"Misunderestimated" by Bill Sammon

Well, I guess seeing "Fahrenheit 911" had some positive effect on me.

That, and a discussion on the ezBoard community Have Theology, WILL ARGUE, provoked me to go out and get some books on the Bush administration (I mean, REAL books, not rants and raves by the likes of Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly or, for that matter, Moore or Franken...)

I tried to pick some that received generally favorable reviews and that contained positive comments (in Amazon) from both sides of the partisan divide. (Man, oh man, was it TOUGH to find four semi-positive books about Bush... :-)

Actually, not all the books I looked at are easy to classify - most giving some type of nuanced evaluation for Bush.

At any rate, I'm starting with "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters" by Bill Sammon, Senior White House Correspondent for the right-leaning Washington Times and political analyst for the more-right-leaning Fox News Network.

I started with it for the same reason you learn to eat your spinach before your desert - it goes down a little better that way :-)

I'm about a third of the way through the book and, to my surprise, am finding it an enjoyable, well-written and informative read despite the author's obvious enthusiasm for George W.

One of the incidents he recounts (so to speak) in the early part of the book is a fund-rasiing talk in Portland, OR where his motorcade was surrounded by maniacle Bush-haters and where he spent the evening (along with the high-rolling speach attenders) under a state of siege.

Ridiculously enough, Bush and his Republican conventioneers were sharing the hotel with "hundreds of homosexual men who were in Portalnd for the Gay Softball World Series".

The protestors, who - according to Sammon - were beyond any sort of reason also attacked and intimidated the gays trying to get to the hotel leading to a surreal discussion between Ari Fleischer and some of the gay leadership commiserating on what a shame it was that everyone just couldn't get along :-)

More reports as I continue through the book, but so far I give it a big thumbs up. (I don't necessarily AGREE with the spin he puts on events, but at least the events are laid out in a clear and even entertaining fashion.

This blog will be posted to both The Salon (in the Kingdom of Morovia) and City of God in The Secular City in Have Theology, WILL ARGUE and we'll see what kind of discussion we can provoke.