Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

In Days of Fire , Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times , takes us on a gripping and intimate journey through the eight years of the Bush and Cheney administration in a tour-de-force narrative of a dramatic and controversial presidency.Theirs was the most captivating American political partnership since Richard Nixon and Henry a bold and untested president and his seasoned, relentless vice president. Confronted by one crisis after another, they struggled to protect the country, remake the world, and define their own relationship along the way. In Days of Fire , Peter Baker chronicles the history of the most consequential presidency in modern times through the prism of its two most compelling characters, capturing the elusive and shifting alliance of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney as no historian has done before. He brings to life with in-the-room immediacy all the drama of an era marked by devastating terror attacks, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and financial collapse. The real story of Bush and Cheney is a far more fascinating tale than the familiar suspicion that Cheney was the power behind the throne. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with key players, and thousands of pages of never-released notes, memos, and other internal documents, Baker paints a riveting portrait of a partnership that evolved dramatically over time, from the early days when Bush leaned on Cheney, making him the most influential vice president in history, to their final hours, when the two had grown so far apart they were clashing in the West Wing. Together and separately, they were tested as no other president and vice president have been, first on a bright September morning, an unforgettable “day of fire” just months into the presidency, and on countless days of fire over the course of eight tumultuous years. Days of Fire is a monumental and definitive work that will rank with the best of presidential histories. As absorbing as a thriller, it is eye-opening and essential reading.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Biography, Presidents, American History, War

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

There is more than one author with this name in the database.

Peter Baker has been a journalist for the Washington Post and the New York Times. He covered President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, resulting in the book The Breach. As the Post's Moscow bureau chief, he wrote the book Kremlin Rising. He is married to the journalist Susan Glasser.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hesitated for a good long while before I finally picked up Peter Baker’s Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House.. My hesitation had nothing do to with quality, as the book has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. It had to do with subject-matter. Though it feels like a lifetime ago (or maybe several lifetimes ago), the Bush Administration resides in our recent past. I believe that it’s hard to write good history when the history is still fresh. Instead of dispassionate analysis and reflection, you get kneejerk reactions. Time obscures some things, to be sure, but it clarifies others.

Also, I lived through those years. They weren’t all that great the first time around. I wasn’t exactly waiting for a chance to revisit them. (My one positive takeaway of Bush’s eight years in office was the stimulus check I received. I sensed, vaguely, that I was being bought off. It turned out I can be bought quite cheaply).

Eventually, the undeniable quality of Baker’s work forced my hand. As advertised, it is a monumentally grand retelling of some fairly tumultuous times.

There are many adjectives to describe the Bush years. Smooth is not one of them. (Also not apt: uneventful). It began (you may recall – or perhaps you’ve tried to forget) with a bitterly contested recount in Florida and ended with a sharply-divided Administration – and Congress – dealing with the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. (I tried to avoid a comparison to the Great Depression, but I don’t think it’s possible). In between there were low points, and lower points, and also a stimulus check. The War in Afghanistan. The escape of Osama bin Laden. The War in Iraq. The mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. Scooter Libby’s outing of Valerie Plame. The utter collapse of the economy.

There were victories as well, to be sure. But with the exception of Bush’s extraordinary effort to combat AIDS in Africa, even his triumphs – the toppling of Saddam Hussein; No Child Left Behind; the tax cuts – are shrouded in controversy and the residue of unintended consequences.

Baker chooses to tell this story in a very particular way – as a story. This is not a political screed, arguing either for or against the Bush/Cheney Administration. This is not a volume filled with rigid analysis. Baker has a definite theme – that George W. Bush was not Dick Cheney’s puppet – but he never hits you over the head with it. He really doesn’t have anything to prove, just something to share.

Baker tells this tale in novelistic style. Scenes are set with fly-on-the-wall there-ness. There is reconstructed dialogue and internal monologues. If we view this as a novel (albeit a novel that is heavily sourced and includes hundreds of annotated endnotes), the two main characters are Bush and Cheney.

Superficially, Bush presented himself as one of the simplest presidents in history. He often failed as a communicator, struggling to string words into a coherent sentence. His extemporaneous remarks were often empty bluster that blew back in his face. He could project a lack of seriousness (those facial gestures!) that was compounded by his many well-documented trips to his ranch.

In Baker’s hands, though, Bush is given depth and shading. A reformed drinker, he was a man of iron discipline. He was politically pragmatic, passed bipartisan legislation, and had a truly compassionate side that did not often shine through while he lived in the White House. He also made disastrous mistakes that might never be understood but will be studied forever. Bush is often criticized for a failure of introspection. He never really could admit his errors. But maybe that’s part of being president. If you have to make the call, if you have to decide things that affect millions of people, perhaps your ego needs a certain shield.

I didn’t vote for Bush, twice, but by the end, I had newfound respect for the him and the challenges he faced. He is, to my surprise, incredibly compelling.

Bush shares this book’s stage – as he will forever, in all history books – with Vice President Cheney, the most powerful VP we’ve ever had. During the Bush years, Cheney served as the lighting rod. He took the brunt of the criticism, made up the bulk of the late-night talk show jokes. Many viewed him as the brains in the White House, leading Bush around by the nose. And to be sure, in the first term, Cheney had a lot of sway in the foreign policy arena. His fingerprints are all over the excesses of “the War on Terror” and the invasion of Iraq.

Cheney comes across as a man far more concerned with international affairs than domestic politics. Though a rock-ribbed conservative, he had a surprisingly liberal stand (pushed, perhaps, by family circumstances) on gay rights. Baker certainly helped me understand Cheney better. When I started reading Days of Fire, I thought he was an asshole. Now, I’ve downgraded that to prick.

Since this is a book about politics, the question of bias is bound to arise. As I said before, this isn’t a polemic. There is a soft bias towards the Bush Administration, but that is an inevitable function of Baker’s storytelling viewpoint. Everything unfolds from the Administration’s perspective, inside looking out. Accordingly, many of the Administration’s failures are explained or rationalized away. Too often, Baker will describe something – like Katrina – as the “appearance of failure”, when in reality, the failure stems from facts on the ground.

Absolute non-partisanship is probably impossible. But if Baker sometimes seems overly forgiving, it's because he is more interested in the human story than political ideology. Ideology is a theoretical construct that doesn't work in the real world because one size does not fit all. Ideology always breaks itself against the world. Time and again, Baker shows you people working and struggling and trying to find the least-wrong answer to difficult questions. You may not agree with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all the rest, but it is helpful - even important - to view them as actual people, rather than lock-stepped automatons bearing the banner of their political party.

Days of Fire is a sturdy 653 pages of text. Of course, that is not nearly enough space to fully cover the Bush years. You could probably spend 653 pages on the decision invade Iraq. As such, there is a certain feeling of compression to the issues, as monumental events get reduced to a few pages or paragraphs. On the other hand, Days of Fire is terrifically, even breathlessly paced. It’s one of those books you take to bed with you and suddenly its way past your bedtime.

History is comforting because it is a thing that we have already overcome. No matter how terrible the struggle, it is in the past and can no longer hurt us. The future is terrifying because we don’t yet know how it’s going to play out. This reality gives Days of Fire a certain strange tonality. By the final pages, it is nearly bathing in nostalgia.

