Stephen Knott: GWB and the Assault on Reason

[Valin]

Power Line:

Scott Johnson

3/8/12

 

Stephen F. Knott is professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College and author of Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency and At Reagan’s Side: Insiders’ Recollections from Sacramento to the White House. He codirected the presidential oral history program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and has also served on the staff of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

 

Professor Knott’s new book — Assault on Reason: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics — is officially published today. It is a hard-hitting book that I think will be of interest to Power Line readers.

 

We invited Professor Knott to write something that would allow us to bring the book to the attention of our readers and give us a preview of its findings. He has kindly responded:

(Snip)

 

 

[SrWoodchuck]

Great post, @Valin!

 

While presidents have always been the target of heated rhetoric from their political opponents and the media, much of the demagoguery directed toward Bush came from historians, law professors, and political scientists, including those who consider themselves “presidential scholars.” Far too many of these scholars abandoned any pretense of objectivity and seemed unwilling to place Bush’s actions in the War on Terror into historical context.

These scholars helped shape the perception that Bush’s presidency was one of the worst in American history. George W. Bush caused too many of those who celebrate the power of reason to wallow in, as Richard Hofstadter once put it, “the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.”

 

Contrast that with the Oblunder administration, where some of these great scholars & professors are now advisors & Czars.....with regulatory authority to help make much of the same Executive expansion, as they previously derided. Oblunder's expansion of Presidential power has generated...............crickets for controversy.

[Valin]

@SrWoodchuck

 

Great scholars & professors? Well maybe in their own minds.