This week, Slate is featuring a conversation about George Bush's presidency, prompted by Oliver Stone's film W. Participants are Oliver Stone; Bob Woodward, author of The War Within; Ron Suskind, author of The Way of the World; and Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy.
Ron Suskind thinks the decision to go to war had already been made in January 2002. I think it happened during the summer of 2002. Bob Woodward thinks it wasn't made until January 2003. I suspect we have somewhat differing views, as well, on the balance of reasons for the war and the influence of various Bush advisers, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. To me, our back-and-forth supports the point that there's a lot we still don't know about the most important decision of George W. Bush's presidency. But I think we agree, at least, that this issue is going to occupy memoirists, journalists, and historians for years to come.
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StumbleUponNow back to W. Oliver, thank you for your thoughtful response and for the kind words about my book. To return the compliment, I really admire your ability to empathize with politicians you hate, something I thought you managed to do in Nixon as well as in W. Josh Brolin didn't turn his character into a cartoon; he played him with the energy, charisma, and caustic wit that draw people to George W. Bush in real life. Watching a lot of scenes in the movie, you can't help just liking that bad boy, which I imagine is an unsettling reaction for a lot of your audience. I had a similar feeling when I was writing The Bush Tragedy. The more I looked at Bush in a family context, the more human and sympathetic he became. When you understand his personal struggles and limitations, it's hard not to feel for the guy.
But I have to say that your approach to telling this story continues to rankle me. I certainly understand the need to dramatize. But even in a film or novel, there is a responsibility to truth. An essential attribute of any successful historical fiction, it seems to me, is plausibility. You have to present scenes and dialogue that might have happened, even if they didn't happen. Among recent films, I thought The Queen did this very well. Most of it was imagined, but the narrative and characters meshed with known reality. I recognize that your method is different, but it put me off every time I heard Bush say something that I knew he'd actually said in a completely different context. It wasn't filling in the blanks; it was reality purée.
You haven't said anything to justify the two crucial scenes I complained about. In my earlier post, I asked you to explain why you had Cheney making the case for war on the basis of a new American empire. Your answer is that you imagined it as "an outgrowth of his thinking." Isn't Cheney's actual thinking scary enough for you without extrapolating additional homunculi? To me, what you do here is not so different from John McCain and Sarah Palin contending that Barack Obama is a secret socialist because he wants to shift more of the tax burden to the rich. The words you put in Cheney's mouth are ones he wouldn't ever say. As support, you offer a quote from a speech he gave in 1999 to the effect that America's oil is likely to continue coming from the Middle East. But Cheney pointing that out when he ran Halliburton doesn't in any way support your movie's depiction of him as vice president arguing for American control of Iraqi and Iranian oil. Your version isn't a theory. It's a paranoid fantasy.
And with apologies for belaboring this, your Willie Horton scene just has no basis in reality. In his father's 1988 campaign, George W. was not responsible for relations with all outside groups. He handled relations with the religious right. In "connecting the dots," as you put it, you are positing a federal crime that no one else, to my knowledge, has ever accused George W. Bush of committing.
I think I've made my point here, Oliver, so I'll let you have the last word.
My thanks again to all of you for joining in the discussion this week. I've really enjoyed it.
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Movies are all about drama, not history-by-the-books.
Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser get it exactly right by focusing on Bush's character, not on trying to capture the verbatim history of events. There was a lot of good reporting, particularly by Bob Woodward, but no stenographers were in any of the important meetings. Therefore, everything is subject to speculation. And here is where Oliver and Stanley gave a fabulous, real, large, and acutely accurate psychological reading of W. and the events and people who surrounded him.
This film will be studied for generations. Not only is it fair to the subject, "W.", it is also fair to the real, underlying truth of the characters and the events. Which is a major-league accomplishment by the writer and the director. Kudos to both Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone.
--radlib1
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While W's drinking and carrying-on didn't result in him getting fined, tossed in jail, etc., when he did achieve he didn't (literally) get the pat on the back either. Whatever W did was meaningless to him, whether it be crash the car into the front door or get elected to positions of incredible power and status.