The Bush Administration evokes a lot of feelings within me, but nostalgia is not one of them. But whatever you feel about Bush and Cheney, whatever your political stripe, you will likely find Days of Fire to be a good reading experience. It is well crafted, evocative, and engrossing.

If it does nothing else at all, it should prove to you that being the president is the absolute worst, six-packs-of-Tums-a-day job in the world. After reading Days of Fire, I have literally no conception why a person would run for this office. Which, of course, makes me slightly afraid of anyone who decides to do so.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Baker's "Days of Fire" was published in 2013. I started reading it in 2016. There are, perhaps, some good reasons as to why it took me so long to finish the book, but I can't think of any at the moment.

The length may be one. It's nearly 900 pages long, which may be a good reason for some, but I have never been stymied by long books before.

It may be the subject matter. It is, after all, about the Bush/Cheney years, and the politicking that was going on then. Then again, I have never been turned off by books of politics. On the contrary, I have always found politics fascinating, in the same way that I find airplane crashes fascinating.

It may be the messiness of life: I was raising a kid, working a new job, dealing with the loss of my father-in-law, having to watch trump win the presidential election and seeing the prospect of our once-decent country being flushed down the toilet.

So, yeah, maybe that was why. I didn't want to read a book about one awful presidency while a new awful---and, by all measure, far more dangerous and stupid---president had just been elected.

So, I literally put this book on hold for about seven years and just got back to reading it this year.

It's not bad, actually. To be fair, it's quite good. Baker writes about the Bush/Cheney years as if he is writing a novel and as if he was a fly-on-the-wall during a lot of significant meetings. It's a very revealing and, more importantly, objective look at eight extremely vital years in our history. (It's clear he did a shit-ton of research, as the end notes section is about three hundred pages long.)

My views of Bush have changed somewhat over the years. I no longer look at him as one of the dumbest or most dangerous presidents in history. donald trump has now taken that mantle. Bush, I now believe, was smarter than he came across on screen. He also comes across, in the book, as more compassionate as he appeared in the press. I still disagree with a lot of his policies and actions (reducing stem cell research, the Iraq War, the bail-outs of Wall Streeters and the auto industry) but I feel like he did what he did for reasons that he felt were right, not necessarily Right. He was also in office during three of the worst things to happen to the U.S.: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 recession, none of which was his fault. (Arguably, anyway.)

I still think Cheney was an asshole.

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I want to hang Saakashvili by the balls," Putin told Sarkozy.
"Hang him?" Sarkozy asked.
"Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein."
"But do you want to end up like Bush?"
"Ah," Putin replied, "there you have a point."

"The president," a senior [Bush] administration official said, "thinks cutting and running on his friends shows weakness. Change shows weakness. Doing what everyone knows has to be done shows weakness."

"You know there are all these conspiracy theories that Dick runs the country . . . or Karl [Rove] runs the country. Why aren't there any conspiracy theories that I run the country? Really ticks me off." - George W. Bush, kidding on the square at the Gridiron Club, March 11, 2006

Days of Fire, Peter Baker's doorstop book on the Bush administration, is a hefty, eight-hundred-plus pag book. Coming as it does after most of the principals have written their memoirs, after the presidential library opened and prompted some conservatives to try rehabilitating Bush's image, the book aspires to be a journalistic account written with enough distanct to be comprehensive. (The classic of the form, to my mind, is Lou Cannon's PRESIDENT REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME, which is still very much worth reading.) Baker's ultimate conclusions strike me as soft headed and unconvincing, but you read a book like this for the reporting more than the big picture analysis and there is plenty to learn.

Baker looks at the administration through the prism of the Bush-Cheney partnership, which is natural enough. He paints a portrait of Bush as considerably more in control over his administration than he often seemed; Cheney was not quite the puppet-master that people imagined either, and even at the height of his influence was best when he was pushing something that Bush wanted to do anyway. Bush comes off as intelligent, particularly about people--the idea that he was stupid was an image that he half-enjoyed, because he loved to beat people's expectations. ("I really enjoy it when somebody says, that son of a bitch just got out a coherent sentence.")

What struck me most about Bush was the fact that he so strongly believed himself to be a compassionate person. "Compassionate conservatism" was a useful line in an era when the Republican party was making itself seem harsh and extremist, but Bush well and truly saw himself that way. He was haunted as governor by an encounter with a poor black kid in juvenile hall, and spent years afterward trying to devise plans (within the limits of his conservative ideology) to help kids like that. When it came time to push No Child Left Behind, Bush impressed Ted Kennedy as being both passionate about education for poor children and in command of the details, not something that Bush would normally be accused of.

Of course, the popular image of Bush was not too far off in many ways. He was arrogant and prone to snap judgments, and often ignorant about basic things. In his first months in office, it took him all of five minutes to conclude that Kim Dae Jung was naive about the North Koreans; when in fact Kim had been involved in Korean politics since Bush was a small child. As his team struggled to fix a devastating financial crisis in the last year of his presidency, Bush marveled: "Someday you guys are going to have to tell me how we ended up with a system like this and what we need to do to fix it." Apparently, Bush wanted to wait until after he left office to consider trivia like how to keep the economy functioning.

Combined, Bush's arrogance, ignorance, and his self-identification as a compassionate person prompted him to a sort of messianic fervor. Baker recounts a meeting during the buildup to the Iraq War between Bush and members of the Republican Jewish Coalition. One member mentioned that his grandfather had been one of the activists who urged FDR to take stronger action against the Holocaust during World War II. This man went on to say that if only Bush had been in office in those days, millions of Jewish lives would be saved. Some men might have seen this as a gross, overweening bit of flattery from a supporter; Bush's eyes filled at the thought. And why not? He had already promised the Republican Governor's Association that "Afghanistan and Iraq will lead that part of the world to democracy." Having already (in his mind) saved the Middle East for democracy, why not stop the Holocaust for a second act?

Baker is also good at showing how well Bush and Cheney got high on their own supply. They were not only the primary merchants of fear ("the blood of a hundred thousand will be on your hands" was a favorite Cheney conversation stopper), they consumed it themselves in mass quantities, Cheney in particular. Recently, Cheney announced that he had the wireless function on his pacemaker disabled to prevent terrorists from hacking into his circulatory system and killing him from a distance. He also at one time attempted to have anthrax treatments placed in every home in America, a plan defeated when one Bush cabinet official pointed out the risks of freely handing out powerful drugs without a prescription.

In the days after the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence agencies were presenting Bush and Cheney with something called a Threat Matrix, a collection of every terrorist threat no matter how far fetched. Radical groups in Uzbekistan were giving nuclear material to bin Laden. The White House was tainted by a biological attack. Anthrax would kill millions before the US government could organize to stop it. Many people (myself included) in late 2001 were irrationally convinced that the 9/11 attacks were only a prelude to something far more terrible, a fear that Bush and Cheney were able to back up with fragments of evidence that could be spun more or less any way that validated their preconceived notions. (Baker recounts one meeting where Cheney, after hearing that bin Laden was meeting with Pakistani nuclear scientists and may have received fissile material from Uzbekistan, determines that Saddam Hussein was a bigger threat than ever.)

