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Team Bush Buries a Tell-All
by Lloyd Grove
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Charles Dharapak / AP Photo
Former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, in his first interview since the storm over his unflattering White House memoir began, tells Lloyd Grove about his former colleagues’ mission to discredit him, W.’s “depressing” speeches—and Obama’s eloquence.
Matt Latimer, who served George W. Bush as a speechwriter in the waning days of his troubled presidency, claims to be disappointed in the reaction of former colleagues to a book he’s just written about the experience.
But he sure doesn’t sound disappointed.
“What they’re basically saying is: ‘Here is the book the Bush administration doesn’t want you to read!’” He doesn’t bother to suppress a giggle. “I have to say, in their defense, they have not had much experience with successful communications strategies.”
“Without having read a single word, they’ve been on this mission against me—and it’s disappointing,” Latimer tells me in an exclusive interview, having held his tongue until now on orders from his publisher, Crown, which is releasing the book on Tuesday. “What they’re basically saying is: ‘Here is the book the Bush administration doesn’t want you to read!’” He doesn’t bother to suppress a giggle. “I have to say, in their defense, they have not had much experience with successful communications strategies.”
All this past week, the cable TV shows and the conservative blogosphere have been simmering with apparent Republican outrage over Latimer’s memoir, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor—which has been under wraps save for a GQ magazine excerpt larded with impolitic quotes from the 43rd president of the United States.
Inadvertently stoking media interest and driving up its pre-launch Amazon.com ranking, top Bush aides have aggressively dismissed Latimer’s memoir as the work of a clueless and disloyal junior staffer out to make a quick buck. Case in point is former chief speechwriter Bill McGurn, who on Monday night posted a withering personal attack on his former employee on The Wall Street Journal's Web site. Never mind that McGurn was once an enthusiastic admirer of Latimer's work (see emails here).
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
schneezy
Bush is a turd and we all know one can't polish a turd
BlueShark
True...
..but they spray painted it such pretty colors for all those years.
ekirent
You can polish turd.
Mythbusters!!!
schneezy
stand corrected and a bit less polished
bluesraves
Stop blaming Bush for everything...it's the VOTERS and the EMPLOYEES of that administration who put their fears and ignorance first who are to blame for giving those insane people the power to go crazy.
That means those FOX watching family members and friends of yours who should be called out for THEIR stupidity in not being able to foresee what was going to happen with 8 yrs of Bush Jr in charge.
Do you realize that since 1989 America has had TWO families control the White House for 20 of those 21 years:
Bush Family 12 years
Clinton Family 8 years
How can this possibly be any different than the ancient system of so called Royal Families that supposedly had divine rights to lord over the rest of us?
Go check around and see what the people in "Royaly Ruled Lands" did with their Royals once they got organized and realized what a crappy hand they had been dealt.
I love this country and we are still the best around but their are trends that cannot be denied will lead us to unravel just as the other great powers in history did...Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Ottomans, French and of course the most recent highly documented unraveling of the English Empire.
If this guy really had any brains or morals he would have never entered the asylum he did and aided the furtherance of that Administrations attack on our economic, political, educational and social institutions.
So I say F@#k you Mr. Latimer you do not deserve any financial profit for what you did and I hope your book fails.
I do not need your book to tell me what I could already figure out myself. You want to do some good and earn some "Karma Money", go find a group of people you idiots hurt when you were in office, beg forgiveness and make amends to them AND then write your book about what you did to make things right AND then you will deserve financial rewards.
You do not deserve any rewards for working for those scared, chicken hawk, bigoted, racist, thieving bastards...
Thank you Mr.Latimer for allowing me to get this off my chest I feel much better now...
bluesraves.wordpress.com
YARROW
In my opinion George Bush, Jr, was our worst president, ever. In my opinion it was in the plan for him to be president, even though he was so totally mentally unquallified. In my opinion, a great many knew the voting would be rigged to achieve that goal.
NHBill
I share your paranoia but if Gore had only won his HOME STATE of Tennessee he would have been President. It was not Florida, Florida, Florida. It was why can't this putz win his own state running for President?!
gandolf
No no, NH Bill,
It is always a fascist right-wing conspiracy lurking in the shadows to blame.
jus1drun
everyone except the true believers know the answer to that. PS could we just bury carter, clinton, gore and bush? we've got plenty on our plate in the "now" and past has been passed.
kdizza
Just like there is a left-wing communist conspiracy to blame Gandolf!
