The Book on Bush

The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, by David Frum (Random House, 303 pp., $25.95)

FOUR decades ago, former White House speech writer Emmett Hughes caused a stir in Washington with a thoughtful memoir of the Eisenhower presidency called The Ordeal of Power. The book was reflective and respectful; it was a sensation because Hughes had violated a prevailing taboo by writing candidly about the president. Former White House aides were then the Washington equivalent of indentured servants: If they wrote memoirs—and most didn’t—they were expected to extol the virtues of the president they had served. The model of the hagiographic genre was Roosevelt and Hopkins, a worshipful memoir by the playwright Robert Sherwood, an intimate of President Franklin Roosevelt.

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About the Author

Lou Cannon

Mr. Cannon is the author of Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD.

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The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, by David Frum (Random House, 303 pp., $25.95)

FOUR decades ago, former White House speech writer Emmett Hughes caused a stir in Washington with a thoughtful memoir of the Eisenhower presidency called The Ordeal of Power. The book was reflective and respectful; it was a sensation because Hughes had violated a prevailing taboo by writing candidly about the president. Former White House aides were then the Washington equivalent of indentured servants: If they wrote memoirs—and most didn’t—they were expected to extol the virtues of the president they had served. The model of the hagiographic genre was Roosevelt and Hopkins, a worshipful memoir by the playwright Robert Sherwood, an intimate of President Franklin Roosevelt.