Cheney had come into the administration convinced of the need to build up the executive branch against sentimental busybodies who want to know when their government is having people killed or violating somebody's privacy or petty bullshit like that. But the 9/11 attacks gave him and Bush not just the opportunity but the perceived obligation to go as far down the rabbit hole as possible. Given how much of the national security architecture is still with us here in the United States, it's remarkable to remember that it was the product of a few quiet meetings, held largely in secret. (Rumsfeld wasn't even originally told about the wiretapping program, for example.) This small collection of deeply paranoid authoritarian-minded men, operating under the (dubious, but at the time very potent) conviction that millions of lives hung int he balance, made fateful decisions that affect us all still.

What's also remarkable, and somewhat less well known, is the fact that Bush's presidency changed dramatically from his first term to his second. In the first term, Cheney held a lot of sway, and he consistently won battles against bureaucratic rivals like Colin Powell and Paul O'Neill. But after the election of 2004, Bush acted deliberately to constrain Cheney's influence; the choice of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State put the diplomatic corps under the control of a woman who frankly worshiped Bush, and who posed much more of a challenge to Cheney than a vacillating, weakened Colin Powell.

Quietly, Bush stopped ordering water-boarding, pared back the use of torture, and made diplomatic initiatives to North Korea that Cheney found appalling and ill-considered. The perceived success of the surge even allowed Bush to negotiate a withdrawal from Iraq with fixed deadlines, something that he had long considered to be tantamount to surrender. In a famous example, Cheney tried pushing the Bush administration to launch airstrikes against a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Bush responded by asking his other advisers, "Does anybody here stand with the vice president?" Not a hand went up.

Baker's book, although hardly a hagiography, is far kinder to Bush than I would have liked. He ends the book by suggesting that Bush has a "solid record" if you ignore the 9/11 attacks, the hundreds of thousands of people who died as the result of his needless war, and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. But those things can't be taken out of the picture. Bush was in some ways sharper than the Republicans who seek to replace him, and "compassionate conservatism" remains the best way for Republicans to adapt to the changing demographics of the electorate. But if these things are easily forgotten, it's because Bush left the White House with his country and his party teetering on the brink of collapse. We're still living in the house that Bush built.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first presidential election for which I was eligible to vote was in 2004, and I voted against Bush as my foray into civic participation. Given Bush's purported disinclination towards the "East Coast, Ivy League establishment," I'm guessing he wouldn't have been a big fan of mine either. However, these were not really relevant factors in my enjoying the book. If you're looking for a hagiography or a smear job you'll be disappointed.

What Peter Baker has created is an impressively smooth narrative of the goings-ons in the world and the White House during the Bush Administration (with some basic biographical tales for both Bush and Cheney). The information isn’t really aimed at swaying your opinion about these events one way or the other. It just tells you more.

I came away from this with a greater appreciation for both Bush and Cheney (and a cabinet member here or there) as they transformed from caricatures to complex individuals as I read. Baker gives you the background, antecedents, behind-the-scenes and public portrayal of milestone moments and events (which will undoubtedly make this book all the more valuable for history’s sake). The more humanizing moments didn’t detract from the weight of decisions made. I certainly didn’t change my stance on whether or not we should have gone to war with Iraq, but I do appreciate the gravity with which Bush addressed this throughout his time in office. Bush definitely cried a lot more during his stint as POTUS than I would have thought.

The cabinet dynamics weren’t dissimilar from those that preceded them. There were differences of opinions, fall guys, business-related biases, and definitely some hurt feelings. (I never knew that Rumsfeld was Condaleezza Rice’s sensei, or mentor or whatever, and it was a fascinating relationship to watch collapse.) I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that Cheney was a fan of Darrell Hammond’s portrayal of him on SNL or that Bush was super into challenging people to bicycle races.

This was a great listen (thanks audible) that, at times, felt almost nostalgic for me as I encountered the events (from Al Gore’s sighs during the presidential debates to Cheney’s hunting fiasco) that dominated the news from my sophomore year of high school through college graduation. While the tour down memory lane played in to my enjoyment factor, I give Baker a great deal of credit as a story teller. I’d definitely recommend this both to the people of now and the future (though I’m not too worried about chrononauts needing my book recommendations).

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that, much like 70% of Americans, I was not a fan of Bush and one of the main reasons I started reading this book was to bolster the opinions I had already formed. This book did pretty much the exact opposite. By no means am I saying that I will now defend the W. Bush administration. I still think you can make a strong case that he was one of the worst presidents in American history. But I walked away from this book with the belief that you can make an equally strong case that few could have become great presidents with the hand he was dealt.

I think this book is a must read for our time. We (myself strongly included) have become victims of a polarized culture that demands we pick sides and then stick doggedly to our decisions. I admit that I fell victim to this culture. My Bush hatred was fueled largely by cable news outlets that told me how I should feel. This book is great because it doesn't try to decide what is right or wrong. It's meant to contextualize policies and have the reader form his or her own opinions. In a time of black and white, narrow minded thinking this book is refreshing in it's even handedness and comfort with nuance and uncertainty.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the actions and legacy of the Bush administration have been reduced to bumper-sticker slogans and treated like bad memories to be forgotten, Peter Baker does a great job telling us what actually happened. He gives us a vivid portrait of a presidency forged in crisis and virtually defined by controversy.

The book’s compelling and fast-paced narrative is driven more by the people and personalities that inhabited it rather than actual events. Still, Baker gives us a good sense of the daily grind of the administration. But sometimes it feels like Baker did some cramming with this work, including things in his story whose significance is unclear.

Baker doesn't bring a lot of new revelations about the administration; rather he does a great job integrating all of the books and memoirs that have come out since the administration took office. Baker gives us a great portrait of two men reacting to circumstances beyond their control.

Baker is very good at providing context. It is important to note that many of the administration’s controversies were not solely the brainchilds of Bush and Cheney. The presidency does not operate in a vacuum. The war in Iraq is usually blamed on Bush’s stupidity or Cheney’s evil machinations. But critics usually fail to point out that the war received Congressional backing, including backing from almost every Democrat that later criticized the war. And the idea of Iraqi regime change did not originate with Bush. After the Gulf War, Iraq continued to be a vexing problem, and in 1998 President Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act, which made Iraqi regime change official US policy. Under the Clinton administration there were covert attempts to spark a Kurdish uprising against Saddam. But Saddam crushed it, which led policymakers to believe that only overt military force could oust Saddam.

Contrary to popular belief, Bush’s foreign policy was not unilateralist. Saddam Hussein, for example, was removed by a coalition of various powers after his failure to comply with UN resolutions. Saddam had spurned as many as fourteen UN resolutions and committed human rights abuses for fun. And almost everybody genuinely believed that Saddam had WMD, including the British, the French, the Russians, the Israelis, the Chinese, and even Saddam’s own generals. The US intelligence community strongly believed it. Most Democrats also believed it.

A commonly cited case of the administration’s disregard of the law was the decision to engage in warrantless wiretapping, ignoring FISA requirements to get a court-issued warrant before targeting US citizens for surveillance. However, Congress had given the administration a considerable degree of leeway regarding the war on terror’s prosecution. Many courts ruled that the administration did have the authority to engage in warrantless wiretapping. Again, the administration did not operate in a vacuum. But in retrospect, it probably should have been more discreet in using its new powers.

