George W. Bush to pen book about decisions

The tentatively titled “Decision Points” is due for release in 2010 by Crown

NEW YORK - Former President George W. Bush, who once famously called himself "The Decider," is writing a book about decisions.

"I want people to understand the environment in which I was making decisions. I want people to get a sense of how decisions were made and I want people to understand the options that were placed before me," Bush said during a brief telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press from his office in Dallas.

Bush's book, tentatively (not decisively) called "Decision Points," is scheduled for a 2010 release by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group. It is unusual in a couple of ways.

Instead of telling his life story, Bush will concentrate on about a dozen personal and presidential choices, from giving up drinking to picking Dick Cheney as his vice president to sending troops to Iraq. He will also write about his relationship with family members, including his father, the first President Bush, his religious faith and his highly criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of having competing publishers bid, Bush and his representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, negotiated for world rights only with Crown Publishing, where authors include President Obama and Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Barnett used a similar strategy in working out deals with publisher Alfred A. Knopf for another client, former President Clinton.

"Proceeding in this way gets the project going promptly, avoids the time-consuming process of multiple meetings and multiple negotiations, and preserves confidentiality for all concerned," Barnett said.

Financial details were not disclosed, although publishers have openly doubted that Bush would receive the $15 million Clinton got for his memoir, "My Life."

Crown Publishing is a division of Random House Inc. and the deal was handled by Random House executive vice president and publisher at large Stephen Rubin. As head of the Doubleday Publishing Group — a division recently dismantled in a corporate realignment — Rubin released Dan Brown's mega-selling "The Da Vinci Code" and Kitty Kelley's "The Family," an unauthorized and unflattering take on the Bush dynasty.

Barnett said that Rubin and Crown had shown "great enthusiasm" and that a deal was made not long after Rubin and Crown officials met with Bush in Dallas.

The structure of Bush's current book is not unlike his "A Charge to Keep," published by William Morrow in 1999 as the then-Texas governor was preparing to run for president. In the foreword to "Charge," Bush noted that he had no interest in a comprehensive, chronological memoir.

"That would be far too boring," he wrote. "The book chronicles some of the events that have shaped my life and some of my major decisions and actions as governor of Texas."

Bush told the AP on Wednesday that he was not "comfortable with the first book, only because it seemed rushed," and that his current memoir would have "a lot more depth," thanks to his years as president. Although he didn't keep a diary while in the White House — he "jotted" down the occasional note — he said he began "Decision Points" just two days after leaving the White House and had written "maybe" 30,000 words so far.

Bush is working with research assistants and a former White House speechwriter, Chris Michel.

Once known for his reluctance to acknowledge mistakes, Bush said the book would include self-criticism, "Absolutely, yes," but cautioned that "hindsight is very easy" and that he would make sure readers could view events as he saw them.

"I want to recreate what it was like, for example, right after 9/11," he said, "and have people understand the emotions I felt and what others around me felt at the time."

Asked if he might write about the ouster of his first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, or about his decision not to pardon Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, choices both openly disputed by Cheney, Bush said he didn't know.

"I made a lot of decisions," he said.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in the investigation of the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Bush commuted Libby's sentence and saved him from serving time in prison, but Libby remains a convicted felon.

Bush said he has read other presidential memoirs, including Ulysses S. Grants' highly praised autobiography, a book he enjoyed in part because it was "anecdotal." He said he had "skimmed" Clinton's memoir and had yet to read either of Obama's books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

Like Clinton, he is a fan of "Personal History," the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir by Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

Presidential memoirs have rarely satisfied critics or the general public, with exceptions including Clinton's "My Life," a million seller despite mixed reviews, and Grant's memoirs, which didn't even cover his time in office. Bush's father also did not write a conventional memoir; he instead collaborated on a foreign policy book with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

George W. Bush has been talking for months about a memoir, even while he was president, and has said he wanted to give people an idea of the world as seen through a president's eyes. Publishers, noting Bush's low approval ratings and questioning his capacity for self-criticism, have been less enthusiastic, urging him not to hurry. Still, Barnett said he received calls from several publishers about a possible book.

Virtually all the top officials in the Bush administration, from Rice to political strategist Karl Rove, have either completed books or are in the midst of writing them. Cheney has said he plans a memoir and former first lady Laura Bush has a deal with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Her book, like her husband's, is scheduled for 2010. Barnett, who represents both Bushes, said that Laura Bush's book would come out first.

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Anti-Obama brickbats from left as well as right

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Opposition to President Barack Obama from Republicans is being augmented by pushback from his own Democrats as he takes on some liberal sacred cows.

There is grumbling from Obama's left flank against tax proposals in his ambitious budget, against his plans for a new military offensive in Afghanistan and over his stance towards the trade union movement.

"He has the classic task of the reformer, to get enough momentum up to overcome the inertial resistance of the status quo," Brookings Institution analyst William Galston said, identifying resistance from both left and right.

Obama Tuesday targeted one of the most powerful constituencies in the sprawling Democratic coalition -- the teachers unions.

"It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones," he said in a speech promising a world-class education system throughout the United States.

That raised the prospect of merit pay based on performance for better teachers, and dismissal for sub-par educators -- notions that have long been anathema to the National Education Association union.

Obama received scattered boos when he broached those ideas in a speech last year to the NEA, which with about 3.2 million members is the nation's biggest union for teachers.For the union movement as a whole, a critical test of Obama's intentions is looming as Congress starts debate on legislation designed to make it easier for workers to form union branches in their workplace.

Obama pledged last week to make the law a reality but it is encountering bitter resistance from employers and Republicans, who say its elimination of a secret ballot for would-be union members is an assault on democracy.

Several Democratic lawmakers also have misgivings about the "Employee Free Choice Act," as they do about Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget proposal.

Ideas such as means-testing health care for richer retirees, and limiting tax deductions by higher-income earners -- potentially hurting charitable giving -- have emerged as bones of contention in the budget debate.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the objections were par for the course.

"I think most people that have seen budgets go from here to there are not surprised that different individuals with competing interests look at and see different parts of a budget -- some things they like and some things they don't like -- whether it's Democrats or Republicans," he said.

Senate budget committee chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, is balking at cuts of billions of dollars to government farming subsidies while also saying Obama's planned deficit reduction is too modest.

Chris Van Hollen, a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, said disputes over the budget were a sign of harder debates to come after Obama won narrow approval from Congress for his massive economic stimulus bill.

"There are a lot of items in the budget that would normally get a lot more attention, if we were in a normal year," Van Hollen told the Washington Post.

"They've been eclipsed by the tidal wave of the economy," he said, while adding: "They are waiting in the wings."

Then there are the growing noises of discontent over Obama's plans to send another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, while leaving a sizeable residual force of up to 50,000 in Iraq.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have both expressed surprise at the 50,000 number as Obama tries to deliver on what is an article of faith for liberal Democrats -- ending the Iraq war.

A coalition of radical groups called ANSWER is planning an anti-war march March 21 on the Pentagon, arguing "President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely."

The president will not lose much sleep over the coalition's demands. But doubts about his Afghan strategy were crystallized in a Newsweek article bearing the cover-page headline of "Obama's Vietnam."

However, assailed by the right and needled by the left, Obama may just be in a political sweet spot. Half way through his first 100 days, opinion polls give the president a lofty job approval rating of more than 60 percent.

Resource http://news.yahoo.com

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