All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings

Rating:
Summary: Family man? No way.
Review: What seems funny to me after reading about half this book is the fact that Bush tries to come across as a decent human and family man.

Does anybody out there realize how many thousands of children (and civilian adults) per month continue to die every single month in Iraq because of the sactions policy that he started during his presidency?

The UN estimates for children who have died in Iraq due to sanctions stood at 600,000 in 1996. By now that figure must have topped 1,000,000.

George Bush can paint any picture he wants -- but his actions spell out his true character. He is a man that places government, state, and power above humanity, like many other world leaders.

You can argue that the sanctions are Saddam Hussein's "fault" because he ultimately does not care about human beings either... but please do not fool yourself into believing George Bush's warm and fuzzy approach -- since Bush's sense of "humanity" seems limited to humans who happened to have been born within the confines of the United States... if even that.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a reminder of what a REAL president ought to be!
Review: Regardless of the one bitter review you may have read on this page, this book is something every American ought to read. You get to the core of the man. Of course you do not get ever detail of his life, no book could give that. You also don't walk away with a full picture of President Bush. But, as he says himself, this is his heartbeat. You get a glimpse of what makes him tick. Mr. Bush being pulled in every way imaginable rarely caved. He exemplifies leadership, character and commitment to principles. How this would be a different time had 47% of American voters not been hood-winked by the current occupant of the White House in 1992.

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Summary: A decent man we did not appreciate.
Review: Reading this tome was certainly a project. However, I was continually struck by how decent a man President Bush was, and how he certainly had his priorities right. After having lived through the Clinton Fiasco, (where his needs are deemed more important than family, faith and country), I am almost stunned with how important basic honesty and decency are to the character of the leader of the free world. If I could, I would take back the vote I cast in that fateful presidential election, and I would recast it Mr. Bush. I can not help but feel that we all would be the better for it.

Rating:
Summary: Self-Serving
Review: Rather than attempt to justify his failed presidency or the highly questionable acts he committed as head of the CIA, Bush tries to salvage his historical reputation by publishing a series of warm family letters. While this book will have use to future historians because it illustrates Bush's current desperation to go down in history as some sort of statesman, it does nothing to show the underhanded type of businessman and politician he was. George Bush the family man should not be confused with George Bush the career politician. That type of confusion is what he tries to pull off here, and readers should be aware of it.

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Summary: The best dad to occupy the White House since Teddy Roosevelt
Review: My patriotism had wilted over the past two years following political scandals, but reading Mr. Bush's book has restored some of my optimism. Here is a man who is not afraid to meet problems head on as evidenced by his many letters to foreign leaders. At the same time, he never lost a grip on what was really important, a theme he reiterates: family, friends and faith. Not since the great Theodore Roosevelt has a presidential dad loved his wife and children with as much enthusiasm and expression. I dare say Mr. Bush may have written as many letters as the prolific TR! I loved the touching letters he wrote in the last days of his presidency. George Bush is a truly decent man.

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Summary: A Record worth Keeping
Review: I was delighted to find a small note the President sent to me in 1990 while I was a Seabee stationed in Saudi during the build-up to Desert Storm printed on page 487. This book contains many such letters and notes and is a real insight into a man who served as America's Chief Executive during a time when we needed his leadership. I will forever treasure my card from the President and the Tie Clip he sent me as a momento of my letter to the Chief of Staff - John Sununu. I recommend this book as a way to see how history is formed in letters and communiques.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating portrait of the former president.
Review: From Newsweek, 9/27/99:

"George Bush Off the Record" by Jon Meacham

Dad was worried. In the summer of 1998, he had two sons running in two of the most important governor's elections in the country -- George W., seeking reelection in Texas, and Jeb, heading for victory in Florida. "Your mother tells me," Bush wrote them in a letter on Aug. 1, "that both of you have mentioned to her your concerns about some of the political stories - the ones that seem to put me down and make me seem irrelevant - that contrast you favorably to a father who had no vision... I have been reluctant to pass along advice. Both of you are charting your own course, spelling out what direction you want to take your State... But the advice is this. Do not worry when you see the stories that compare you favorably to a Dad for whom English was a second language and for whom the word destiny meant nothing."

Kind, generous words - but the former president's book of letters suggests that he is in fact both a master of the language and a man of uncommon ambition. Bush understands that "destiny" is something you work for, and the countless notes he wrote over the years were part not just of everyday life in mid-century America but were also political coin. He may be tongue-tied at a rostrum, but on paper and now on e-mail, Bush is a gifted communicator who produces choppy but charming prose. The portrait of the former president in "All The Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings" (640 pages, Scribner) is naturally favorable: Bush and his chief of staff, Jean Becker, chose which notes to include. But the result does offer an unusual glimpse of the private thoughts of a public figure.

Far from his caricature as an out-of-touch WASP, the Bush in these notes is an expressive, engaged family man. Perhaps the most moving is a letter he wrote his mother about Robin, the Bushes' daughter who died of leukemia at 3½: "There is about our house a need... We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to offset those crewcuts." The letters also show how Bush, always eager to make himself useful, maneuvered in the political wars. In a memo to President Ford and Henry Kissinger when he was being summoned from China to clean up the troubled CIA, Bush expresses reluctance, then accepts: "...[I]f this is what the President wants me to do the answer is a firm 'Yes.' In all candor I would not have selected this controversial position if the decision had been mine, but I serve at the pleasure of the President and I do not believe in complicating his already enormously difficult job."

