‘Is our president learning?’

August 29, 2006

In case readers are interested, I’d like to give everyone a heads-up about a just-posted article at The American Prospect that I wrote. It’s called, “Is our president learning?”

Here’s a teaser:

In January 2005, George W. Bush sat down with C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, longtime host of Booknotes. When Lamb asked the president how much reading he does on a given day, Bush replied, “I read, oh, gosh, I’d say, 10, maybe, different memoranda prepared by staff.” When Lamb clarified that he was asking specifically about books, the president explained, “I’m reading, I think on a good night, maybe 20 to 30 pages,” before segueing into an explanation about his rigorous exercise schedule.

Given the history, it came as something of a surprise this month when the White House began a not-so-subtle public-relations campaign suggesting that the president not only has a great fondness for books, but has actually become a voracious reader who finishes challenging texts at a stunning clip.

It’s a subject that we’ve covered here a bit this month, but I pulled it all together in one (hopefully entertaining and informative) feature piece.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Good article. How you restrained your self from simply typing “60 books? Yeah right the man is a stupid moron!” and leaving it at that is what seperates you from the rest of us.

  • Awesome smackdown of the “man of letters”. He’s reading more books than Karl Rove, one of the smartest (albeit evil) people in Washington?

    Riiiiight.

    I loved this brutally honest headshot:

    …If we expand the definition of “read” to include Cliff’s Notes, abridged books on tape, and skimming over a book’s jacket, then maybe the claims are plausible. Otherwise, they’re demonstrably ridiculous…

    And this part is especially timely, the president who can’t bring himself to read the papers but reads Camus only realizes Katrina is a disaster when he sees a video of the catastrophe:

    …the seriousness of the Hurricane Katrina crisis “sunk in,” not when the president pored over FEMA reports, but when communications aide Dan Bartlett put together an easy-to-understand video montage for Bush on a DVD, a few days after the levees in New Orleans broke…

    Maybe the country is finally tired of the “regular guy” who’s actually dumber than the regular guys suffering under his misleadership.

    I sure hope so.

  • 20-30 pages on a good night?

    Doing the math and assuming that he “reads” for 2 hours at a speed of 10-15 pages a night then there is absoutely zero chance of him ripping thru 60 university level books over the year. At that rate, even 60 Curious George books a year is too much for the Dear Leader.

    Generally the more sophisticated the book, the slower I read–(avg 40 pph for serious texts with loads of 100 dollar words, avg 60 pph for general non fiction/literature and 100 pages an hour for bestseller fiction.) I know I couldn’t go thru his book list within a calendar year, maybe half, unless my employer doesn’t mind me reading instead of working.

  • Great article, CB. Doing articles is a good way to conquer the ephemerality of blogging also. Gives the ideas a bit more weight and life-span.

    I was thinking as I read your article mentioning Cliff Notes and the idea of Books on Tape, that this is what the Prez does with his government reports. He has someone summarize and then tell him about the reports so he doesn’t have to read and study them. And of course this summarizer has to have the right bias which is the right bias.

  • I suppose his next feat, in a showing of Bush’s strength and resolve, he will swim across the Yangtze faster than Chaiman Mao…

  • Doesn’t the phrase “man of letters” imply that one also actually writes something worth reading?

    I mean, I’ve published magazine articles. Does that make me a “man of letters”?

    Great Article CB. You definitely qualify 😉

  • Bush quote from the article:

    “It’s an interesting lesson here, by the way. He’s an adviser. Now, he is the Ph.D., and I am a C-student — or was a C-student. Now, what’s that tell you?”

    That democracy is dead.
    And that you are one sick fuck.

  • Our next president will be an intellectual:

    – after the manipulativeness of Nixon, the US opted for the honesty of Carter;
    – after the malaise of Carter, the US opted for the sunniness of Reagan (carried over four year for Bush Sr.);
    – after the remoteness of Bush Sr., the US opted for the empathy of Clinton;
    – after the mendaciousness of Clinton, the US opted for the directness of Bush Jr.

