U.S. Politics & Government - 20th Century, Presidents of the United States - Biography, U.S. Politics & Government - 1980-1989, U.S. Politics & Government - 1988-1993
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Overview
Imagine a White House M*A*S*H written by a Reagan-Bush staffer - a hilarious inside account of high power at very low ebb. There has never been a book quite like Hell of a Ride - a wildly original chronicle of a presidency on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It tells the sorry tale of how a president with a 91 percent approval rating in March 1991 ended up with a humiliating 38 percent of the vote in November 1992 through the eyes of the people who had the most to lose: the panicked and soon-to-be-unemployed staffers populating the Bush White House. Award-winning journalist, Reagan speechwriter, and five-time "Jeopardy" champion John Podhoretz peels away the myths both positive and negative about George Bush to reveal a president and a presidency that had literally no idea what they were about. We see Bush and Co. frittering away the affection of America, damaging the economy and mortally wounding the Republicans all in the short space of 18 months. Podhoretz unmasks the sycophants and paper tigers in the palace court of King George, and finally reveals the startlingly empty core at the center of the Bush White House: George Bush himself.Editorials
Library Journal
The title implies a rollicking tour of the Bush administration, a kind of Saturday Night Live takeoff. Instead, this book is a darkly humorous assesment of the evidently more-inept-than-we-even-thought White House bureaucracy. Former Reagan and Bush speechwriter and staffer Podhoretz depicts four years of a presidency not only without a governing ideology but without a clear ``message'' that could be passed off to the American voters as a genuine political conviction. According to Podhoretz, the lack of ``the vision thing'' on Bush's part was reflected in the perks-and-turf obsessed staff, the very people charged with carrying out policy. Political junkies of both the Left and the Right may enjoy this scathing account, but the average reader may back away from its brutally honest portrait of a modern presidency. For libraries with patrons who enjoy political commentary.-- Pamela R. Dauben speck, Warren-Trumbull Cty. P.L., Warren, OhioGilbert Taylor
Bush's 55-point drop in approval ratings between his war triumph and electoral defeat resulted in a dearth of mirth among his startled acolytes. Having licked his wounds, this ex-staffer supplies some of the hilarity occasioned by such a vertiginous fall. Podhoretz was only a nominal Bushie; like most true-blue Reaganite holdovers, he was exiled from the White House soon after the veep became the prez in 1989. Adopting the code-lingo of hallway scuttlebutt, such as referring to technocrats Sununu and Darman as the Gnostic Gnomes, Podhoretz assembles vibrant vignettes, most pertaining to events of campaign '92, of mid-level staffers hanging around the White House mess, in the OEOB, at the Republican convention, and in front of urinals. At such impromptu locales, staffers groused about what the higher-ups were doing with their ideas (disregarding them, normally) to save Bush from himself. This author applies a comedic verve that makes his polemic--straight from the conservative camp that always distrusted Bush--solidly entertaining for pols of all stripes.Book Details
Published
November 1, 1993
Publisher
New York : Simon & Schuster, c1993.
Pages
320
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780671796488