Bush, book-whacked

US President George Bush displayed his courage and guts this week in officially kickstarting his re-election bid in hostile terrain, in fervently liberal New York. This is in sharp contrast to the man who’d displace him. John Kerry settled for the more familiar environs of his Boston for the Democrat convention. But then Bush has the incumbency advantage. He also has the benefit of years of acclimatisation to a flourishing culture of Bush-hating. Indeed, for a man so roundly lambasted for his allegedly microscopic reading lists and philistine ways, Bush has been a boon for the publishing industry. That America matters has been the rather contentious assertion of his administration — and America and the rest of the world have responded by consuming copious doses of Bushabilia, not any of it flattering for the elected (just about) leader of the hyperpower.

US presidents — on account of their power and the very American tendency to collapse the personal and the political in assessing their leaders real-time — always invite intense theorising. But in the nature of the writing he has elicited while in office, Dubya’s case is vastly from, say, his predecessor’s. It is as different as fact is from fiction. Bush’s critics train their gaze resolutely on actuals, before drifting into stirring — and as even some non-Republicans would argue, far-fetched — theories of doom and worse. There’s Molly Ivins, who recently followed up Shrub, her hilarious yet alarming account of Bush’s Texas years, with Bushwhacked. There’s Maureen Dowd, who has compiled her stringent columns on the “boy emperor” into a bestselling book. And among the many others there’s always Michael Moore — that is, when he’s not busy producing anti-Bush documentaries. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, transformed into teflon at the very sight of a critic — even independent prosecutor Ken Starr. Nothing would stick, so they had to resort to fiction — his friend Joe Klein seized anonymity for Primary Colours, still the most accurate sketch. The masters also chipped in. Philip Roth cast many parallels with the Clinton saga in The Human Stain.

Yet, assessments of the Bush-hating oeuvre don’t rest on literary merit alone. This is polemic with a purpose. And this November we shall find out if personalising political attacks pays electoral dividend. Or whether it in fact assembles even a politician’s casual supporters behind him.