I was actually thinking of reading that Matt Latimer book until I found him writing this:
In fact, even the odd coupling of Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan agreed that excerpts from my book made Bush look smarter and funnier. Christopher Buckley and Maureen Dowd said Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney came across as characters more textured than is commonly known. (Dowd, as is her wont, said I let them off too easy.) And nearly everyone who read the book said it was funny and accurate in its depiction of the silliness of our nation’s capital.
I mention this to underscore that Republican elites in Washington have gotten so overly serious, so defensive and so insular that they have lost the ability to be self-aware and laugh at themselves, much less learn from their mistakes.
What the hell is wrong with people these days? Don’t they know better than to (a) fluff their own books and (b) pretend they’re fluffing their own books just to prove some larger lofty point?
demkat620
I don’t know DougJ. I’m still wondering when these people are going to learn there is nothing that will ever make Bush look “smarter”.
Zifnab
Hahah. Remember that time John Yoo was all, like, “Sure I’d ok crushing a child’s testicles”? Man, those were good times.
Midnight Marauder
@demkat620:
Exactly. I know that based on the excerpts I’ve read, Bush comes across as even more clueless than previously thought possible, particularly during the financial crisis of last year. How anyone could read that section and come away thinking more highly of the man is beyond me.
Warren Terra
Also, Latimer may have attracted attention by pointing out some of Dubya’s foibles and failings, but he’s apparently still a huge fan of Rumsfeld – he was Rummy’s speechwriter before he was Dubya’s, and I read someplace (it’s not in his Wikipedia page, at least not right now) that since the election Latimer has been helping Rumsfeld with his memoirs. Apparently his book dishes on some people, but protects others, in line with his sympathies.
freelancer
I plowed through Latimer’s book in about a day. He throws some bombshells but there’s way too much GOP hero worship of incompetent fools like Rumsfeld and Cheney in it. He knew nothing about policy, and was just a speechwriter. I know “just a speechwriter” is pretty condescending, but Latimer comes across as naive and credulous in favor of almost all GOP leadership.
Jay B.
Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan are NOT an odd couple, they are old friends more alike than not, except the crypto-racist Nazi Buchanan is smarter.
Dowd let them off too easily when it mattered.
Buckley can be forgiven for having lived too close to the insanity for too long to even know how to judge it. It’s a pity really, he’s the only one in that whole list of people who actually has talent.
Calouste
If you have to come up with recommendations from Matthews, Buchanan, Buckley and Dowd, it pretty much shows that the best use for your book is either doorstop or toilet paper.
Penfold
@Warren Terra:
Latimer was on Colbert (I’m pretty sure it was that) and discussed his continued work for Rumsfeld, including the memoirs. He came across as more pro-GOP than I was anticipating based on the early released snippets of text.
Derelict
I’m reading the book right now. Lattimer does give a veneer of humanity to both Rumsfeld and Cheney. But it’s just a veneer. You can tell the poor kid was overawed by being in the presence of so much power. And his limited life experiences leading up to his time in Washington left him unable to calibrate people like Rummy, Cheney, Bush, and Bolten against actual “normal” people.
Perhaps most telling is the fact that he recounts what is clearly a completely dysfunctional administration–someplace where, as he puts it, “nothing was ever thought through”–and yet even now he doesn’t seem to realize the depths of incompetence in which he swam.
And, incidentally, the book is a very good read.
jl
Did he mean overly seditious, offensive and peculiar, maybe?
I clicked through to the article to see who this Lattimer guy is. He is the ex-speech scribbler who wrote nasty things about ex-Dear Leader Bush, right?
I get one point towards informed commentary, for my e-mail beer. Some one write that down, please!
Little Dreamer
Ah, come on. It’s a tough economy. If he doesn’t vet his own book, nobody else will, especially now that he’s dropped the bombshell that Cheney really might be human after all.
freelancer
@Little Dreamer:
Of course he’s human! He waits in line in the White House Mess to get his Diet Dr Pepper like everyone else! What a compassionate saint!
ironranger
Chutzpah
Hubris
Egocentric
All of the above.
BombIranForChrist
Sully is the worst self-fluffer …
“While sitting on a pile of my books called The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back now available in paperback at Amazon here, I saw a beautiful sunset which reminded me rather of my book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back, in which I wrote: “This book of mine, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back is awesome”.”
I mean, when did that book come out? 2006? Can he please shut up about it?
This is reason #490213 why I don’t read Sully until I have exhausted every other blog on the internet.
Mark S.
@freelancer:
I guess not. From the best I can tell, he just thinks Republicans need to be more conservative. “Conservatism can never fail; we can only fail conservatism.”
David Hunt
Unfortunately, this is not true. I can think of one thing that would do it right off the top of my head: shutting up and not making public appearances. The natural tendency to suppress bad memories will make soften of his less appealing aspects in the public mind as time goes on.
So as long as he manages to keep from doing/saying stupid things in public, it’ll help him.
Notorious P.A.T.
It was sooooo funny when Bush was like, “where are those WMD? Gotta be here somewhere!” HAHAHAHAHA! He told the country he was supposed to preserve and defend that we had to send people over to Iraq to die because of WMD that turned out not to exist! If you can’t joke about that. . .
gbear
Go listen to his interview with Terry Gross and you won’t want to buy the book even more.
M. Bouffant
This is the coming post-Bush admin. split.
Gossip & rumor I’ve collected on the web of toobz indicates that Bush pretty much lost what little interest he had in Presidentin’ after the 2006 election, turned on/ignored (in his passive-aggressive way) Cheney (just angry in general) & Rummy (who’s still pissed because he was fired). This Latimer is obviously on the Cheney-Rummy-NeoCon side.
Expect to see more when Cheney’s book comes out.