Thomas Oliphant - Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush

The problem wasnt just Iraq.It didnt even start with Iraq.It was bigger than Iraq. In fact, it was everything George W. Bush touched, from the very early flop on energy policy to the walking fiasco named Alberto Gonzales. Even adding the tragicomedy of Hurricane Katrina doesnt come close to describing the governmental catastrophe of the Bush administration. The collapse of the Bush presidency is a broadly acknowledged fact. Everyone whos anyone, from politicians to comedians, has taken shots at this ever-growing target. By any fair assessment, much of the past seven years has been disastrous. The challenge is to understand why.Few analysts have stepped aside, abandoning easy hits and quick gibes, and analyzed the totality of the Bush Administration. Now, bestselling author Thomas Oliphant does just that. With his keen, experienced eye, he asks the simplest of questions: How could some of the smartest, most experienced and politically savvy people in Washington screw up so badly?After all, this was the team led by a man with an MBA. They came to Washington with the mission to run the government in an orderly, businesslike manner. Instead, chaos has ensued. How did this happen?From domestic policy to international goofs, from soaring energy prices to the health care crisis---Thomas Oliphant tackles it all, closely inspecting the initial projections and promises of Bush and his key senior officials, and the ways in which they lost control of these well-publicized and overconfident plans. By comparing their rhetoric to their dismal record, Oliphant provides a historic analysis of the Bush administration---showing how a system so seemingly competent and mechanized could fail so miserably, and with such frequency.In the wake of the Republican loss of Congress and unmet promises for future change, and as the presidential campaign to choose Bushs successor heats up, Oliphant provides a rigorous examination of what went wrong and what this means for the next administration. Utter Incompetents is at its heart a searching look at the George W. Bush administration, its policies, and the legacy that it will leave behind on January 20, 2009. It is also the substantive backdrop for the next president. Thomas Oliphant has been a correspondent for The Boston Globe since 1968 and its Washington columnist since 1989. He is a native of Brooklyn and a 1967 Harvard graduate. He has been named one of the countrys top ten political writers and one of Washingtons fifty most influential journalists by The Washingtonian magazine. Mr. Oliphant lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, CBS correspondent Susan Spencer. The collapse of the Bush presidency has been acknowledged by comedians, politicians, and foreign allies and enemies. Failures include the early flop on energy policy, the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, and the ongoing war in Iraq. The challenge, Oliphant says, is to understand why the past seven years have been so disastrous. Thomas Oliphant attributes the failures of the George W. Bush administration to that President himself. The political team led by a man with an MBA came to Washington with the mission to run the government in an orderly, businesslike manner. Instead, the country has faced domestic policy issues, international goofs, soaring energy prices, and a health care crisis. Leading into the 2008 election year, the Republicans have lost Congress and promises for future change have not been met. While few analysts have looked beyond the easy hits and quick gibes and analyzed the totality of the Bush Administration, Oliphant seeks to answer the question: How could some of the smartest, most experienced and politically savvy people in Washington screw up so badly? Oliphant inspects the initial projections and promises of Bush and his key senior officials, and the ways in which they lost control of these well-publicized and highly confident plans. By comparing their rhetoric to their record, Oliphant analyzes the Bush administration. His book aims to show how a system so seemingly competent and mechanized could fail. Tom Oliphant is one of the true chroniclers of America. He uses his wit and wisdom to offer critical, insightful, and loving observations of our politics, culture, and society. He is the Will Rogers of our time.Madeleine AlbrightDone right, political discourse is a feast. And Tom Oliphant brings more to the table than anyone I know. First, the meat. He knows this stuff. Then, theres the delicious insight . . . Then theres his voracious appetite . . . Now, imagine I had extended the metaphor to include all parts of a feast . . . all served with Toms hilarious wit and innate decency.Al Franken, author of The Truth (with jokes)Tom Oliphant is a reporters reporter and a writers writercompelling and thorough, eloquent and fair. Throw in a rare wit and wryness . . . [he] offers both powerful insight and sweeping narrative. Were lucky that in this book, hes chosen to focus on the Bush administration . . . the real story.Robert M. Shrum, author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial CampaignerBoston Globe correspondent Oliphant ably rises to the task of . . . detailing the perfidy of George W. Bush and his administration. Oliphant includes the testimony of disgruntled former insiders such as John DiIulio, the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and the first senior Bush adviser to resign, as he recounts the Bush teams hyperpoliticized approach to policy formation and unwillingness to consider information conflicting with their worldview. Saying American history contains few examples of such a pervasive, systemic, persistent record of blunders by a national administration, much less an equally persistent record of a myopic refusal to face the facts, Oliphant sets out to demonstrate how the first president to hold an M.B.A. has managed to bungle nearly every issue he has touched, from Terry Schiavo to the war in Iraq . . . this competent narrative will appeal to readers yearning for one more fix of righteous liberal indignation.Publishers Weekly