Critics also like to pounce on Cheney’ s “connections” with the oil business, which they vaguely connect with the war in Iraq . Cheney, of course, once headed Halliburton, which was a beneficiary of no-bid contracts in Iraq after the invasion. Conspiracy theorists use this to claim that the war was about oil. In order to believe this, of course, Halliburton would actually have had to make a gigantic profit from the war. However, according to the facts, Halliburton made only $85 million in Iraq in 2003, out of expenditures of $3.6 billion, a profit margin of less than 2.5%, hardly what I would call “war profiteering.” And Cheney didn't even profit from this. What Cheney received was deferred compensation, which he received between the 2000 election and the inauguration. Thus, if Halliburton made or lost money, Cheney’s checks would remain the same. Before taking office, Cheney had also given up $8 million in stock options from Halliburton. There is no evidence that Cheney benefited financially from any Halliburton work in post-invasion Iraq. Besides, if Bush invaded Iraq for oil, US oil imports from Iraq would have skyrocketed after the invasion. But in fact, Iraqi oil production plummeted following the invasion.

Yes, the administration made their share of mistakes and miscalculations, just like every other government that has ever existed. But there is never a simple right or wrong answer to any one of the world’s endless and complicated problems. The world, and the truth, is always more complex than pundits or news bytes would lead you to believe.

The core of, the book, of course, is the relationship between Bush and Cheney, which evolved over time. In his first term, Bush the inexperienced idealist leaned heavily on Cheney’s experience, but operated more independently, and leaning on different advisors like Rice more during his second term. Bush emerges a bright and idealistic human being who did not shrink from tough decisions. Notably, Bush never had any misgivings that invading Iraq was a mistake. It could have been easy to just pull out after finding no WMDs and leave the whole mess to the Iraqis. Bush worried about failure, but he was determined not to show it. And admirably, Bush never broke under the strain, as Lyndon Johnson did under Vietnam. Bush refused to be pessimistic. He made the lonely decision to mount the surge when there was enormous pressure to withdraw. Cheney comes off as a cold but forceful adviser (apparently Cheney once took a personality test that determined that his ideal job would be funeral director).

Baker dispels the myth of a cold, devious Cheney manipulating the goofy, idealistic Bush. Cheney was without question the most powerful and influential vice president in US history. But Bush proved to be quite assertive at times, and as the presidency went on Bush actually distanced himself from Cheney to a degree and leaned more on other advisers like Rice. Cheney’s influence declined during the second term, and he was never really close to Bush anymore after they left office.

Both sympathetic and critical, this is a valuable and overdue look at the Bush administration.

[Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I found this absolutely absorbing, and as readable as a Stephen King novel, and pretty well-written (just like a Stephen King novel), in the end I was sort of grossed-out by this whitewashing of Bush and Cheney posing as a balanced and critical examination of their two terms in office. It was especially a Bush love-fest. Hey, he's a smart, sensitive, caring man after all! In everything he did, he only meant well!

Almost no words spent on the Iraqi dead, which he must take responsibility for, and just a couple of fleeting mentions of the possible role of oil in the Iraq war. Bush's less-than-distinguised career in the National Guard is glossed over, as is just about every other possible shortcoming on Bush's part.

In the end: jingoistic propaganda, but a pretty good read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the navy steward worked his way around the table taking orders, most of the officials stuck with a simple fruit bowl. Cheney, on the other hand, ordered bacon and eggs. Hill was struck that the vice president would order something so different when everyone was going light, especially since he had had four heart attacks. (p. 567)

Ah, this book has a lot of new moments, but for some reason this late one stuck with me. Baker's book is essentially the story of a failed presidency, and a big reason for that failure is its ongoing, nearly fatal stubbornness. Iraq. Spying. Torture. Refusing to fire Rumsfield. Harriet Miers. Bullheaded in the extreme. Dick Cheney plowing into a plate of bacon and eggs, no matter what, says it all. Seriously, this is a very good, and long, book covering the eight years of the Bush administration. And Baker gives you all of it. Seemingly every day. In lesser hands, this could have been a deadening experience. But Baker is a fine writer, and through the sheer accumulation of detail, along with a sympathetic (but by no means partisan) eye, creates a context that humanizes most of the major players of these momentous years. Bush, in particular, benefits. As much I disagree with his invasion of a Iraq, he generally comes across as a warm hearted and emotional guy trying to get it right. Baker, with a novelist's flair, at one point, even as the violence of Iraq dominates just about every page, has Bush embracing his dying dog on the White House lawn at dusk. Damn.

More importantly, late in the book, Baker paints a picture of a president (he reads fourteen bios on Lincoln in one year!) who has grown into his role. Against the advice -- sometimes bordering on insubordination -- of nearly everyone, excepting a few young aides (Stephen Hadley, Meghan O'Sullivan (a real star in the book) and Brett McGurk), Bush reversed the drift in Iraq, and instituted the controversial "surge." Boy, at the time the "surge" escalation happened, I was STRONGLY opposed. Bush's display of presidential leadership here is as fine as any I've read. However, the problem here is that this decision is teathered to the controversial decision to invade in the first place. As Petraeus himself has said, "surge" tactics can only buy you time. In the end you must find a political solution.

If you're coming to this book to find illumination regarding the decision to invade Iraq, you'll be disappointed. You just don't know for sure where it comes from. About a week after 9/11, at a meeting of war cabinet officials, Wolfowitz blurted out that there was a 10 to 50% chance that Hussein was involved in the attacks. Where Wolfowitz got that number, out of the air or out of his ass, I have no idea. Even Bush got pissed, saying "How many times do I have to tell you we are not going after Iraq this minute?" At this point, I got the sense that some conversations, ones that perhaps preceded 9/11, have not yet been revealed. And it's only a week or so later, Bush is telling Blair that Iraq will have to be dealt with.

Did someone get to Bush in that time? If so, it would have been Cheney. Cheney is hard to like, especially in the early days of the administration. To some extent Cheney does reinforce and help the inexperienced president. If you want to go Hard Line, Cheney is your man. But Baker destroys the notion of Cheney as puppet master. Cheney, who is actually quite deferential to the office of the president, only takes what Bush pushes his way. When the second term comes around, Bush, who is by nature hyper competitive, is ready to take back the decision making. Cheney soon becomes a reduced figure. Still bitching and grumping, and on occasion winning a fight here and there, but for the most part replaced by Condoleezza Rice -- who can, and does, push back.

Baker also covers Bush's domestic efforts, most of which flamed out. And then there's Katrina, but even here Baker shows the state of Louisiana as having its share of idiots in high places. Bush shows a degree of necessary calm during the financial crisis, though I doubt he'll ever get credit for those hard decisions, ones that probably saved us from another Great Depression. Bush does shine when it comes to relief in Africa. In the end, years and years from now, one hopes that he is also remembered for the lives he saved there.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have moved on to the next stage of my grim fascination with the US presidency from the voyeuristic masochistic delight of an introvert following the pain of the campaign to now actually reading about the actual time spent in office. I have a big fat book about Lincoln leering at me as we speak.

