Inside the Bush White House

Inside the Bush White House

Paul Krugman reviews two books on the internal mechanics of the Bush White House, in the New York Review of Books. These books, American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips, and The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind,

"...can be seen as a second wave of Bush critiques. The first wave, exemplified by Molly Ivins's Bushwhacked, Joe Conason's Big Lies, and David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush, described what Bush has been doing these past three years. But they offered only scant explanations of how and why the Bush administration does what it does. (I made a brief stab at an explanation in the introduction to my own The Great Unraveling, but it was no more than a sketch.)

The new books go deeper into the agonizing question of what is happening to our country. Ron Suskind—an investigative reporter with a knack for getting insiders to tell what they know —offers a detailed, deeply disturbing look at how the Bush administration makes policy. Kevin Phillips—a former Republican strategist who feels that his party has betrayed the principles he supported—investigates the history of the Bush clan, and argues that this family history provides the key to understanding George W.'s motives and even his technique of governing..."

I learned about this from Brad DeLong