JEREMY LOTT: Don't Press Your Luck
Press, Bill
The Slaughterhouse B o o k s I n R e v I e w suing policies that led to the peaceful collapse of the Soviet empire? Many Europeans do not see a strong America as being in their best...
...It is also misleading and at times maddeningly repetitive...
...The “hands-off approach to foreign policy advocated by Robert Taft no longer applies,” Press writes, in a very Bushian passage...
...Press writes that “Despite spending billions of dollars and waging war in two countries at the same time, the Bush administration has made us less safe than before September 11, not more...
...This is a baseball game, not a photo The inscription reads, . e t l o s l h t e ev a u b own in front...
...Besides, the book is not much to get worked up about...
...I’d been reading it on the Metro ride over to have a go at it for this journal of high democratic ideals...
...After all, he had Dop...
...There are too many threats to global or regional stability, either from rogue nations or from stateless terrorist organizations...
...Mead proposes neither, but expresses optimism that with a little more understanding and patience from the U.S., Islam will eventually accept capitalism, and possibly even liberal democracy...
...His proposed solution is to put his party permanently in power and allow the Republicans to be only a loud opposition, to help keep the Dems honest...
...This approach takes Press into uncomfortably conservative territory...
...Worse, (John Wiley & son, 256 pages, $24.95) it was early enough in the season that Chicago man- Reviewed by Jeremy Lott ager Lou Piniella couldn’t be bothered to tie Bobby Cox for most managerial ejections...
...L]et me tell you a little secret about [Pat] Buchanan and [Bob] Novak, as someone who knows them well,” he confides to the reader...
...He’s neither as green as Teddy Roosevelt nor as prudent as George H.W...
...7 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R J u n e 2 0 0 8 B o o k s I n R e v I e w though it’s rarely very funny...
...We can do a lot more listening, as Mead suggests, but the power of the militant Islamists is not going to be undercut by a more “understanding” America (the 9/11 attacks were conceived during the Clinton years) and they will only stop hating America when America adopts Sharia and cuts ties with that “Zionist Entity...
...There’s nothing quite like Lou losing it, kicking dirt at the umpires, and maybe stealing a base or two on the way out...
...Sometimes they get it right...
...Please, don’t...
...He’s not as anti-government as Ronald Reagan...
...Bill Press...
...George W. Bush is not as isolationist as Robert Taft...
...To explain why that’s the case, he pursues two contradictory lines of argument...
...One, the right is through because it is wrong on all of the great issues of the day...
...In 2004, he declared Bush Must Go...
...Now he’s reiterating all the reasons why President Bush is a failure, adding new charges into the mix, and tying that all together into a case for why the conservative revolution is over, kaput, done...
...The game was low- scoring enough a point...
...In his chapter on the recent wars (in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and on terror) he highlights some of the history of the antiwar right, which held some sway well into the ’90s and can still sporadically rear its head (see Paul, Ron...
...The world is too dangerPress has made something of a cottage industry of angrily repeating himself...
...Not only does growing American power threaten proud former world powers with irrelevance, but America is also viewed by even many of our allies as an economic and cultural competitor...
...Otion is to help cultivate the much-neglecte c e s s i h t f o t n i o p e h t t u B e h i v s s s e h P , r sor ’ ry ad , the c e book re . . How I wish I could follow d - vituperative arts...
...Press asked where I was from and how I’d acquired his book...
...When that didn’t work, he accused Republicans in a subsequent book of stealing Christmas...
...Many Europeans do not see a strong America as being in their best interest...
...to crush the Axis like a pancake...
...It was to almost justify it: 2-0 Trainwreck: The end of the Conservative Revolution one of those games that (and not a Moment Too soon) couldn’t even manage to By Bill Press be a pitchers’ duel...
...Our “cameraman” fiddled with the camera function on the PDA, and Bill Press—the former Crossfire co-host, former chairman of the California Democratic Party, and current host of a radio show on something called XM—also shrank down...
...He praises containment and constraint but faults many right-wingers for opposing America’s involvement in World War I and waiting until Pearl Harbor before wanting the U.S...
...in late April...
...We never could get it to take the picture...
...My friend, the would-be cameraman who would probably rather go unnamed here, had spotted Press a few rows down and to the right, and I just happened to have his latest book, Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revo lution (and Not a Moment Too Soon), in my lap...
...In 2004, he declared Bush Must Go...
...Say it with him now: We’re mad as hell at George W. Bush and not going to take it anymore...
...To tell the Gandhis and Rodney Kings of this world, “No, we cannot all just get along...
...Press has made something of a cottage industry of angrily repeating himself...
...Again, with italics: “George Bush has made us less safe, not more...
...To throw that ball a bit inside to keep the batters from getting too comfortable in the box...
...It feels good,” and to go bother their neighbors about it...
...The same goes for the Arab world...
...Now he’s reiterating all the reasons why President Bush is a failure ous today...
...He’s so magnanimous to Republicans, in fact, that he’d p robably even allow them to sound off on Crossfire...
...When that didn’t work, he accused Republicans in a subsequent book of stealing Christmas...
...Coming back, he made i e i G . e r e r o “ back...
...We were at a Washington Nationals game in D.C...
...Press argues that the right is, and should be, a spent political force...
...picture taken with me...
...Oh, wait...
...On the one hand, Press is okay with the unsavory company that he keeps, up to a point...
...On just about every issue that you could pull out of a hat—from taxing to spending to regulating to disaster relief—Press argues that the Republicans have been an utter disaster...
...Bush...
...good review...
...Fortunately, Mead’s lecture on contemporary foreign policy is almost as brief as it is unconvincing, and should not be a reason for avoiding this otherwise engaging and well-written book...
...And the threat: “I’ll repeat it as many times as I need to...
...He wanted to sign it and have a Jeremy Lott is author of The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency (Thomas Nelson...
...Unlike Richard Nixon, he doesn’t twitch when he lies...
...Readers are told to “Try it yourself...
...Press concedes that some of the loudest, most pointed critics of George W. Bush’s Iraq ignominy were in fact, conservatives...
...Though we should take the concerns of other nations seriously, is it America’s fault that its national interests don’t always align with those of France...
...Press’s writing is at least clean and tart, Don’t Press Your Luck I hesitated, then sat down hard...
...yelled one guy a few rows rev t w iew s n ing it r for e T e he s p Am i erica F n Sp J ectat m or y , he v gulp t e d a a small joke before he got to his seat: “You’re not reading my book...
...Two, it is through because there aren’t any real conservatives left...
...Chiefly, when they agree with Bill Press...
...Bhave the courage of his conto l e s m i h g i n e v e n a c i u s t t this ’ t liberal b r in n ternation f a t l r o - - tions...
...Press presses the second point because he wants to use the words and deeds of mostly conservative Republicans past to beat Republicans present over the head...
...J u n e 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 3...
...The United States must maintain a strong military presence and there are times when we must take the lead and intervene...
...The Slaughterhouse B o o k s I n R e v I e w suing policies that led to the peaceful collapse of the Soviet empire...
...Provided, of course, that Democrats are sending the troops into battle...
...When I told him I was Nats over Cubs...
...And then: “Let me repeat that: George Bush has made us less safe, not more...
...This tension will necessarily be part of America’s relationship with Europe and other parts of the world regardless of who is in the White House, unless that person accedes to the proposition that America needs to bind its actions to the will of the EU or the UN...
...When Press got up to head back toward the men’s, I waved it at him, and his eyes lit up like Christmas tree lights...
Vol. 41 • June 2008 • No. 5