Anyway I am not really sure why I read this book apart from the realization that books about campaign are the gateway drugs to reading about presidents. I did not particularly enjoy the time Bush was in office and a certain surprising nostalgia given the current president elect aside I had little interest in revisiting this time.

I am glad I did though because I learnt the following: being the president is an awful role; the stress they had in the aftermath of 9/11 with daily worst case scenarios being sent to Bush/Cheney in a bureaucratic orgy of doom and ass coveringwould have driven most completely insane; Bush to his credit regularly met the relatives of those killed in the wars in private; Bush was seen as the best president in terms of aid for Africa ever and the link between Bush'sbest features loyalty, a willingness to pursue what he felt was right rather than what was popular, and a desire not to second guess those at the front led to the worst decisions.

I also relearnt that the entire Presidency was subsumed by Iraq and no one at the end could really say why and that there was ineptness in spades from the continued support of Rumsfeld, the accidental breaking of the Kyoto treaty or the entire Katrina aftermath.

At the end Bush had my sympathy but definetly not my vote.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, let me say that I never voted for Bush/Cheney and can be counted among those who think they were among the worst and most destructive administrations in US history. Certainly they were in my lifetime, thus far.

Their transgressions, for me, originated with the contested election in 2000. Thought I must also say that even then I was struck by Gore's inability to carry his home state of Tennessee. It's rare when a presidential candidate doesn't carry his home state, and in this case it was a manifestation of Gore's inherent weaknesses as a candidate, Clinton scandals notwithstanding. Similarly, in 2004, Bush faced another pompous windbag in Kerry. And while I think both Gore and Kerry would have been better presidents than Bush, I remain troubled by their choices for running mates (Lieberman and Edwards, respectively). In hindsight, Edwards was as much a train wreck as Palin. At the very least, no one could accuse Cheney of being a lightweight.

Contested election aside, people forget or give them a pass on the fact that 9-11 occurred on their watch. And while I thought toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan was an appropriate reaction, right from the beginning I thought the diversion into Iraq was a mistake and based on manipulated evidence, combined with a unique personal history between the Bush clan and Saddam Hussein. I always thought Saddam's supposed weapons program was the equivalent of a "Beware of Dog" sign hanging on the fence of someone who had no dog. It was a way to fend off his Middle Eastern enemies, especially Iran. Additionally, Iraq did have a self-perceived claim on Kuwaiti territory back in 1990, but the Saudis called in their marker with Bush the First to respond in force. And we all know that the US military presence in Saudi Arabia was the basis for Osama bin Laden's disaffection with the USA, thus giving birth to Al Qaeda.

Other transgressions include the turning of a revenue surplus into a huge deficit, the impotent response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the ruinous tax cuts, the Constitutional assaults predicated on the War on Terror, and the ineffective financial regulators that led to the second-worst economic meltdown in US history.

Most egregiously, the lack of planning and inability to anticipate the violent forces that they were unleashing in Iraq, and their blase attitude toward events such as the looting of the museum in Baghdad, not to mention the persecution of Chaldean Christians is inexcusable.

All that said, this book did remind me that Bush did more for Africa, in his support for the treatment of AIDs, malaria, etc., than any president before or since. He was also committed to meaningful, but not punitive immigration reform, and it seems he did move from unilateralism to diplomacy over the course of his eight years in office.

Despite approaching this book as a record of car wreck I survived, I came away with a more nuanced perspective of both Bush and Cheney. For those who supported them, this book will seem even-handed. For those who hated them, it might seem overly sympathetic. For myself, I lean toward the even-handed despite my antipathy toward their policies. I never thought Bush was stupid, but I did think he was too much under the sway of Cheney's Hobbesian view of the world. But even that is too simplistic a way to view their relationship.

Anyway, I thought this book was very well written, and I must admit the needle has budged a bit as far as my thoughts about the two of them. I will now at least concede they were motivated by a vision that I don't share, but that they truly believed in.

The most insightful analysis might be that Bush somehow was able to address the ramifications of the mistakes he made: vis a vis, the Iraqi surge; bailing out the auto industry; and TARP.

Nevertheless, I still wish Sandra Day O'Connor voted the way her conscience now guides her.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read about a third of this lengthy book before it was due at the library. It was infuriating but relentlessly competent, drawing together some original interviews but also a lot of memoirs of Bush-administration figures that I will never read, forming a thorough and perhaps unnecessarily detailed account of the Bush years. ("Laura Bush had comfort food made for dinner that night, October 6: chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and banana pudding for dessert.")

It is well done as history but made me livid because I would characterize its general attitude as being like the surreal moment in the 2004 campaign when Bush asserted that he had kept America safe, as if 9/11 were a pitch thrown when he wasn't ready, therefore it doesn't count. It does fucking count and I don't care how many footnotes your apologia has, it will never legitimatize that first, signal failure or the perverse choices and reactions that followed it. It's not that the author is openly attempting to rehabilitate Bush or Cheney. Instead, by handling them with kid gloves, he tries to create an impression of even-handedness, as if this book were about an ordinary presidency, or one that ended fifty years ago.

Baker does go fairly far out of his way to challenge the image of Bush as a simpleton or a puppet being controlled by Cheney, and I actually found this convincing. Unfortunately, it makes Bush into an even less sympathetic figure, because it means he has to own up to all his oversimplifications, giddy abuse of privilege, and asshole "jokes" as purposeful acts instead of mere blundering around.

The main thing that I learned from this book is that I am still mad and probably always will be. I can't think of a single friend to whom I could recommend the masochistic exercise of reading this book, however respectable an effort it may be.

[Jessica (booneybear) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it is difficult to remember that political leaders are just normal human beings dealing with extraordinary situations. This book showed a very human side to George Bush. Unfortunately Dick Cheney did not come off as sympathetically. It was interesting to see how the relationship between Bush and Cheney evolved through the 8 years in the White House. I was always one of the few people who actually felt bad for all the negative and hostile attacks against President Bush while he was in office. Of course, I pretty much feel bad for any president who gets attacked by the general population. Talk about your thankless jobs. I think President of the United States has to be the most thankless job ever.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bush was my POTUS. I grew up with him as my president, so his administration was what I knew about politics for what still feels like the majority of my life (I'm in denial that the turn of the century wasn't just yesterday). I of course remember where I was on September 11, 2001 and the enduring effects of that "day of fire." I recall watching President Bush's second inaugural address while high on laughing gas at the dentist's office. And I still can feel the emotions that came with looking on fondly after coming home from school and watching the replayed footage of the newly former president departing the White House after a peaceful transfer of power.

In fact, it wasn't until the 2008 election that I discovered my passion for politics and became the news junkie that I am today. And yet, even with moments of delirium from the anesthesia or the blissful ignorance of childhood, my lived experience of the Bush years still feels like the most defining, politically, for me to-date.

Make no mistake: I am a staunch Bush supporter. I do not pretend that egregious errors were never made, but neither does he. Instead, I see the vilification of someone whom I believe to be a good person who was doing what he genuinely believed to be right under incomprehensible circumstances as a mind-boggling and indulgent exercise, especially considering the moral bankruptcy of his immediate predecessor, a man revered by Bush's harshest critics. I also admire President Bush for the discipline and transformation that occurred throughout his personal life. Perhaps the topic deserves a book of its own.

