My New Year's Resolution

Evil Genius, Karl Rove, from whom all good Right Wing Stormtroopers take our orders, recently wrote about a competition in which he and President Bush have engaged for the last few years.

It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book's pages -- its "Total Lateral Area."

We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.

At year's end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. My trophy looks suspiciously like those given out at junior bowling finals. The president lamely insisted he'd lost because he'd been busy as Leader of the Free World.

Mr. Bush's 2006 reading list shows his literary tastes. The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.

Fifty-eight of the books he read that year were nonfiction. Nearly half of his 2006 reading was history and biography, with another eight volumes on current events (mostly the Mideast) and six on sports.

To my surprise, the president demanded a rematch in 2007. Though the overall pace slowed, he once more came in second in our two-man race, reading 51 books to my 76. His list was particularly wide-ranging that year, from history ("The Great Upheaval" and "Khrushchev's Cold War"), biographical (Dean Acheson and Andrew Mellon), and current affairs (including "Rogue Regime" and "The Shia Revival"). He read one book meant for young adults, his daughter Jenna's excellent "Ana's Story."

A glutton for punishment, Mr. Bush insisted on another rematch in 2008. But it will be a three-peat for me: as of today, his total is 40 volumes to my 64. His reading this year included a heavy dose of history -- including David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter," Rick Atkinson's "Day of Battle," [ed. note: am currently reading this and it, as well as its preceding volume in the trilogy, is excellent] Hugh Thomas's "Spanish Civil War," Stephen W. Sears's "Gettysburg" and David King's "Vienna 1814." There's also plenty of biography -- including U.S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs"; Jon Meacham's "American Lion"; James M. McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and Jacobo Timerman's "Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number."

Each year, the president also read the Bible from cover to cover, along with a daily devotional.

The reading competition reveals Mr. Bush's focus on goals. It's not about winning. A good-natured competition helps keep him centered and makes possible a clear mind and a high level of energy. He reads instead of watching TV. He reads on Air Force One and to relax and because he's curious. He reads about the tasks at hand, often picking volumes because of the relevance to his challenges. And he's right: I've won because he has a real job with enormous responsibilities.

In the 35 years I've known George W. Bush, he's always had a book nearby. He plays up being a good ol' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader.

There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one. Like so many caricatures of the past eight years, this one is not only wrong, but also the opposite of the truth and evidence that bitterness can devour a small-minded critic. Mr. Bush loves books, learns from them, and is intellectually engaged by them.

(emphasis added)

As Christopher Hitchens suggested on that idiot Bill Maher's show recently (h/t Morgan H. also, beware language--f-bombs--and colorful hand signals), it has become the stupid person's easy joke to send up President Bush's supposed lack of intelligence.

This isn't the point of this post, but I don't know many stupid people who read as many books as President Bush.

The point of this point is this: My dad, brother and I have all taken up Evil Genius Karl Rove & President Bush's challenge. We will read a book a week and compete on number of pages read (thus, reading a bunch of children's books won't cut it). And I'm opening up the competition to any of you, dear readers, who would like to join us. Periodically, say, monthly (maybe weekly) I'll update with a list of books and pages read by those who throw their hats in the ring. We can also do mini book reviews.

This is, I think, a good New Year's resolution. Sacrifice a little time every day--time you might have spent watching TV, movies, whatever else you do--and read.

(h/t Matt L., Scott L.)


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Krauthammer: The Conservative Case For John McCain

I'll take Krauthammer over Hitchens, Adelman, Powell, or Buckley (Chris) any day.

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

If McCain loses, I will blame his handling of the campaign, rather than his ideology (conservative), for the loss. One of the things that frustrated me the most was his me-too economic populism on the credit crisis when I thought there was a clear opportunity to strike a Reagan-like note on the power of free markets.

If McCain loses, it won't be because he has been too conservative, as some have alleged. The only example they can point to is his overt over-conservativeness in choosing Palin. You know what? She's just the VP. Presidential candidates have always chosen VPs for their perceived electoral advantages.

Let me lay some more truth on you: If it weren't for Palin, things wouldn't be even this close. Bush won in 2000 and especially in 2004 because he got his base to vote. If McCain has any shot at winning in 2008, it will be because Palin got the conservatives out to vote.

Don't buy the tripe that Palin is the reason McCain is behind or may lose the election. It's just not true.


