Bush's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Karl Rove deployed his Wall Street Journal column yesterday to defend his old boss' intellectual bona fides. To hear Rove tell it, George W. Bush has devoted much of his free time to wading through weighty fiction (Camus) and nonfiction tomes. Just as Rove once tried to play up Bush's Texan roots, he now emphasizes his inner bookworm side, noting that Bush, at bottom, is an Ivy League man, sporting a history degree from Yale, no less.

Is Rove fibbing when he reports that Bush plowed through some 95 books last year? I think not. With Bush's poll ratings at a historical low, the president, as he heads toward his new home in an exclusive Dallas neighborhood, really has nothing left to gain by pretending any longer to be just plain folks. As pleasant as it sounds, however, book-reading should not be equated with wisdom or good judgment. Plenty of leaders in history have read lots of books with ill-effects for everyone else.

What's more, Bush may have ripped through a lot of volumes, but did he intellectually engage with them? Rove provides no evidence that he and Bush ever discussed the volumes they were reading. Instead, it sounds like an exercise in one-upmanship--to see who can polish off the most books in a year. It's hard to imagine that Bush, who once ordered Rove to fetch his jacket from a chair in the Oval Office, regarded him as worthy of debating. And as Richard Cohen points out in the Washington Post, none of the books on the Civil War or Abraham Lincoln that Bush seems to have devoured challenged any aspect of his thinking. They confirmed it. Cheerfully oblivious to the havoc he has wrought at home and abroad, Bush, you could, say is confirmation of the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

As Rove seeks to bolster Bush's image, however, he will probably continue to insist on Bush's prodigious intellectual powers. Watch for further Rove columns reporting that Bush is headed to Greece to help assist an archeological dig in Athens, immersing himself in Latin texts, and attending a course at New York's New School on French New Wave films.

Comments

[Querent]

I don't know where you get the "weighty fiction" label. The Stranger is a slim, easy to understand book, probably the first psychological novel about a psychopath. It should have been even easier for Bush to understand. He probably recognized himself.

But Rove's list of books Bush "read". Well, it was just one laugh after another. I don't believe for a minute that he read all that stuff. Although it would explain why he just couldn't seem to get his work as president done. And why he kept taking all those innumerable vacations.

[Phoebe917]

i agree, Querent; i didn't have any trouble with The Stranger when i read it in 9th grade!!

[Bitsko]

Better Dubya had read Camus' essays. He had a lot to say about totalitarianism.

[mouselion]

And even more apropos, absurdism.­..

[MIKELIN8]

How hard can it be for a grown man to read "Hop on Pop", and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"?

[grailknight]

I'm wondering why this is being rehashed? Didn't the WH make a big to-do over W's reading of Camus in the summer of 2007? I clearly remember MoDo's rapier-like wit cutting into Bush's freshman survey lit reading list.

[Sumocat]

Agreed. I know a few people who read a lot and gain nothing from it. Volume may impress the rubes, but it doesn't indicate critical thinking and/or intellectual advancement.

[lisakaz2]

Plowed through? Maybe, but only if you count sifting thru pages as if he were playing 52 pickup. Any words he saw wouldn't mean anything, just like dust in a breeze.

[Freesia2]

Now they're just getting insulting. Rewriting history that unfolded before our eyes like we're blind as bats is one thing - but behind the scenes sprucing and warm fuzzy stories of Curious George is just gratuitous. Greedy people. They want to not only get away with it, they want to feel some love. I'm not patting Bush's empty pointed head.

[fpie]

None of that. This is classic Rove, "Look over there!" misdirection. Hey everybody , talk about whether or not Bush actually reads, was Bush's administration really such a disaster?, hey look, Cheney admitted he was behind the torture, Bush is giving Rove a blancket pard... Hey , didja hear Lorra gave George head in the oval office?... LOOK OVER THERE!!!
Gotta fill that news vacume with non-sense or some truth just might slip out at the last minute before they can sneak out the back door.