So I approached this account with a sense of responsibility: if I am going to put a stake in the ground re my feelings about the George W. Bush presidency, let alone the man himself, I want to investigate from a critical view - especially given I am relying on a middle-school memory as my anchor to the reality of those years. I previously read Bush's own memoir, Decision Points, and found it remarkably compelling. But how would his legacy make out beneath the pen of a NYT reporter?

In my view, Peter Baker is tough but fair in his analysis, even when the book on one subject in particular slips into paying lip service to conclusions that don't appear to track with the evidence presented. I certainly walked away with a harsher judgment of Vice President Cheney than of President Bush, though not because he was some sort of puppet master (a point Baker attempts to make clear). And while I would have loved a deeper dive on some of the most controversial elements of the Bush presidency - Katrina felt virtually glossed over - I think this work's breadth speaks to the truly monumental circumstances confronting the Bush administration and, at times, a single man. It may be too far to call Baker a true Bush critic. I sense he too likes the President. But reviews suggest that both sides agree this book is "a credible and compelling account" of what actually happened in those eight years. Of course, it is merely one account, (though based on snippets from many), and there is plenty more research left to do.

Ultimately, I finished this book feeling a bit hardened about many of the issues on which I had previously given President Bush some latitude, but I also finished the book believing that the man himself felt, and still feels, the same way. I admire him for the way he worked to smooth the transition for the Obama administration, for the way he demonstrated deference and respect for his successor even when he did not receive the same treatment either historically or in return, and for the way he continues to engage on policies near to his heart, including his health initiatives in Africa and his commitment to wounded warriors. The book ended with me feeling like I was saying goodbye to a man who gave it his all in the face of extraordinary odds, and for that I am grateful. I would hope for nothing less from the leader of the free world.

Critics will say that Bush was flippant, arrogant, made decisions with no regard for consequences. I have always perceived him as a man perhaps not tormented - as again I believe he did what he thought was right - but always acutely aware of the very personal repercussions his policies and decisions had and are having at the most fundamental individual level. I sense that burden will remain with him for the rest of his days - and reading this account of the decisions he was forced to make, it would be no wonder for any other person in his shoes - but I admire the way he handles that burden, channeling it all towards what he believes is good and righteous, just as he strove to do during his days in the White House.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2019...

“Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” is Peter Baker’s 2013 review of the two-term Bush administration. Baker is Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times and was a reporter for The Washington Post for two decades. He is the author of books on Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the rise of Vladimir Putin and a recent biography of Barack Obama.

Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of notes and internal documents, this book is brimming with eyewitness accounts of almost every consequential moment of Bush’s presidency. But it is more than just a survey of Bush’s eight years in the White House – it is also an in-depth examination of the intriguing Bush-Cheney political partnership.

The clear focus of this 653-page book is undeniably the Bush presidency, but Baker does a nice job introducing both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. While not providing an exhaustive introduction to either man, “Days of Fire” sets the stage almost perfectly by comparing (and contrasting) their childhoods, early careers, characters and personalities.

Baker’s narrative is very much an “as it happened” behind the scenes history. The reader re-lives important moments essentially as they unfold, and it often seems Baker was the “fly on the wall” for these eight years…recording and transcribing everything of interest. This is the foundation for the book’s most significant strength: it is a monumental collection of conversations, debates, deliberations and introspection stitched together with narrative glue.

Other high points include Baker’s notable lack of political bias or slant, a riveting description of the events of 9/11 (particularly relating to Bush’s activities that day) and observations relating to the evolving relationship between Bush and Cheney. Finally, while Baker wisely avoids passing final judgment on Bush’s legacy, he does make a number of interesting observations and historical comparisons in the book’s last chapter.

While many readers will enjoy the day-to-day focus Baker provides, this book is far from perfect – particularly judged as a biography. It consistently exhibits a fact-heavy and dialogue-rich style of reporting and lacks a smooth narrative flow. This causes the book to feel dense and occasionally tedious; it is usually interesting, but can be difficult to push through.

And surprising given Baker’s penchant for attending to important matters, much of Bush’s first-term domestic agenda is comparatively neglected. The split between Bush and Cheney over same-sex marriage, for example, gets far more attention than the prescription drug benefit plan or the Bush tax cuts.

In addition, Baker generally does not foreshadow important events or provide a “road map” for where events are heading. Reading “Days of Fire” occasionally resembles driving down a winding road at night; the narrative is often exciting but the reader can only see what is directly in front of him or her and there is little sense of what to expect – or why – outside the narrow beam of focus.

Overall, as an impressively sourced and richly detailed behind-the-scenes review of the Bush administration “Days of Fire” may be the best reference which will ever be published. As an exploration of the enigmatic Bush-Cheney relationship it is revealing and often nicely nuanced. But as a traditional biography of George W. Bush, or a reflective analysis of his presidency, it exhibits a few imperfections.

Overall rating: 3¾ stars

[Rob Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This as good of a historical/narrative overview of the Bush administration as we're bound to get for awhile. In Days of Fire, author Peter Baker takes us through the story of the Bush years, centering on President Bush, and (unusual for a presidential biography) Vice President Cheney. The book is a narrative, storytelling history a la Doris Kearns Goodwin (as in Team of Rivals or The Bully Pulpit. It takes from the earliest days, through 9/11, midterms, Hurricane Katrina, all the way to the last day in the White House.

I grew up in the Bush administration. I'm old enough to remember the Clinton years, but both Bush terms are ones I began actually following national events. Reading this book I learned some things about Bush and Cheney I didn't know before. I come from a doggedly blue state, we're not big Bush fans here, but reading some of the more personal touches Baker includes I have a newfound respect for the man. A lot of the idiosyncrasies about Bush included make him extraordinarily likeable and human. Cheney doesn't leave the book without being more human too, noticeably with his stance on gay rights. You may not agree with the man, but you read the book and they become a lot more human.

The book has downsides too. It's story telling history, there's no analysis, which is fair. My high school history teacher always said you could never really write or judge things from a historical view without more than twenty years passing. As such, this is the best history of the Bush administration we're gonna get for another decade. I found the closer the book got to the present, the less new information it presented.

Many times the book will feel like a novel. Baker will write dialogue that happened during a certain situation. In some places it's fine, because he'll write it from one person's recollection and than write another person's. That's a great technique for this book. Other time's it's not so black and white, and it can feel like he's putting words in people's mouths. The problem is the accuracy of the situation may be as accurate or as factual as an episode of the West Wing. It's best to take it with a grain of salt.

Still in 2014, this is a book worth reading, regardless of how fresh those years are for you.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Baker strikes a great balance between the wonky stuff, the power struggles in the White House, and the characters involved. The book starts with plenty of background of the major players, which sets up the conflicts and subplots during the eight years. Considering the number of people involved and the length of the book, I never had to search the index to figure out who the Undersecretary of Labor was and why they were involved. Baker sticks to the important players that are fully fleshed out characters.

Baker also refrains from passing judgement until the end, when Bush's two terms are placed in the proper historical context. I found it to be surprisingly sympathetic to Bush as a person, if not Bush's presidential legacy, and it humanizes his mistakes in surprising ways.

