Daily View: George W Bush's memoir
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Commentators consider why George W Bush wrote his memoir Decision Points.
The there is nothing new in this memoir, something he is not shocked by as the purpose, he thinks, is to get us to like him more:
"Bush as he presents himself here is calm, deliberative, reasonable, open-minded, God-fearing, loyal, trustworthy, patriotic.
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"This should come as no surprise. The presidential memoir as it has evolved, especially in the wake of recent presidencies, is not a memoir as the term is commonly understood - an attempt to examine and interpret the writer's life - but an attempt to write history before the historians get their hands on it."
As if to back up that point, George W Bush's former media advisor his compliments to his former employer:
"I'm glad President Bush has published Decision Points--not so much because I think it will help rehabilitate his image or improve his place in history, though I think it will help on those counts. I'm glad because I believe readers will get a sense of the George W. Bush who I've known for 15 years - a man who is very different than the distorted public image many have come to accept as accurate. Contrary to conventional wisdom, President Bush is very smart, quietly reflective, often contrite, and deeply humble."
that George W Bush is modelling himself on Harry Truman, who's image was successfully changed over time. However, she warns that it may not work:
"Unfortunately, neither Bush's book nor his publicity blitz can help him attain his real goal, that elusive place in history. In fact, Truman's rehabilitation came about not from his memoirs, but because the unfolding of the Cold War proved he had been right about Stalin, right about Soviet intentions, possibly even right to fight back in Korea. A later, less stuffy generation of Americans was less bothered by Truman's humble origins, and more impressed by his honesty and humility.
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"Subsequent events - in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US itself - will also determine the way Bush's presidency is perceived, possibly in ways we find hard to imagine."
[subscription required], which is serialising the memoirs, that George W Bush's avid reading hasn't taught him the complexities of history:
"If history teaches anything, it is that the past and the affairs of man are complex, uncertain and unpredictable. But the history that Mr Bush tells, his story, is clear-cut, a Manichean battle between good and evil, fought with history on his side.
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"'I admired Lincoln's moral clarity,' he writes. 'The clash between freedom and tyranny.' History, he says, will judge him, but it is unlikely to assess him with the simple clarity with which he judges himself."
that there is a more immediate need than history to change Mr Bush's image:
"Until now the American right has dealt with Bush the way Stalin dealt with Trotsky - via the airbrush. Most Republicans have tried to vanish him from the record, avoiding the merest mention of his name. But that's not sustainable for ever.
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"Eventually, if the Republicans are to return to the White House, they will need an account of the last Republican presidency - ideally one that does not have Americans cowering behind the sofa, terrified to look. If they can pretty up Bush's image just a bit, make the Bush era seem less like a nightmare to which the US must never return, that can only help."
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