My two favorite reviews of Decision Points are this very serious – devastating, actually – take from Dan Froomkin, and Paul Constant’s less serious take which dual-reviews it with the newest book by Tucker Max.
Early passages in both books pivot on the protagonist’s use of a bullhorn. Max writes, “Everything you say becomes one level more humorous through a bullhorn. Stupid becomes passable, passable becomes funny, funny becomes hysterical, and hysterical becomes Dave Chappelle doing Rick James.” Max uses his bullhorn to yell “Go practice your throw-ins, you cheese-eating surrender monkey!” at some “European-looking dudes.” With his amplified voice, he tells a “chunky girl” to get tested for “hoof-and-mouth disease” because she is “frothing at the udder.” At the ruins of the World Trade Center shortly after 9/11, Bush finds a bullhorn “thrust into my hands… People shouted, ‘We can’t hear you.’ I shot back, ‘I can hear you!’ It got a cheer.” The bullhorn turned his stupidity into something passable, and he used those cheers to power his administration’s ascent into madness. After 9/11, Bush writes, “My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass.” (Important note: Bush never did kick the ass of the person who did it. You will not learn that from reading Decision Points . As in real life, he conveniently changes the subject.)
And so on.