There are a bunch of sweet anecdotes about Bush's cabinet members and advisors. Rumsfeld breaks into tears when his son enters rehab and Bush consoles him. During a panicked evacuation (an eventual false alarm), Bush stops to gather his dogs. When a transgender former Yale classmate sheepishly re-introduces herself and says, "Last time you saw me, I was still living as a man." Bush immediately grabs her hand, smiles, and says, "And now you're you." After leaving office, Bush quietly greets returning soldiers at the airport and golfs with random people that happen to show up to the links at the same time as he does.

I was pleased by how much the book explained the two biggest Bush head-scratchers for me, 1) essentially nominating his secretary Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice and 2) his handling of Katrina. Neither of them make Bush look good, but Baker explains the thought processes and hand-wringing that went on behind the scenes. Each of them were a result of "gut instincts" and bad advice (prevailing themes), but they each left Bush emotionally devastated.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Bush years. It will challenge your opinions and perhaps even your own version of events.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read, in fact a painful read. The misjudgments on Iraq were devastating. Yet, this is an important read, important because it so seriously, systematically and deeply examines both terms of the George W. Bush Presidency. Moreover, the author does this in a remarkably objective manner. Peter Baker conducted over 400 interviews with some 275 people as diverse as Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Stephen Hadley, Michael Hayden, Rob Portman and even John Axelrod. In addition, Baker had access to full archives of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles times. More importantly, Baker himself covered both the Clinton and Bush presidencies as a correspondent for the Washington Post. Baker also served as a Moscow Bureau chief which gave him unique insight into Vladimir Putin. Finally, Baker had the opportunity to read the memoirs of the principals involved as he completed work on this book.

It is worth noting that Baker frequently had to attempt to reconcile varying accounts of the debates within the Bush White House. Baker seems to have done this quite well. The debates on the best way to proceed in Iraq were particularly intense. The insight into the refusal to pardon Scooter Libby and its effect on the Bush Cheney relationship is profound.

Baker is a superb writer and his style fully engages the reader. Besides examining events, themes, personalities, successes, and failures of Bush Administrations, Baker provides an almost intimate look at the President’s daily life. The seemingly small asides and recounting of what it was like to be president then provide a remarkable insight into the flaws AND the humanity of the characters involved. This book will remain a basic reference for the Bush Presidency for some time to come.

in my opinion, Peter Baker may be the finest writer with a journalism background since Stanley Karnow.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will probably be the definitive book on the Bush-Cheney administration. Mr. Baker has clearly consulted every source he could find, interviewed everyone available, and has produced practically a day-by-day account of the two terms that seems about as fair and factual as one could hope. It may be more than you want to know at 653 packed pages, but if you're willing to stay the course there's a lot to learn.
Among other things, Mr. Baker lays to rest the recurring notion that Cheney actually ran the White House; you'll finish this book knowing that he did not. It's clear that Bush respected Cheney and sought his opinions, particularly in the first term. It's also clear that Cheney was a supportive force to Bush, and that he (Cheney) was driven by a deep concern that no effort be spared to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks. In these matters, though, his opinions were frequently not those which prevailed.
Another takeaway, at least for me, was the degree to which Bush's decisions were governed by his principles, and that he was a good and decent man. Certainly he wasn't always correct when he acted, but he had more than his share of horrific occurrences to deal with and always approached them with care and a positive spirit. He rarely, if ever, got the benefit of Main Stream Media support, but he never gave up or whined. I think history will be kinder to him than to our current president.
Anyway, it's an impressive body of work, and a great review of the eight years.

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much "mainstreamitis," too much "have-a-beer-itis"

Per the first, this book reads exactly like it was written by who it was: not "Peter Baker," but a decade-plus White House correspondent for a major mainstream paper. Take torture, for example. In the index, it links to pages that don't actually use the word, but, euphemisms or softenings.

Per the second? Baker seems to have that stereotypical "guy I'd have a beer with," as it was called in 2000 and again in 2004, man-crush on W.

As a result, other than looking at some details of how Bush wasn't totally Cheney's puppet, and even more details about how, after office, every Bush Administration official, including the Head Cheese and Darth Cheney, who has written a book, or been interviewed for a partisan one, has told at least one lie about one major interaction with other Bushies, there's not much here. On length, it could have been cut 150 pages without much loss.

I was on the 2/3 star border, but, this book is getting too much unworthy praise, so I went down rather than up.

==

Years later, being yet more politically informed, I know that Peter Baker is an MSM nepo-dynasty starter. Not just married to Susan Glasser at the New Yorker, but father, with her, of the execrable Theo Baker.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was important for me to read this, particularly after the underwhelming but decontextualized depiction of the Bush-Cheney Administration in the superb 9/11, an Oral History.

Bush’s Presidency overlapped with my late teens through mid-20s. His positions, as conveyed to me through European print media and my elite college peers, seemed warmongering and self-righteous abroad, and oppressive towards gays and scientists at home. When a peer corrected my ignorant assumption that the Administration’s foreign aid record was lackluster, I was taken aback. How could this Presidency - which seemed to embody all the tropes of a muscular, unthinkingly self-congratulatory Americana - how could this be the Administration that championed PEPFAR? Of course in the years since, Michelle Obama’s hug and Trump’s, well, everything, has “done much to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation,” using rather antiseptic language.

Unsurprisingly, any demonization bears little resemblance to the human being it purports to represent. The chapters on his pre-Presidential life depict a guy torn between his upper crust New England pedigree and his lived experience as a West Texas roughneck. His sense of alienation amidst unconsciously condescending coastal elites, his embrace of populist emotive born-again culture, and his angst at the burden of being George H.W. Bush’s namesake…all this helps to understand Bush's character and his instincts. You get a sense of a tight knit family, an unshakable respect for American institutions, and deep, sincere empathy for others’ pain.

More ominously, the 21st century culture wars that have torn our society apart are foreshadowed in this one man's 70s/80s anti-establishment revolt. Note that we didn't even have the vocabulary to distinguish red vs blue America until the major networks coincidentally chose the same colors in their election night 2000 reporting. I'm not saying that Bush is responsible for the culture wars (Newt Gingrich is higher on my list of people to blame for the gratuitous politicization of regional/class difference), merely that he personally experienced AND became a lightening rod for the heartland vs. coastal rancor that has accelerated over the last 20 years. (How many of us Ds smirked when political cartoonist and late night tv hosts dismissed him as an inarticulate cowboy? Did we really imagine that one could not have both a sharp mind and penchant for boots and imaginative turns of phrase spoken in a non-coastal accent? I'm ashamed at my own unthinking elitism.)

President Bush and his cadre should absolutely be held accountable for the myopia that made the Iraq invasion inevitable and the hubris that the U.S. could export our version of democracy as if it were a car or a Hollywood film. Not to mention the grotesque expansion of executive prerogative, secrecy, national security spending, and the blind faith that civil liberties matter less than muscular foreign intelligence. No no and no.

Interestingly, John McCain comes off as far more bumbling and incompetent than I’ve ever seen him depicted before. Condi had to fight every day to be awarded the respect and status she deserved. It was inspiring to watch her stick to her guns, knowing that protocols and formalities, while silly, are also a recognition of status, which she couldn’t afford to let slide. Cheney… my god. He was willing to make compromises for national security that truly boggle my mind. Thank God Bush wasn’t assassinated while in office.