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More-on Kissinger (UPDATED)

In a follow-up to my debate follow-up regarding the Obama/McCain dust-up over what, exactly, Henry Kissinger had and had not said about meeting with dictators, please see Christopher Hitchens:

But the true farce and disgrace is that this increasingly glassy-eyed old blunderer and war criminal, who has been wrong on everything since he first authorized illicit wiretapping for the Nixon gang, should be cited as an authority by either nominee, let alone by both of them. Meanwhile, I repeat my question from two weeks ago: Does Sen. Obama appreciate, or do his peacenik fans and fundraisers realize, just how much war he is promising them if he is elected? Once again on Sept. 26 in Mississippi—at the end of a week when American and Pakistani forces had engaged in their first actual direct firefight—he repeated his intention of ignoring the Pakistani frontier when it came to hot pursuit of al-Qaida. Out-hawked on this point, as he was nearly out-doved on the Kissinger one, McCain was moderate by comparison. Obama went on to accuse Iran of having built more centrifuges than most people think it has. This allegation has a confrontational logic of its own, above and beyond the minor issues of preconditions and the "level" of diplomacy. I think Obama is to be praised for doing this—always assuming that he does in fact know what he is doing. But as we all press bravely on, the debate would look more intelligent, and be conducted on a higher plane, if it excluded a discredited pseudo-expert who has trampled on human rights, vandalized the U.S. Constitution, deceived Congress, left a trail of disaster and dictatorship behind him, and deserves to be called not a hawk or a dove but a vulture.

Re: Obama's twice-stated position that he would sit down, w/o preconditions, with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, etc.: I remain opposed, regardless of Henry Kissinger.

For two reasons: 1) Meetings should not be conducted with these thugs, at any level, w/o preconditions AND 2) Meetings should not be conducted between these thugs and the President of the United States, except, perhaps, in extreme circumstances.

So extreme and outrageous are the circumstances, that I cannot, at this time, conceive of the events that would have to occur in order for the President to meet with, say, Ahmadinejad. Maybe if he led a democratic revolution in his country and singlehandedly smashed to bits, with a crowbar, his country's nuclear weapon capacity. Then, maybe, I could see the POTUS agreeing to a sit-down.

(h/t Justin W.)

UPDATE 9:38pm MDT: That wasn't the selection Justin W. wanted from the Hitchens article. Presumably, this is the one he was looking for when he sent the link and suggested I share it with my readers:

Henry Kissinger did indeed favor such talks with such regimes "without preconditions." This cannot have been hard to do, since only last week at a forum at George Washington University, consisting of himself and four other former secretaries of state, Kissinger had told his audience: "Well, I am in favor of negotiations with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it." He then added something that can hardly have startled anyone who ever watched him usurping presidential prerogatives during the Nixon and Ford administrations: "I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level" before, as the New York Times put it with uncharacteristic brusqueness, "he trailed off." Nonetheless, asked if such talks should be "at a very high level right out of the box," his response was to say, "Initially, yes," which is as much as to say "yes." He then said: "I do not believe we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations," which would appear to justify the use of the term unconditional in conjunction with "very high level."

[...]

Thus for McCain, a full day and night after the exposure of his shaky running mate to such ridicule, to make the same mistake himself in Oxford, Miss., was really something to see. It was even worse if you heard it on radio, as I initially did, than if you saw it on television. (You can hear that geezerish whistle in his pipes much more ominously than when you are looking at his elderly face.) Anyway, on the same question of "without preconditions," he walked into Obama's tersely phrased riposte, which was to quote Kissinger in precisely the same way as Couric had already done. McCain looked and perhaps felt a fool at this point, and may have been only slightly cheered up when Kissinger told the Weekly Standard after the debate that he after all doesn't, at least not for this precise moment, "recommend presidential high-level talks with Iran." Which, when compared with his earlier remarks, makes it seem that he has no idea what he currently thinks and should either be apologized to by, or should apologize to, either Sarah Palin or Katie Couric, or conceivably both.

There you have it. Barack Obama said he would meet with dictators w/o preconditions. Henry Kissinger advocated meeting with dictators w/o preconditions at the SecState level. Seemingly, the only difference is the level at which the talks should be held--though this is a significant difference.

In my opinion, both are dumb positions. Let their low-level hacks meet with our low-level hacks. If Ahmadinejad, for example, wants to cease and desist their nuclear aspirations and quit calling Israel a "stinking corpse" and threatening to wipe her off the map, maybe then they can have a higher level meeting. Otherwise, we have nothing to gain from high level meetings with thugs.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.