Jeez, Stephen, read the damn thing and do what you are uniquely qualified to do: refute the general ability of pundits to accurately write contemporary presidential biographies, especially psycho-biographies.
All historians should have a higher standard of biography. Suskind makes some interesting points, but his argument in the main is based on one-sided and clearly biased sources, hearsay, and far less than comprehensive research. For example, where is Tommy Franks' memoir? Suskind is too busy setting up the non-analytical religious nut George Bush straw man and non-analytical ignorant religious nut Bush supporter straw men to let in some of the complexities of the President or his supporters. This is especially so during the campaign season.
As a Catholic I get a little twitchy when evangelicals get excited, but I think as a general rule it is a pretty good thing for us to have some folks with a little too much faith in God (in that it gets aggressive about converting) to balance out the folks with none (or with too much faith in other gods, like the environment or wealth redistribution). Clearly some of George Bush's supporters fall in that too much faith category, I just don't think Suskind proves that Bush is one of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment