man who stands on his own merit and character. His optomistic world view is founded on his love of family, God, and country. He explains many of the things that have been used against him. As one example, his "failure" as a businessman is actually a story of starting a company as 1 person, from the ground up, and then selling that company when the oil business went bad (the oil crisis of the 70's) and many other small oil companies went bankrupt. But the story you won't get elsewhere is how afterward he stayed in Midland and helped every one of his former employees find a new job.

George W. comes alive in the book as a person of values, convictions, and the guts to do what is right, even when it might not be politically advantageous. He has been accused of being a "lightweight" when it comes to the issues. After reading this book I can't believe anyone would still call him a lightweight. He talks candidly about how he makes decisions, about his successes and failures in Texas, and how the experience has prepared him for the Presidency.

All this, and the book made me laugh, too. He has quite a sense of humor that is maybe better portrayed in his book than it has been in front of the cameras.

Read this book. No matter your political convictions, he is your president now, and he deserves to be heard in his own words.

This is not a monumental piece of literature, but it was not writen to change the world. The books job was to tell the people who George W. Bush is, and it accomplished this job very well! It covers his life from childhood to today. And most importaintly, is clearly states his political beliefs and convictions, so you KNOW the man well when you finish. No psychobabble, no theories, just cold, hard facts on the content of his character. By the way, conserning his "Jesus Christ" answer as his favorite philosopher in the debate...if you think that a part, even a very small part, of that answer was political positioning, you NEED to get this book! This is not a boaring preachy read, just a good man shareing his past and present self, as well as his optimistic view of the future.

Before you even think of buying this book, do a little research about who Bill Kristol really is. Kristol is a flunky for rich right-wingers, whose career is underwritten by ultra-conservative, tax-exempt foundations.

Be a smart consumer and an educated reader. Know the bias of an author before you read their work. To review a full report on Kristol's background, go to:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm

The only reason this book has any value is because of the opinions from the courts that take up the first half of the volume. The rest of the book is filled with op-ed pieces from various newspapers and magazines, liberal and conservative. They are all pretty much worthless. They are too short to offer any real insight, and instead simply seek to use very abrasive rhetoric to whip their respective troops into a frenzy. Reading the court cases however, is clearly an essential part of understanding what happened in the election of 2000. To me, it is fairly clear that what happened to Gore was blatently undemocratic and unfair, but also completely legal under Florida's statutory scheme. So the fundamental question that the book raises, though it never directly address it, is, should we be pursuing a basic sense of fairness, or strictly adhereing to laws, even when it is apparent that they are not functioning in a democratic way, or to the benefit of the citizenry whatsoever. If you think that op-ed columnists will adequately answer that, think again. But at least this book allows thoughtful readers who want to ponder the question for themselves the opportunity to see some source materials.

The Brookings Institution is a rabbit warren of liberals raised for food, who are, it seems, preserved so that the elite can think well of themselves; Nixon contemplated fire-bombing the joint, and ever since its denizens have been somewhat cautious. For some time, neoconservatism has been the real political philosophy of the elites of The Beltway and Manhattan, but for purposes of public relations the pretense is made that we would be liberal if we could, were it not for dose foreign terrorists and dem welfare queens who take advantage of us.

My experience from Eastern academia and elsewhere is that in actuality liberals in our society tread a narrow path and must avoid giving offense to what William Jennings Bryan called, and which remains, the dollar power.

One way in which they do this is by being "fair" and "balanced." Now to some diehard liberals, such as John Rawls, fairness is being just to the least well-off, and is constituted in such deeds as slipping the local wino the contents of the poor-box. However, fairness has been redefined in recent years by neoconservative pressure as "balance."

Thus Bush v Gore, rather than presenting ONLY E. J. Dionne's liberal, pro-Gore viewpoint, presents (1) the text of all relevant court cases and (2) a balanced selection of views from liberals and conservatives.

The problem is that there really is no common ground.

