Cover of Decision Points
My daughter gave me George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points. One of the big things I like about President Bush is that he is one of the few conservatives who seems to have a sense of humor.
We could forgive someone who is the president of the United States for a smidgeon of hubris, but amazingly, George W. Bush appears to be a president who takes the world and major decisions seriously without taking himself too seriously.
The book is about making decisions on a world scale. The title is spot-on for how George W. Bush viewed his job. He made decisions at crucial times after 9-11 that changed the world in many ways, some for the better, and perhaps some that have put a big red X on the backs of Americans precisely at the time when the world’s sympathy was with us. Decisions he made turned that tide and made us great enemies but who knows that those same decisions didn’t save the United States and the world from an even worse fate?
“W” was an amazing president. What a shame that modern presidents have to be put through the ultra polarized political ringer. It is like tug of war-if you let up for a second you windup in the pit; if you pause to give a balanced view, the other side does not reciprocate but rather just pulls ever harder seeing a golden opportunity in the arena of opinion making to score a kill. One man, one human being, becomes the place for hundreds of millions of people to pummel their anger. The man comes to be an unhuman, and the process maddeningly inhumane.