Ithaca 37
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Here's a book review worth looking at:
Is Dubya's Presidency Even Poorer Than Tricky Dick's?
A Review of John Dean's Worse Than Watergate
By EDWARD LAZARUS
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Friday, Apr. 09, 2004
As someone who came of age during the Senate Watergate hearings, I brought considerable skepticism to Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush -- the new book by John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon (and my fellow Findlaw columnist).
And in the end, my skepticism won out: Dean's lively indictment of the Bush presidency failed to persuade me that our current leadership is indeed more dangerous than Nixon's presidency, as the book's title suggests. However, Dean's work did succeed in its larger and more important purpose: namely, to instill in all its readers a deep concern about the direction of our national leadership and the vitality of our democracy.
Worse than Watergate is at its best when making the case that the Bush White House shares with the Nixon White House two traits - an obsession with secrecy, and a penchant for dishonesty - that are fundamentally corrosive of democracy. Dean paints a picture of a government that manufactures dishonest justifications for its policies, at the same time that it closes off public access to government decisionmaking.
As Dean makes clear, that is a formula for rendering a government that is nominally accountable, unaccountable to its citizens. And that lack of accountability is, in turn, something no true democracy can long survive.............."
Here's the rest of it:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040409_lazarus.html
Is Dubya's Presidency Even Poorer Than Tricky Dick's?
A Review of John Dean's Worse Than Watergate
By EDWARD LAZARUS
----
Friday, Apr. 09, 2004
As someone who came of age during the Senate Watergate hearings, I brought considerable skepticism to Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush -- the new book by John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon (and my fellow Findlaw columnist).
And in the end, my skepticism won out: Dean's lively indictment of the Bush presidency failed to persuade me that our current leadership is indeed more dangerous than Nixon's presidency, as the book's title suggests. However, Dean's work did succeed in its larger and more important purpose: namely, to instill in all its readers a deep concern about the direction of our national leadership and the vitality of our democracy.
Worse than Watergate is at its best when making the case that the Bush White House shares with the Nixon White House two traits - an obsession with secrecy, and a penchant for dishonesty - that are fundamentally corrosive of democracy. Dean paints a picture of a government that manufactures dishonest justifications for its policies, at the same time that it closes off public access to government decisionmaking.
As Dean makes clear, that is a formula for rendering a government that is nominally accountable, unaccountable to its citizens. And that lack of accountability is, in turn, something no true democracy can long survive.............."
Here's the rest of it:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040409_lazarus.html
