Rogue State: America at War With the World

Rating:
Summary: It Makes Laugh, then Cry for America
Review: "Life is a comedy for those who think, a tragedy for those who feel," New Yorker and Rolling Stone correspondent T.D. Allman writes at the beginning of this book.

He's referring to the Bush administration, but ROGUE STATE has the same effect on the honest reader. There is something very funny about what's happened to America over the last four years, until you stop to think about it.

Allman does a lot of thinking in this book. You will too -- especially if you go beyond his white-hot denunciation of Bush and his coterie to the historical, analytical and philosophical parts of this book.

The chapter "Systemic Dysfunction in America" is particularly important reading for anyone who thinks the present state of affairs is more or less normal. Other chapters -- notably the chapters on Dick Cheney and Tony Blair -- will make you laugh, but the final chapter of this book, "Unnecessary Evil" is as chilling an indictment of George W. Bush and those who support and tolerate him as anything in print today.


Rating:
Summary: enjoyable political rant
Review: If you hate W., you'll like the book. He really nails Bush for failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Still, I wanted more. What about the administration's policy of torturing prisoners? What about the abuse of civil liberties in the name of the Patriot Act? What about the Saudi connection? What about the slide of the U.S. dollar, the crushing deficits, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs, huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the influence of big oil and coal?

Rating:
Summary: Verdict on Bush and Cheney
Review: If you have been looking for a book that thoroughly investigates the actions of the Bush-Cheney administration, this is it.

I laughed and learned a lot from this book.

The main thing I learned is that we need a new president -- and soon!

Rating:
Summary: A truly mixed work...
Review: Veteran journalist T. D. Allman attacks the Bush administration's ideology, actions, and very legitimacy in this fierce critique of its first term. While a powerful and passionate work, it has its failings and ultimately fails to impress.

"Rogue State" begins by analyzing what Bush's "theft" of the 2000 presidential election. For Allman, the case is clear: the Nixon-appointed Chief Justice, political hack and noted racist William Rehnquist disregarded democracy and acted in blatantly partisan ways to bring about Bush's presidential victory. However, the case really is not so clear, and while Allman scores well on certain points, he also stumbles badly on others. For example, when discussing the 1876 election, he focuses entirely on the partisan line vote (and tie-breaking vote of the Chief Justice of that time) of the Congressional-appointed Electoral Commission. He completely omits that this election took place in the midst of Reconstruction. Historically, comparing 1876 to 2000 is like comparing apples and oranges, and in trying to make the 2000 election seem like a clear-cut theft with historical parallels, he only misleads his readers and insults those of us who might be better educated about American history than he supposes we might be. He also makes much of the supposed unconstitutionality of the Bush-Cheney ticket (the Constitution forbids both electors to vote for two candidates from the same state). However, I would place the blame for allowing this to fly on cowardly Democrats making only a token effort at blocking Cheney's candidacy through the courts. In fact, they could have raised this issue again in 2004, but did not. In our system, it is up to the political opposition to make things like that stick.

He goes on to mock what he sees as the perversity of Bush's choice of Dick Cheney as vice-president, dismissing him as a hatchetman, and cataloguing both Cheney's and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "acquisition of unelected power and money." Once again, Allman scores heavily but also stumbles badly. He invests a great deal of capital in portraying Cheney as accumulating vast unelected power. However, he fails to reconcile this with the middle of Cheney's career as the sole Representative of the state of Wyoming. He tries to make Cheney's never seeking elective office again sinister, but who can characterize campaigning on a Presidential ticket as not seeking elective office? Moreover, after being Secretary of Defense, Cheney was supposed to return to being a mere Representative in the House? Run for Governor of Wyoming? Wait for a chance to become the junior Senator from Wyoming? Allman's description fits Rumsfeld very well, but Cheney barely at all.

The book is littered with mixed results. He characterizes rogues like Wolfowitz and Perle very well, but once again stumbles badly on Condoleeza Rice. He dismisses her as an intellectual lightweight, but offers no substance to back up that characterization. If I personally know of Rice as a medicore intellect, it is because numerous friends of mine experienced her firsthand at Denver University and Standford. I do not know of it because of Allman's book, and by failing to back up his invective on this point he can only generate sympathy for the open-minded and critical-aware reader.

Allman is very on target when he analyzes the Bush Administration's political strategy as being one wedge issue after another, including in foreign policy. He has enough insight to see that the Bush Administration is not alienating most of our traditional allies accidentally in pursuit of their goals, as some commentators think: alienating them in the name of unilateralism IS one of their goals. However, the principle problem with his book is that it is halfway to being the leftist version of a book by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. It is full of hatred, anger and contempt, and is often not entirely truthful.

The great power of Democratic or leftist propaganda books is that they are very often both solidly factual and very funny. Being based solidly on fact makes them hard or impossible to refute on the issues. Being funny makes them approachable and attractive to the unconverted. The only people who enjoy tracts like Allman's are people who already agree with him, and it is perhaps a good thing that this book has not received more attention. I am sure Al Franken, Mike Moore, and maybe even Paul Begala would be bludgeoned with it whenever they appeared at an author's event. I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but this book does the cause no service whatsoever. Thankfully, it also does not seem to have done it any harm.