    The shallowness of Bush Jr. should lead the US to elect the candidate with the most brain power.

  • I guess I don’t doubt that he read those memos, etc. but he obviously retains nothing and he learns even less.

  • “It’s an interesting lesson here, by the way. He’s an adviser. Now, he is the Ph.D., and I am a C-student — or was a C-student. Now, what’s that tell you?”

    That your daddy’s thugs stole the election for you, moron.

  • i’ve said it here before and i’ll say it again. lip service is nothing — i want proof, dammit. a book report would be nice,

    this is particularly telling about smirkey ‘reading’ The Stranger: Press Secretary Tony Snow was cagey about details, but told reporters that the president “found it an interesting book” that ultimately led to discussions with aides about “the origins of existentialism.”

    oh, wow, i’m really satisfied now. not.

    great write-up on Amer. Prospect, CB. to answer your title question ‘is our preznit learning?’ i think we all know the answer to /that/: no, but the dipshits will be all impressed or whatever by the massive, non-existent list of books he supposedly read.

  • Good Stuff. I, while never claiming to be the MOL (man of letters) our fearless leader is, did once read over 60 books in a year…

    Course, I was living in a third world country and would end work at 2pm. For the next 8 to 10 hours – every day – I would read. Maybe Bush is reading all night after he finishes work at noon.

    And racerx, in all fairness, seeing the Gulf Coast and reading about it were two TOTALLY different things!

  • Nancy, yes.

    I meant that Bush was clueless until he saw the video, and it was probably only the political damage he was concerned about. I’m sure even the video reporting wasn’t a good picture of the devastation, much less the printed stories.

  • Mr. Carpetbagger,

    Your last line is a thing of beauty:

    Bush may not like the ending, but the book on his intellectual aptitude has already been written.

    Excellent job, may you write many more articles for The Prospect and other leading journals.

  • *Very* good article, CB and, like Dale (#4) said, it’s nice that it’s out in a less ephemeral world than our blog.

    As for our preznit readin’ an’ learnin’… 🙂 He’s been offered a chance to show off his newly-aquired erudition (from Think Progress):

    “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday challenged President Bush to a televised debate and voiced defiance as a deadline neared for Iran to halt work the West fears is a step toward building nuclear bombs,” Reuters reports. “The White House said Ahmadinejad’s call for a presidential debate on global concerns was a ‘diversion’ from international concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.”

  • This reminds me of the time our curriculum coordinator at the junior high school where i was teaching came up with an idea to get the kids to read more. They would submit certificates — which had to be signed by their parents — chalking up the number of minutes they spent reading each day, with a slew of prizes to be handed out at the end of the designated period (basically the entire school year). Well, as you can imagine, before too long the certificates were claiming that the students were reading not 50, not 100, not 200, but 400, 500 and 600 minutes every day. That comes out to a minimum of eight hours a day spent just reading.

    Right. That’s what I said, too.

    Eventually we had to start calling in the students who had made these outrageous claims that they had spent eight or ten hours a day doing nothing but reading books — along with their parents, who had signed the certificates — and counsel them about inflated claims.

    You think W’s claims about how much he reads might be exaggerated just a wee bit?

  • Loved it, CB. And I remain firmly convinced that our Embarassment In Chief does read the classics like Hamlet…..in comic book form. 😉

  • Good article, Steve. But, I have to say, the White House PR Machine could tell me Bush had read 60 match book covers since the beginning of the year, and I would not believe a word of it. These people lie – not just political mendacity but political tall tales. What’s next? Bush rides a hurricane into submission just as he does every day his mountain bike, aka “Widow Maker”? Will Barney or Miss Beasley be replaced by a blue ox named Babe? Honest to Pete. Do they think we all are as dumb / credulous as the Republican al Qaeda?

  • The “President” should stick to tomes more appropriate to his reading and intellectual level – say books like “My Pet Goat.”

    • Comments are closed.