In an article in this month’s issue of GQ, ex-presidential speechwriter Matt Latimer becomes the latest former George W. Bush aide to publish embarrassing revelations about life in the Bush White House. Some of those who have kissed and told ranked higher than Latimer, but he is the first to illuminate what was going on in the Oval Office during the financial crisis. The juiciest material comes when he dishes on what Bush thought of John McCain’s presidential run (“a five-spiral crash”), Barack Obama ("This is a dangerous world and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it"), and Sarah Palin (“What is she, the governor of Guam?”).
Latimer chronicles Bush’s frustration in trying to pitch his financial-rescue package in September─the one Congress soundly rejected days later (a compromise version was eventually passed). Bush didn’t seem to understand how the plan worked, for which Latimer blames then-Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, who he says “didn’t seem to know [what the plan was], changed his mind, had misled the president, or some combination of the three.”
The portrayal of Bush is hardly flattering, but it isn’t a caricature. For example, the president demands to know how his aides decided on a proposal the administration couldn’t muster the courage to support─and the aides have no answers. Elsewhere, Bush lucidly analyzes the campaign. He is shocked when told that McCain can’t rustle up more than 500 attendees for a campaign event in his hometown. “We tried to move on to something else,” Latimer writes. “But the president wouldn’t let go. He was stuck on the Phoenix event. At one point, he looked off into space and said to no one in particular, ‘What is this─a cruel hoax?’ ” Later, when many aides are euphoric about McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Bush predicts Palin’s disintegration as a candidate.
“ 'You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.' Then he made a very smart assessment. 'This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,' he said. 'She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.' It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party."
The Bush administration, which was famously fixated on loyalty and message control, has seen a number of damning tell-alls from former insiders. Here are some of those who have criticized Bush after leaving the White House, in chronological order.
John DiIulio: A Democrat who was the first head of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001, he wrote a scathing 2002 letter to journalist Ron Suskind that later ran in Esquire. “In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions,” he wrote. “This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis─staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.”
Richard Clarke: The chief counterterrorism expert for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush wrote a memoir, Against All Enemies, in 2003 and also offered testimony to the 9/11 Commission suggesting that cabinet officials had ignored warnings about Al Qaeda activities. In the book, he alleged that plans to attack Iraq were underfoot immediately after 9/11: “At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that [Donald] Rumsfeld and [Paul] Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.”
Paul O’Neill: An outspoken Treasury secretary, he rankled others in the administration with his stringent views on deficits and opposition to tax cuts. After being pushed out, he spoke at length with Suskind, who in 2004 published The Price of Loyalty, about O’Neill’s experience. The book was critical of Bush’s leadership style and echoed Clarke’s charge that war with Iraq was in the offing from the earliest days of the Bush presidency.
Scott McClellan: From 2003 to 2006, McClellan served as press secretary and was seen as a consummate loyalist, so his 2008 What Happened came as a surprise. Although McClellan remained personally fond of Bush, he wrote that he “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” while Karl Rove and others encouraged McClellan to lie to the press as part of a “permanent campaign” mentality.
Tom Ridge: In The Test of Our Times, released this month, the first secretary of homeland security said color-coded terror alerts issued by his department may have been manipulated for political reasons just prior to the 2004 presidential election. “We certainly didn't believe the tape [recently released by Osama bin Laden] alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," Ridge wrote of pressure to ratchet up the threat level. "I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' ”
Could the worst be yet to come? Former vice president Dick Cheney, who is infamously blunt, was reportedly displeased that Bush refused to pardon former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. He's not very GQ or Esquire, but anything he says will get plenty of attention.