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cleverMoniker
You can't blame Al Gore for the stupidity of the citizens of his home state. They were manipulated by the NRA to believe he was going to take away all their guns. Have you seen what Tennessee puts forth in the way of politicians? Marsha Blackburn?? Maybe the most obnoxious, petty, and useless public servant in Congress (apologies to Michelle Bachman fans). Al Gore is a far better man than the citizens of that failed state.
gandolf
Glad that's all in your opinion.
It would be unfortunate if any of that was supportable by, say, a fact.
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tankertodd
CARTER!
Veronicaxy
@Tanker: I rarely see praise for Carter the president, but frequently for Carter the role model humanitarian.
cleverMoniker
GB Jr. is a superhero. Think of what he accomplished without having any of the requisite skills: he became the CEO of corporations, the owner of a professional baseball team, he avoided the VietNam war and then went AWOL without any consequences. He even became the President of the United States, and he didn't even win the election!
I think there's a magic lamp with a genie in it somewhere in this guy's past.
Veronicaxy
I agree.
Whatever else might be said about him what he has accomplished and what he accomplished it with are remarkable. A rich and powerful father alone couldn't have done it.
openhand
W will obviously never read this book, but he would do well to see the movie. Amazing how it seems to sync with this comment, pity it wasn't available for the script.
Mixpixlix
It is exactly his anonimity that makes the book so powerful. Just like the "invisible" bartender or server, people often say and do the oddest things infront of strangers.
It's come as no suprise to most of us that the Bush White House was a disaster on many fronts.
I just find it interesting that media pundits are hammering Obama. Where was this concern for the president's actions when W was in the oval office?
nortonclybourn
The Bush quotes mentioned here are not shocking or alarming. I don't see what the big deal is. Sure, Rove is an asshole, but his career is over anyway, except as a professional Fox News Asshole, where his wild and easily refuted statements can go unquestioned. Carville disappoints - "One whit's damn" - what the heck does is that supposed to mean?
gandolf
Agree that the quotes really aren't shocking or alarming. Kind of fun gossip, but Latimer better make a good haul and find a new career because no decent politician is ever going to look at him again.
Karl Rove is reviled because he was successful. David Axelrod makes Rove look like a paragon of virtue.
ittybittykitty
Isn't "decent politician" an oxymoron?
amanda07070
Rove is reviled because he is a conniving heartless bastard and has been since his first smear tactics began in college (at least the first RECORDED one). The smear tactics continued through his libelous, distracting and FALSE accusations against John Kerry.
How is he successful, in your eyes? He is now a cartoon character on FAUX news.
AlanD2
gandolf: Karl Rove, successful? Wasn't he the guy who promised that Republicans would rule for 40 years?
After 9/11, Rove, Bush, and Cheney ran America's bipartisanship into the ground, along with the Republican party. Some success...
Uncommonsense
He never worked for any decent politician in the first place, so what's the dif?
Re: Rove. When has Axlerod planted bugs in his own office and claimed it was the opposition? Seems to me Axlerod's math is much better than Rove's.
tumbleweed
I don't plan on ever reading the book or watching the movie 'W'. It was bad enough just living through his terrible Presidency. Don't tell me Matt Latimer hasn't figured out yet Bush and the whole Republican Party are some of the pettiest people alive. They can dish out the criticism but when it comes time to take some they get vile and vicious. They don't like having their failures exposed for the whole world to see. They aren't failures the rest of us are failures for not seeing how great they really were. After all they are the smartest people in the world. But, have no fear they will blame Obama for W's failed Presidency too! Ops! The Republican Noise machine already is. That's just the way Republican's are.
NHBill
Considering all of the dirt that came out on the Kennedy and Nixon administrations over the decades the mind reels at the thought of what we will discover about Bush/Cheney.
Veronicaxy
Good point. But will that save us from another administration like it? Rove's work is everywhere in the 'news' that sows such incredible fear and hatred.
gandolf
Latimer, for his part, says with a sigh: "I don't think I could be a speechwriter again."
Well, right, because who in their right minds, would ever hire him? The things he's "reporting" may well be true, and they are interesting. They are really not so damaging or embarrassing - except to Latimer. They show his poor taste, questionable character and over-inflated sense of self-importance.
Here's a young, new speechwriter, who comes in at the end of an administration and thinks poorly of it because evidently, they didn't like some of his high-art speech-making. He praises Obama as a speaker and criticizes Bush.
Here's the thing. Obama can generate some electricity. But as we're seeing, it's a lot of heat, which is great on the campaign trail. But even though Obama has tripled the number of media interviews as either Bush or Clinton at the same point in their tenures, he is clearly NOT SUCCEEDING at persuading people to accept his programs. And that's what governing is about. So, again, maybe team Bush wasn't so dumb after all.