--brewcrew2008
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This all reminded me of the reviews I read of one of the biographies of Ronald Reagan, I believe it was "Dutch" by Edmund Morris. After being at Reagan's side for years and interviewing everyone he could who ever met Reagan he couldn't believe what he had found. He learned that Reagan was essentially a stuffed shirt, a kind of empty vessel who, like Bush, was incurious about the world and didn't really know how to fix any problems. But Morris could not believe this. Surely there must be more to Reagan. Thus he chocked it up to Reagan be a mysterious, inscrutable person of endless depth. Despite his closeness to Reagan Morris never found the bottom of the man, at least he couldn't believe that he had. Thus to explain Reagan Morris had to make up stories about Reagan and insert himself into events he wasn't a part of.
Suskind believes that some future writer will get a better and truer grasp of Bush. But if there is nothing else to grasp then Suskind is sounding or acting like Morris.
--doughdee222
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One thing Mr. Woodward left out: yes, it was believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and, yes, we tried to make a case of it. And in the end we were wrong, but let's not forget, Saddam was less than forthcoming until the U.S.A was knocking at his door.
We can get all over the weapons-of-mass-destruction argument and bash Bush, Powell, and all the others who were wrong. But Saddam closed his doors to regular inspections by the U.N. (until the last minute) and kept his entire country under his thumb.
-Pachomius
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A big part of his election campaign in 2000 was that he was the "CEO president" - that he would surround himself with advisers who were experts and would give him advice, and then he would make the decision. A huge problem with a "CEO" president who takes no time to understand any issue is that he is completely dependent on his advisers, and in this case, they were all some combination of delusional, insane, ideologically corrupt, incompetent, or gutless. Of course Bush decided to invade, he was fed information that could only lead him to one conclusion.
And this bit about Bush telling Cheney he's the boss - that had nothing to do with Cheney's control over policy, Bush just didn't want Cheney to appear to be making the decisions, and he wanted Cheney to be deferential to him. The whole Bush presidency was about him looking presidential, and being elected twice, and making big decisions to be remembered by. He had no real plan that he wanted to implement, he just wanted to look like he was in charge, and he didn't want Cheney to alter that perception.
--kgsbca
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The points missing from the discussion are, first, the way people process information, and second, the fact that the political climate at the time created tangible benefits to Bush which disposed him towards war.
Intelligence assessments, the existence or not of WMD, possible links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda--all of the available facts and interpretations of facts available to Bush were heavily laced with ambiguity. When faced with decisions in the presence of even minimal ambiguity, almost no human beings can analyze them completely objectively, and most tend to be strongly disposed to make the interpretation that is most advantageous to them. This happens to all of us to some degree, without our awareness. We will interpret available facts, and even bend them, if necessary, in order to interpret them in a way consistent with our pre-dispositions, without even thinking about it.
Bush is clearly either less able or less willing to set aside his pre-existing beliefs than most people, and most people aren't very good at it. This must be considered against the fact that, during the spring and summer leading up to the Iraq invasion, in a political sense, war was working for Bush and Cheney. […] Although most people agreed that action against the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified, many doubted whether it would be effective. However, by early in 2002, the skeptics looked wrong. […] It was a huge political success for Bush at the time, and defining himself as The Anti-terrorist became the strategy used to help Republicans gain in the 2002 elections.
I don't know if Weisberg is right that a decision was made to go to war in Iraq in mid 2002. But a psychology disposed toward war was strongly entrenched, and continued to be further fortified by the political advantage the Republicans gained from exploiting the conflict. The result may well have been that no single over-riding reason was needed. Between all of the players involved, a group-think took over in which each could assemble their own justifications from a long list of possibilities.
When you have a democracy governed by a collective dominated by a group-think that has been re-enforced by tangible benefits to the leaders resulting their interpretation of sketchy data, and when that same collective has great control over the presentation of the available datta to everyone else, the only reasons that really matter are the ones that will sell the idea to the public.
--not_abel
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I wish I had the date of the speech so I could go back and listen to it again. During the 2000 campaign, I heard a snippet of Bush speaking on the radio in which he said something to the effect of, "We don't have a monolithic enemy like in the days of the 50s, we have instead this vague unstructured threat field" What struck me about it was that he sounded wistful, disappointed that he missed all the fun of facing down an evil empire, going toe to toe against Kruschev. He was right, of course, about the vague unstructured threat field, but I think he wanted to test himself against the consolidated forces of evil. So I think he was predisposed to look for a monolithic enemy, to see the actions of a terrorist cabal as one face of evil incarnate. He wasn't content to fight Al Qaeda, he needed to be god's warrior and declared a global war on terror.
--Swampdog
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(10/28)