Then there's the goofy Bush. In the 1940s, his mother asked his guidance when she apparently caught the future president's sister kissing a beau. This leads "Pop," Bush's family nickname, to a good-humored exegesis on the mores of "necking." ("For a kiss to mean engagement is a very beautiful idea, Mama, but it went out a while back I guess.") The letter is signed: "Much love, Pop, professor 'sexology' Ph.D." Years later, he dictated this to his diary about "Hee Haw" and the Grand Ole Opry: "It's a great mix of music, lyrics, barrooms, Mother, the flag and good-looking large women..."

In a recent note to his kids about aging, Bush wrote, "I don't expect to be on the A team any more; but I want to play golf with you. And I want to fish or throw stones. And I want to rejoice in your victories be they political, or business, or family happiness victories." As the nation gets to know his sons, this book is a useful guide to understanding the man who raised them.

Rating:
Summary: Reflections, Interactions & Opinions Of An Outstanding Man!
Review: If all boys could grow up to be the man President George H. W. Bush has become then America's future is bright and secure. When reading this book and reflecting on this outstanding Public Servant's life, opinions and memories only makes you proud to be an American. He was not only a good pilot, but a dedicated congressman, loyal official in many important appointed posts. Moreover, he never lost focus on being a good husband, devoted father and simple quiet gentleman. The book will inform you, tug at your heart and even make your eyes water, just a bit! The greatest mistake ever made was not reelecting this man of courage. Yet he would be the first to say, the American people have the right to choose as they desire. What I think is most insightful about this man is not just what he accomplished in his private and public life as well as his presidency, but how all of his children have grown to follow in his foot steps of serving others. George and Barbara Bush can claim many achievements but none says more about their success than seeing their children become dedicated public servants to all American citizens. A Grand Book By A Remarkable Man, Caring Father And Honest President.

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Summary: As published in Maine Sunday Telegram
Review: The day after George Bush lost the election to Bill Clinton, he wrote a whimsical letter of apology to the Worldwide Fairplay for Frogs Committee, apologizing for a comment he'd made during the campaign.

You were right," he wrote to the committee's Nestle J. Frobish, who'd complained. "It was the frog-lover vote that did me in." Why? Toward the end of 1992 campaign against Clinton, Bush had said, "Being called dishonest by Bill Clinton is like being called ugly by a frog."

In his new book, "All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings," former President Bush offers a compilation of many of the thousands of letters he has written to family, friends and heads of state, from the days he was a Navy fighter pilot to the present life of a retired president.

Strange" might be an apt description of this book, because it's not really a book. It's a scrapbook, 600 pages of memos and letters that George Bush wrote, many of them supposedly personal messages to his children and grandchildren.

Some of the letters, especially the ones to his family, are strange. There's the formal letter he wrote to one of his grandchildren, Ashley Walker Bush, on the day she was born, Feb. 7, 1989, barely two weeks into his presidency. "On this the first day of your life, your old grandfather sends you his love," Bush wrote. "Today was the day after my Savings & Loan proposal." He signs the letter, "Devotedly, George Bush," then in parentheses, adds, ("formal!!!").

The point is, it's hard to figure out who George Bush is. But then again, maybe not. Think about it: *Two weeks after taking the oath as president of the United States, leader of the free world, he's writing this weirdly formal letter to a 1-day-old baby about his savings-and-loan proposal. Or was it written for our benefit? *The day after he loses the biggest election of his life, he makes a joke of it by writing to the frog people. Or is he really not amused, but bitter and writing this to try to show he's unaffected by this bombshell election loss?

Maybe what's so hard to understand is why, for one, he would offer such letters to history but even harder to figure out is why some of these letters, memos and diary entries were even written in the first place. It almost seems as though many were written for the very purpose of giving George Bush a public voice, an anchor in history, and that their audience wasn't necessarily the recipients but us.

There's a 10-page letter he wrote to four sons in 1974, which begins, "Dear Lads," and starts, "We are living in the 'best of times and the worst of times.' " And he goes on to tell his boys, "You can sort out our blessings as a family. We have a close family, we have a lot of love around. We've got enough things. If we get sick we can get well, probably, or at least we can afford to pay the doctor."

And then he starts telling them about Watergate, which was at its nadir when this letter was written, and why it is the "worst of times." And he wants his boys to know of the "abysmal amorality it connotes. You must know my feelings on this. Because of my job (head of the RNC) and because of my past associations with the President (Nixon), it might be well that you don't know how I feel."

In the letter, he tells his boys that John Dean, the White House counsel who spilled the beans on Nixon, is a "small, slimy guy." Bush closes the letter by saying it must be hard on his sons to have their father as head of the Republican National Committee, that his sons must get hurt -- "because of your family loyalty" -- when people make Watergate jokes.

The letter is a lecture, a position paper, on everything from counting one's blessings to Watergate. It seems it was written for not Bush's sons but for Bush himself, as a historical record of how he wants to have people believe he thinks about things. As president, he not only typed many of his own letters, but on those that he typed himself he would type "self-typed," as though it were necessary, either for sake of the recipient's ego or to make it more valuable as a future collector's item.

Rating:
Summary: Areminder of a kinder, gentler time...
Review: What a great read. This will remind you of how a president should be, dignified, statesmanlike, and someone of moral integrity, not like the present embarassment in the White House.

I doubt if President Bush will write a true memoir, so I appreciate what he has done with this volume. This book shows you the big difference between a good man like Bush and a slimeball like Clinton.

Add this book now. You won't regret it.