Jean Edward Smith’s Burning Bush

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

August 18, 2016

 

 

I’m not going to read Jean Edward Smith’s new biography of George W. Bush for three reasons, one of them coming directly from Smith himself. Smith, the acclaimed biographer of John Marshall, Lucius Clay, and Dwight Eisenhower, once advised me: “Never write a biography of a living person.” He gave lots of good reasons for this counsel, many of which can be easily surmised. I was a little surprised, therefore, when I heard he had signed on with Simon & Schuster to write one of the first full scale biographies of George W. Bush. But only a little surprised, for a reason I’ll come to in due course.

 

The second reason I won’t waste my time with his Bush biography is William Inboden’s thorough takedown in Foreign Policy. After reading Inboden, I would think Simon & Schuster ought to withdraw the book in embarrassment. The extraordinary length of Inboden’s critique is captured in his extraordinary title: “It’s Impossible to Count the Things Wrong With the Negligent, Spurious, Distorted New Biography of George W. Bush.”

 

Do read the whole thing, but here are a couple of delicious samples:

 

(Snip)

 

As a historian who admires Smith’s previous works, I found the ineptitude of the research perhaps the most surprising and disappointing aspect of the book. Take one of the most egregious examples: an anecdote, which Smith relates with great relish, and upon which he bases much of his depiction of Bush as a warmongering religious zealot. According to Smith, in a January 2003 phone call between Bush and Frech President Jacques Chirac, during which Bush urged the French president to support a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq, Bush allegedly told his counterpart, “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins” (339). Smith then goes on at some length describing the obscure Old and New Testament prophecies concerning Gog and Magog (complex passages about which biblical scholars differ upon the meanings) and asserts, “biblical writings were determining Bush’s decision about war in the Middle East.” Moreover, in Smith’s account, this alleged presidential application of biblical prophecies to Iraq had a tremendous consequence in that it caused Chirac to decide to oppose the war: “Bush’s religious certitude and his invocation of Gog and Magog scuttled the possibility of French support for military action” (339). The conversation is utterly and completely false. Bush never said these words to Chirac or anything of the sort to any other world leader. I have checked with multiple senior people with firsthand knowledge of the call Bush had with Chirac, and all confirmed that Bush never said anything remotely resembling those words. . . That Smith never did the research necessary to verify this scurrilous story bespeaks a larger interpretive failure on his part.

 

(Snip)

 

I came away from the encounter wondering: What is it about liberals that they can’t help themselves in the classroom? Are they that insecure about their biases and opinions? Apparently so. The Ashbrook Center sensibly never invited him back. In any case, read the Inboden review and skip the Smith book.

 

UPDATE: Reminder—there is a corrective available, from Steve Knott: Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics.

[Valin]

 

The book’s opening broadside puts Smith’s vendetta on full display: “Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.” A strong charge, to be sure, and yet over page after page, instead of building a scholarly case for this scathing historical indictment, Smith instead produces a profoundly distorted caricature of Bush based on unreliable accounts, factual errors, and wildly implausible judgments. He also on occasion indulges in a viciousness that is unbecoming in a scholar of his stature.

 

In disclosure, I write this review from two perspectives: as a historian, and as a former Bush administration staff member who served five years at the State Department and the National Security Council. So, while I (like Smith) am hardly unbiased, I can claim familiarity with both the craft of history, the workings of the Bush administration, and the character and intellect of Bush.

 

 

Yes But How Do You Really Feel

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More here by Draggintree in 'Books'

 

It’s Impossible to Count the Things Wrong With the Negligent, Spurious, Distorted New Biography of George W. Bush

 

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