OPINION: As election nears, a reminder: Remember Bush — and don’t repeat
As events speed by, what seemed so immediate and momentous soon becomes ancient history. So with the presidency of George W. Bush. Concerned that we are already forgetting and may therefore be liable to repeat something too much like that history, James Gannon has written “The Reckless Presidency of George W. Bush” (Aeon Academic Press, Seattle, 264 pages, $16.95), in which he concludes that Bush “brought America unnecessary war, income inequality, serious debt, and deep recession,” and warns against voters electing “a Republican spouting the same Bush nostrums.”
James Gannon was a colleague of mine at NBC, a deeply serious and conscientious researcher and writer who worked much as a field producer. The home viewer of television news who sees a report by some familiar face is rarely aware that the report is largely the work of a field producer, who has looked into the issues, scouted the location, found the interview subjects, supervised the filming, and written much if not all of what the on-camera reporter says. The on-camera reporter arriving on the scene usually finds that the basic work on the story has been done by the field producer.
In “The Reckless Presidency,” Jim Gannon front-loads the book with assessments of Bush that may put off a reader who, even if agreeing with those assessments, may feel impatient to get on. But it would be a mistake to stop there, for the detailed history Gannon proceeds with will bring back to even those who follow the news more closely many incidents, miscalculations and harmful decisions that have by now slipped the mind.