(Updated below)
Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.
- That's the first sentence of the
preface to Jean Edward Smith’s biography
of George W. Bush. After this, one supposes, Smith really settles down
to rendering a judgment on Bush's presidency. (Hat-tip to Thomas
Mallon's review
in The New Yorker.)
Smith's
line is also being added to my collection of great opening sentences (non-fiction division).
Poor
Dubya hasn't been having a very good week, has he? Smith's bio
came out on Monday the 4th. Then, on Wednesday, the day Bush turned
70 – a day when more reflective people than Dubya (which is to say,
almost anyone) might want to pause and consider how they've spent
their time on this old world – the Chilcot Report dropped,
providing a
withering assessment of the British role in the Iraq War (pdf).
The
Chilcot Report mainly takes the actions of the Blair government to
task, leaving to the US the task of producing a similar official accounting of the
mendacity, incompetence, and barefaced illegality by the Bush
Administration before, during, and after the war. (Not
gonna happen, I'm afraid.)
I should note that the
Report has a pretty pedestrian first sentence: "We were
appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009,
and to identify lessons for the future." Less of a Jane Austen, as these things go, more of a Richard
Nixon. So it wasn't placed in competition with other worthy
opening lines. But you don't have to read far into the executive
summary to get to the zingers – and they seem
all the more harsh to my American ear by their understatedness.
(Update: And here's the last sentence of Smith's biography. Serves me right for waiting until the book comes to my local library:
Whether George W. Bush was the worst president in American history will be long debated, but his decision to invade Iraq is easily the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.”
(Update: And here's the last sentence of Smith's biography. Serves me right for waiting until the book comes to my local library:
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