Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush
Author: Fred Barnes
“You can’t worry about being vindicated, because the truth of the matter is, when you do big things, it’s going to take a while for history to really understand.” —President Bush, in an exclusive interview with Fred Barnes for Rebel-in-Chief
With Rebel-in-Chief, veteran political reporter Fred Barnes provides the defining book on George W. Bush’s presidency, giving an insider’s view of how Bush’s unique presidential style and bold reforms are dramatically remaking the country—and, indeed, the world. In the process, Barnes shows, the president is shaking up Washington and reshaping the conservative movement.
Barnes has gained extraordinary access to the Bush administration for Rebel-in-Chief, conducting rare one-on-one interviews with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and many other close presidential advisers. That access, along with Barnes’s extensive independent reporting and interviewing, produces an eye-opening look at this highly consequential—and controversial—presidency.
Rebel-in-Chief reveals:
• How Bush acts as an “insurgent force” in the nation’s capital—“a different kind of president” who is turning the Washington establishment on its ear
• How Bush is redefining conservatism for a new era—and creating a new Republican majority
• The inside story of how Bush has revolutionized American foreign policy—and how the president's crusade for democracy would have been anathema to Bush himselfonly five years ago
• When and why Bush decided to go into Iraq, even knowing that he was putting his political future at risk
• How a White House aide you've probably never heard of is shaping the Bush vision
• The surprising and important ways Bush's faith affects critical presidential decisions
• How Bush has outmaneuvered his political opponents and surprised members of the press who have dismissed him as an intellectual bantamweight
• How Bush routinely defies conventional wisdom because of his contempt for elite opinion and halfway reforms (“small-ball,” he calls them)—and why he usually wins
George W. Bush billed himself as a “different kind of Republican.” He has proved to be a different kind of president, too. And Fred Barnes’s riveting behind-the-scenes account helps us understand how much this “Rebel-in-Chief ” is reshaping the world around us.
The Washington Post - Jackson Diehl
.The Weekly Standard editor and Fox News pundit convincingly describes a president who thinks and behaves "as an insurgent" in Washington, who scorns small ideas and conventional thinking and who consequently "has found it easy to overturn major policies with scarcely a second thought." Barnes portrays Bush's contempt for Washington elites and the press as a virtue that has allowed him to revolutionize both foreign and domestic policy and fashion a new form of conservatism. The case he makes for Bush's boldness is indisputable, especially in foreign affairs. But the thinness of Bush's counsel in his anti-Washington bubble also stands out.
Library Journal
Barnes (executive editor, the Weekly Standard) argues for the greatness of George W. Bush. Less biography than hagiography, this work is an unabashed love letter to the current president, with its author revealing that he shares Bush's inability to identify any mistakes that the president has made. Barnes notes an interview with Bush, but otherwise no sourcing is given for the book, which could pass for the regurgitated Republican National Committee talking points that one might hear on Barnes's own show on the Fox News Channel. A third of the text defends Bush's Middle East policy; the rest praises his faith and his impact on domestic politics, but the "new majority" Barnes hails is shaky at best, with new fissures opening weekly, while the "new conservatism" is a complete repudiation of traditional conservatism. As for Bush's "rebel" status, it apparently consists of refusing to wear tuxedos or to socialize with the Washington press corps. This book will be demanded by that new conservative choir that enjoys being preached to, but Ronald Kessler's similar, albeit gossipy A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush is more comprehensive and contains actual reporting. Purchase only where there is demand.-Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Books about: Case for Vegetarianism or Whats Cooking in the Courtroom
Fiscal Disobedience - An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa
Author: Janet L L Roitman
Fiscal Disobedience represents a novel approach to the question of citizenship amid the changing global economy and the fiscal crisis of the nation-state. Focusing on economic practices in the Chad Basin of Africa, Janet Roitman combines thorough ethnographic fieldwork with sophisticated analysis of key ideas of political economy to examine the contentious nature of fiscal relationships between the state and its citizens. She argues that citizenship is being redefined through a renegotiation of the rights and obligations inherent in such economic relationships.
The book centers on a civil disobedience movement that arose in Cameroon beginning in 1990 ostensibly to counter state fiscal authority--a movement dubbed Opération Villes Mortes by the opposition and incivisme fiscal by the government (which for its part was eager to suggest that participants were less than legitimate citizens, failing in their civic duties). Contrary to standard approaches, Roitman examines this conflict as a "productive moment" that, rather than involving the outright rejection of regulatory authority, questioned the intelligibility of its exercise. Although both militarized commercial networks (associated with such activities trading in contraband goods including drugs, ivory, and guns) and highly organized gang-based banditry do challenge state authority, they do not necessarily undermine state power.
Contrary to depictions of the African state as "weak" or "failed," this book demonstrates how the state in Africa manages to reconstitute its authority through networks that have emerged in the interstices of the state system. It also shows how those networks partake of thesame epistemological grounding as does the state. Indeed, both state and nonstate practices of governing refer to a common "ethic of illegality," which explains how illegal activities are understood as licit or reasonable conduct.
Table of Contents:
| Ch. 1 | Introduction : an anthropology of regulation and fiscal relations | 1 |
| Ch. 2 | Incivisme fiscal | 23 |
| Ch. 3 | Tax-price as a technique of government | 48 |
| Ch. 4 | Unsanctioned wealth, or the productivity of debt | 73 |
| Ch. 5 | Fixing the moving targets of regulation | 100 |
| Ch. 6 | The unstable terms of regulatory practice | 129 |
| Ch. 7 | The pluralization of regulatory authority | 151 |
No comments:
Post a Comment