What has Obama accomplished so far that he set out to do? NOTHING. And things don't look good for him either. Worse, he is desperately overexposing himself.
The Race speech is a great example too, of high-sounding words that when parsed, was really a pile of incoherent narcissism.
This guy is just a little to solipsistic to enjoy.
gandolf
To add, Obama even has decisive control of both houses of Congress and a fawning, advocating media on his side. And still, he can't marshal support for his proposals. How can this be, for the greatest communicator of our generation?
It is simple. He is wildly outside of the American mainstream and even setting partisan politics aside, people simply do not trust that he is capable of doing the things he says he will do. That's because he changes positions like most people change underwear, never admits mistakes, and frankly a rapidly increasing number of his assertions and arguments are so absurd that they just insult peoples' intelligence. (See, e.g. Charles Krauthammer, Does He Lie? at http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWJkNTE3MzkzMjlhNGUxODhmNGM0Y2IzNTllMG NjMzE=) .
deebee1222
Hmm. Wish Bush had been willing to admit his mistakes. But Iraq/Afghanistan have been so horrendous, it's hard to know where to start. The closest he came was when he fired Rumsfeld and started turning his back on Cheney in 06.
Obama is trying to dig this country out of the ditch that Bush and his cronies dug. They had eight years while Obama has had nine months. How about a little perspective?
crngndmhm
What's it like exactly to wear your ass as a hat? Do you often wonder if theat shit smell is exuding from your mouth or your wonderful hat?
zircus
I love these post-mortems of the Obama Administration. Folks, he hasn't even been in office for one year. Rewind the clock and take a look at where George W was at in August of 2001. He didn't look any better. In fact, he looked worse.
I personally think Obama's first year agenda is one of the most ambitious in recent memory. The last administration to try to tackle health care (Clinton) got pummeled, primarily because it drafted a plan and then tried to push it through Congress, without receiving any prior input. Obama is taking the opposite approach - he's letting Congress do its horse trading and bickering now, so that when he brings the final plan to a vote, everyone will have had the opportunity to put in their thoughts.
I personally think his approach is a dicey gamble. But I can see why he embarked on this legislative strategy. The health care industry has some of the biggest lobbyists in the nation duking it out on a daily basis in Washington D.C. It is very, very difficult to get them to go along with any kind of change, because the current system is extremely profitable.
And last but not least, I don't quite get your criticism of Latimer's disappointment with Bush's speaking skills. Even Bush's most loyal fans can't really deny that he lacks public speaking talent. His first year in office had so many mangled moments that he almost sounded incoherent at certain points. Obama, in contrast, has had a few flubs, but nevertheless has a smoother delivery and a stronger grasp of the content of his speeches.
gandolf
By the way, how exactly is Team Bush burying this book, as the title claims? As the author seems to admit, it is getting plenty of publicity on TV, the Internet and elsewhere.
This is another one of those non sequitur arguments that gets repeated apparently because it fits an accepted media narrative. Bush's team is diabolical and tries to suppress criticism and dissent. Except they didn't and aren't.
kdizza
Read page 2.
Uncommonsense
Read the article is right! Your comments here exceed the length of the article, and are quite repetitive.
ApresSki
Ditto to:
Schneezy (1st) in the post & on Gandolf's last comment in this post.
ramiuthudna
I think that Latimer's last comment is the most revealing of all: that he never wants to work as a speech writer again. Those of us who have written speeches for others and who have seen them trashed by their staff or ruined by the speakers understand the maxim "pearls before swine" all to well.
Uncommonsense
All "too" well.
TheLampost
By now smart people have already figured it out: Protect or side with George the Moron and be doomed. Expose or prosecute George the Moron and be honored.
AlanD2
TheLampost: Too bad this didn't happen during Bush's administration.
mqmnyc
Why would Bush worry, it's not like he reads books anyway.
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Leary7
My question is why isn't Daily Beast columnist and pathological chickenshit Mark McKinnon quoted on this subject? Wasn't he Bush top media guru? McKinnon is so desperate to recast himself as a centrist, despite the fact that Rove remains his best friend, that anytime something controversial comes up regarding the Bush team he hides like a shivering schoolgirl. Oh sure, he shows up to take the easy shots and Joe Wilson and Rick Sanford, but I still am waiting for his comment on the wacko elected head of the Young Republicans. How about it Mark? How about trying to hit a pitch that isn't lobbed to you.
crngndmhm
He's to busy speculating on who hte next Republ;ican presidential nominee will be.
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