Chris Suellentrop: Review of Bruce Bartlett's Impostor in the Washington Post

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March 23, 2006

Review of Bruce Bartlett's Impostor in the Washington Post

The Washington Post has published my review of Bruce Bartlett's much-discussed Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy in today's Style section, and the editors, in their infinite wisdom, put it on Style's front page. (Bartlett is a guest columnist this month at TimesSelect, which makes him a guest colleague of The Opinionator.)

Shorter Impostor review: "Now, 9/11 didn't Change Everything, as some would have it, but it most certainly did Change Some Things, one of which was the relationship between Bush and his conservative base in the Republican Party. Nominated in large part because of his father's name, his establishment ties and his triangulating, tweak-the-Congress electability, Bush became a figure worthy of devotion, even adoration, among movement conservatives only after the terrorist attacks. No person writing about Bush's place in the conservative movement could ignore the crucible of Sept. 11.

"Yet Bruce Bartlett has done exactly that. ... To be fair, Bartlett acknowledges being 'deeply concerned' about the war in Iraq, but he says he sticks to economic policy 'because that is my field of expertise.' Fair enough, but the decision to restrict his areas of inquiry turns out to be unusually frustrating, because he hits upon a persuasive unified field theory of Bush failures but declines to pursue it."

Recycled Washington Post reviews: Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary; Byron York's The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy; Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's Because He Could.

March 23, 2006 at 11:27 AM | Permalink

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Chris Suellentrop

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The Opinionator