Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, Media Bias, and the Bush Haters

by Bill Sammon

A riveting portrait of President Bush as he broadens the war on terror overseas—and plunges into high-stakes political battles at home "They misunderestimated me," George W. Bush famously remarked on the eve of his historic presidency. Fractured syntax aside, Bush was his detractors misunderstood his appeal to the American public, and underestimated his considerable political skills. In this compelling new book, Bill Sammon reveals how the president is turning these misperceptions to his advantage in the looming showdown with John Kerry and the Bush haters. As senior White House correspondent for the Washington Times, Sammon has been granted extraordinary access to the president and his closest confidants, from political gurus Karl Rove and Andy Card to foreign policy advisers Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. The result is a compelling chronicle of the second eighteen months of George W. Bush's term, as the administration's focus shifts from al Qaeda and Afghanistan to Iraq and the 2004 election. Sammon's on-the-scene reporting and exclusive interviews with the president and his top advisers reveal how the White House is implementing the most profound shift in U.S. foreign policy in more than half a century, prompting an eminent Democratic historian to rank Bush alongside John Quincy Adams and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of America's "grand" strategists. For the first time, Sammon discloses the president's vow that Kerry will "regret" bad-mouthing the liberation of Iraq, the seminal event in the post-9/11 phase of the Bush presidency. Rove even details for Sammon the White House strategy to paint Kerry as a condescending elitist whose "blatant" attempts to capitalize on his Vietnam experience will ultimately come back to haunt him. Misunderestimated also meticulously tracks the rise of the Bush haters, a disturbing political phenomenon that colors everything from the war on terrorism to the presidential campaign. The impact extends to the press, which Sammon exposes for racing to brand Operation Iraqi Freedom another Vietnam "quagmire" less than eighteen months after making the same blunder during the Afghan war. In Misunderestimated, Sammon takes readers inside the Oval Office for historic decisions of war and peace, aboard Air Force One for a daring, surprise descent into Baghdad, and even on an intimate tour of Bush's beloved Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. It's a mesmerizing account of a president determined not to repeat his father's two fundamental mistakes—abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Biography

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Anna Ligtenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

ISBN 0060723831 - For a while, I'd found that books with a religious tone sort of almost required two separate reviews: one for the believers, one for the rest of the world. Political books are beginning to fall into that sort of category, for a different reason. There's the quality of the writing, all by itself, and then there's the accuracy of the details and the degree of the slant. Fitting that into one review ought to be fun!

In Misunderestimated, author Bill Sammon presents the reader with what seems to be a somewhat behind the scenes look at George W. Bush's first term in office. (It should be noted that the book is copyrighted 2004 and ends before the 2004 election; the timing matters a great deal more than you'd think it would.) Beginning with Bush's besieged appearance at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Sammon tells the story using the words of the participants often. This strengthens the sense of glimpsing behind the scenes details and gives some of the smaller stories within the big story great emotional impact.

The main purpose of the book seems to be summed up by the subtitle "The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters". The trouble with that is simple: "The President" is almost a bit player in this book. The bulk of the writing is about Iraq, including a biography of Saddam Hussein, and Secretary of State Colin Powell is a larger figure than the president. "Battles... John Kerry" is a bit odd to throw in the title because Kerry doesn't make an actual appearance as a presidential candidate until the last chapter. Even then, there's little campaign information and no interaction between the two men. "Battles... Bush Haters" seems gratuitous as well; other than the first chapter, the "Bush Haters" don't seem to appear as a group and are never very well defined by Sammon. With all of that in mind, Sammon fails to live up to his own (somewhat whiny) title and earns himself 2 stars.

Sammon is an unusually biased author. Sure, there are left-wing and right-wing authors out there by the dozens, but Sammon - for the moment - stands out from the lot of them for me. First, he takes every opportunity to mock and belittle "the press" and "the media"... but on the cover, Sammon is noted to be the "Washington Times Senior White House Correspondent", making him part of the group he ridicules. Either he's got a superiority complex or he's irrational. Or both.

In addition, throughout the book, Sammon ridicules fairly constantly: he disparages Jessica Lynch for "cowering in the backseat of a Humvee" when she was taken hostage and blames only the Post for writing her as a hero, failing to mention that the Pentagon reported (April 2, 2003) that she had been shot and stabbed, even though she hadn't. He seems gleeful as he reports that she was raped, which isn't the only somewhat despicable moment on his part.

Sammon pointlessly dedicates an entire chapter to ridiculing Dan Rather's interview of Saddam Hussein, mocking Rather for being polite to Hussein, a mad man with a history of killing people who tick him off. More than anything else, Sammon seems to gloat, at every opportunity, about how Bush won not just one but two wars, referring to Afghanistan as over and Iraq as a "three week war", all the while failing to point out how many times the Bush Administration lied when they tried to implicate Hussein in the September 11th attacks. This is the problem with trying to write history as it happens - you get a lot wrong, because it's not over yet. We remain "bogged down in the quagmire" (a phrase Sammon takes exception to often) of war in both countries, and the comparisons to Vietnam (another thing that bothers Sammon) have gone on for years after both Bush and Sammon declared "Mission Accomplished".

On the up side, this is a very easy read. The riots in Portland and Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad for Thanksgiving are both very well written vignettes, as is the look at Powell's angst over his presentation to the United Nations. (A note about that portion of the book - almost word for word, it appears in a 2006 Washington Post article titled "Falling on His Sword" by Karen DeYoung; that article is an excerpt from her book ISBN 1400075645 Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell (Vintage), which makes me curious if she credits Sammon for it.) Even though it doesn't flow smoothly, fails to live up to the title, and is biased, it's always good to get the story from all sides and Sammon's managed to present this one in a read-able way. The only other failing, in my opinion, is that there's no index, an egregious omission in any non-fiction title.

- AnnaLovesBooks

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really puts into perspective the rise of the "Bush Hating Bandwagon" that the majority of people who jumped on did so in haste, for foolish and uneducated reasons, and backed up their opinions with "opinion based facts" which, as you could guess, is simply someone claiming to be smart that tells you what the facts are when they've really taken those "facts" out of the tooth fairy's handbag. The book didn't have as much analysis as I would have liked, but it makes its points through specific experiences and the way they were handled and portrayed by the media, bushhaters, and how they actually happened. I for one have never hopped on the bandwagon, and end up defending Bush often (albeit not everything, of course), but the man is at least principled and not swayed by polls.

[Hootie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave interesting insight to President Bush that is not portrayed or shown on a normal basis.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little dated (pre-2004), but it's a good read. The opening with the anti-Bush protesters in Seattle was really frightening though. People are animals.

[Jim Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading. Great book!