I had just started my senior year of high school in September of 2001. I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch in front of the tv when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I went to school without really knowing what was going on, and in every class that day the teachers had the TVs on. I remember at lunch a classmate saying, “A whole lot of people are going to be dead, now.” My neighbors were Saudi and kept their kids home for […]
I’ve seen Fire and I’ve seen Reign
It is only fitting that perhaps the most contentious presidency of my lifetime gets a second look in my quest to read a biography for every president in US history. And while Decision Points was shockingly insightful and somewhat changed my opinion of George W. Bush, Days of Fire is far deeper and considerably more thorough. In many ways, this is for Bush what Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals was for Lincoln: an interwoven narrative exploring the characters of the particular administration being studied. […]
A panegyric to the paterfamilias
I was too young to really follow the presidency of Ronald Reagan. I have vague memories of the Cold War, but it always felt like a distant and insubstantial thing. It wasn’t until Desert Storm that world events really started to register through the haze of childish indifference. So George H.W. Bush is indelibly connected, for good or ill, to the opening of my world and discovery of politics. While I can’t say I paid great attention to his administration, his was the first I […]
How do you rehabilitate the devil?
First, a disclaimer: I was a newly-minted adult in 2000, and the Bush-Gore foray was the first election I was able to throw myself into. I felt taller with my new-found responsibilities as a member of the voting public, and took the matter seriously. I read up on both of the candidates (and Nader, but let’s be serious), and weighed their positives and negatives. I decided on Bush. Not because I had a particular affinity for him or his principles (I think I’ve always been […]