The case for Bush, it is obvious from this book, is incoherent, wrong, and based on force majeure and Gore won the election by the generally accepted standards of modern democracy, which are on record in the United Nations' founding documents and which the US has helped to enforce in Haiti and elsewhere...but not in Florida last year.

Scalia's majority opinion of Dec 12 is incoherent because it has to maintain, against the entire trend of American history, that we really are a Roman republic, in which the vast majority of people have a limited choice of top man every year by grace and favor of successful used-car salesmen; for Scalia leans heavily on his claim that we, the people, are dependent upon the grace and favor of the moneyed bozos in our STATE legislatures for our right to vote.

In this Animal House model the country is run as a toga party by George Bush's fraternity brothers; I mention the Belushi film advisedly because these films manufacture consent to the superior wisdom of dyslexic clowns.

But this model is not Rome, it is at best, Byzantine. In this model our elections become like the ability of the citizens of Byzantium to root for sports teams named after primary colors; a meaningless diversion. Indeed, and as Chomsky has suggested, the programs of the Democratic and Republican candidates are so close together that random numbers may determine how we vote, there being no strong arguments or differences presented, and this, to Chomsky would naturally bias the results toward close ties, with the result that Bush v. Gore was not a fluke; the problem may recur as long as candidates do not present clear alternatives.

The Roman republic was maintained by the collective ability of the Romans prior to Octavius Caesar to maintain, over and above personal appetite, a distinctly Roman legal culture. The Roman stance was that of a Brutus (not the one who killed Caesar but an earlier Brutus) who allowed his sons to be killed rather than violate the Roman Republic's law. The theme was sacrifice of personal advantage to the commons.

The early Brutus manifested republican integrity because he was willing to sacrifice his sons to abstract legal principles. It might seem that the later Brutus had the same integrity (and a superficial reading of the Shakespeare play would indicate that this is so): but Shakespeare ultimately makes Plutarch's point that murder had no place in republican Rome and that Brutus' form of integrity was actually a form of corruption. Brutus and Cassius, after all, violated their own laws by killing Caesar and their rebellion was morally and legally equivalent to that of Spartacus.

The last time republican integrity was celebrated in popular political culture in France and America was not a conservative time at all. It was instead the revolutionary climate of France in 1789, and, to a lesser extent, in America of 1776. The paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Benjamin West celebrated a political willingness to sacrifice bourgeois interest for the greater good. They state visually that if we want a res publica we need men like Marat, General Wolfe dying on the Plains of Abraham, and Brutus catching hell from his old lady for his sacrifice of his sons.

Now, nothing further from modern conservatism could be imagined, which demands that people NOT be made to sacrifice for the greater good of the Republic, or the Revolution. No, in modern conservatism, lesser folk only sacrifice for dear old Enron...not the republic. And the top men are never discommoded at all.

The game is so deeply cynical that many honest American voters are completely unaware of what's being done to them. Liberals who've run "focus groups" to study the opinions of voters have found that many voters are not aware of how far to the right the in-group Republicans have drifted and the minimalism of their commitment to representative government. The Brookings Institution has dropped the ball, for its "balance" and its retainer of Bill Kristol shows institutional cowardice in which the FACT that the election was a bloodless coup d'etat becomes a meaningless opinion.

I found this book to be the equivalent of a teen magazine puff piece. The tone can only be described as "fawning" and it misses all the hard questions-what do you DO with the qualities you have, and where do your decisions take you? The only real information to be gleaned from this is that the president lets his associates do most of his thinking, and that tidbit is available in better form elsewhere.

I am a former student of Dr. Kettl's at UW-Madison, and i very much enjoyed his class. I can honestly say that it was impossible to determine where he stood politically from his teaching, which is a huge credit to him. I found this book very informative. It was quite interesting to learn more about our current president. Dr. Kettl hits the nail right on the head when he says that G.W. is someone who is consistently underestimated. I enjoyed this book very much!!