I come away with both more respect for George Bush as a person and a greater willingness to look at the federal response post 9/11 and say, yeah, that was fucked up.

[Dacy Briggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically written and fair treatment of a President who had both the highest and one of the lowest approval ratings of all time. I am so excited to finish a history/biographical book that seems to be so far away from bias…it is very refreshing to see. Accessible for both Republicans and Democrats, anyone who read this factual epic story will come away with their own opinion. This will go down as one of the best books I have read this year. 800+ pages went by very quick due to the engrossing and intimate reading of conversations and geopolitical intrigue.

I think Bush and Cheney’s issue was trying to complete George H.W.’s administration goal in the obsession with Iraq, even from the very beginning stages, rather than trudge a new path. The question is posed in the epilogue, “If Bush and Cheney don’t invade Iraq, does Bush 44’s time as President look better in the history books?” I would have to say yes. Maybe it would have also given Bush more time to focus on the subprime mortgage lending industry at the beginning of his second term as well, who knows.

[Dan R. Celhay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading about Bush is interesting because he had a rough time with 9/11, Katrina, the financial meltdown among other issues that seem to spring one after another. The book centers on the impression that Cheney was the one pulling the strings behind most of Bush'actions and he did rely heavily on Cheney but much less on his second term. Cheney is always referred to as "taciturn" and he has probably become one of my favorite political figures so far.

[Jennifer Flanagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Men men men

[Robert Ayotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as part of a goodreads giveaway and generally enjoyed the comprehensiveness of Baker's reportage, but there are some significant weaknesses as well. The general writing style is as if Baker wrote a 650 page plus NY Times article. This is not a cheap shot. It is informative, well-resourced and generally balanced. However, this book will never be considered the definitive account of the Bush presidency because the characters of Bush and Cheney demand someone who has more magisterial flair as a writer. Robert Caro, Baker is not. Bush and Cheney come off as two-dimensional archetypes, with only Bush showing some evolution toward empathy, a willingness to revise prior inaccurate assessments and act more nuanced during the latter stages of his presidency. Cheney comes across like a cartoon character--one who is stubborn, unwavering and obnoxiously arrogant toward others' opinions. Can two individuals be this two-dimensional? You have George Bush looking into various organs (his heart, mind and insides) and even his soul and making rash pronouncements about Vladimir Putin, Nouri al-Maliki, Harriet Meyers and others that were comically wrong. It's as if Bush should have adopted the George Costanza motto and whatever he thought was the correct thing to do, do the exact opposite. Did his staff give him a Staples button that said, "Easy," before a major decision was made? And yet, I would like to believe the anti-intellectualism of Bush, Cheney and Rove that Baker reports could really not be this malignant toward balanced, sober decision-making. Additionally, the account of the financial crisis is poor. Its as if Baker did not have his heart in it and had a page limit that could not be breached.
However, terrorism and the Iraq War have the bulk of the focus of Baker's book and here he shines. He takes a wide perspective and includes material from aides, diplomats, cabinet secretaries, foreign leaders and military leaders. It is this material that shows the divergence of opinions, the personalities, the motivations, etc., that would seem to capture the overwhelming responsibilities of being the leader of the United States. The internecine war of opinion between the State Department versus the Secretary of Defense and the Vice-President is confidently written and displays the tension and anxiety that existed between people debating whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but also how far to suppress individual liberties on behalf of protecting US citizens from another terrorist attack. Perhaps because neither Bush or Cheney had a distinguished military career, Bush was reticent to confront the military leadership over strategy. He was not helped by Donald Rumsfeld who comes across as a petulant, cantankerous individual who is quick to blame others for the less than optimal post-Iraq military management.
Additionally, it is surprising that Bush seemed to have no problem ordering a military campaign with cowboy bravado leading to soldier and civilian casualties on clearly erroneous intelligence and yet outsourced the hard decisions to either discipline or fire his aides because it seemed to cause him personal discomfort. And yet even though we are still grappling with the decisions made during the Bush presidency, I almost look back nostalgically toward the man who led the Republican party before the even more messianic, anti-intellectual strain that the current Republican party exhibits. For those who want to eliminate the government, one only has to refer to Baker's quote of Bush during the throes of the financial crisis, "If we're really looking at another Great Depression, you can be damn sure I'm going to be Roosevelt, not Hoover."
In summary, if you are looking for a survey-like course of the Bush presidency this book confidently and competently provides the reader an 8 year overview in one volume. However, if you are looking for a book that comprehensively captures the Bush White House years then that book remains to be written.

[Philip Girvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

George W. Bush did not agree to be interviewed by Baker, a reporter for the New York Times, believing that a NYT reporter could not tell the story of his presidency objectively. Bush's absence is unfortunate and while it can't help but weaken the book, Baker was able to secure interviews with every other key member of the Bush administration, including Vice-President Cheney, allowing Baker to share multiple perspectives on various key events during Bush's two terms. These perspectives are revealing and Baker does a fine job moving the narrative forward without getting terribly bogged down with any particular episode. Of particular interest to me, were the tensions inside the GOP party, both within and without the administration. For example, Baker reports a bit of political horse trading to secure conservative GOP members of Congress to extend Medicare to cover prescription drugs for seniors, the "biggest expansion of the entitlement program since its inception", resulted in Bush agreeing to nominate to the Supreme Court candidates vetted by the conservative congressmen in exchange for their supporting the bill.

As one might expect, seeing that it dominated the Younger Bush's presidency, The Iraq War dominates the story. Were one curious to read more of that conflict, I'd recommend Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor's Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq particularly for details re the lead up to the Iraq invasion as well as Thomas Ricks's excellent Fiasco which does an excellent job describing the early years of the war.

Baker doesn't turn away from the Bush administration's failings, e.g., the lack of attention paid to Al-Qaeda during the months and weeks prior to 9/11, the dodgy evidence used to prosecute the Iraq War, Katrina, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the lack of progress made w/r/t to the domestic agenda during the second term...Neither does he caricature Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or other officials. The impact of 9/11 on the president is made quite clear, and the weight on his conscience from having rescue workers and other citizens at Ground Zero urged him to "do whatever it takes" to bring those guilty to justice makes Bush a more empathetic character than I would have believed possible.

On page 190-91, Baker writes, 'In the aftermath of September 11, Bush and Cheney fell back on the thinking of their generation, the nation-state paradigm. Going after a stateless, formless enemy like a terrorist network was unfamiliar. Going after Iraq fit more neatly into their experience. "Everyone of us, our entire worldview of foreign affairs was put together in an era of great power conflict -- good versus evil, us versus them... Fundamentally the problems we faced after 9/11 did not lend themselves to the great-power conflict model. Stateless enemy. And so people have said, why did George Bush use this language -- us versus them, smoke them out, hunt them down? It's because that's all he knew and that's all everybody knew".'

It's insights such as this that, in my opinion, make Days of Fire worth reading regardless of one's political stripe and regardless of one's opinion re Bush/Cheney going into the book.

[Kim Miller-Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it took me a couple of months to get through, this is the best book that I have read about the Bush presidency (including Bush's own memoir.) Consisting of over 650 pages chock full of meticulously researched information about events, meetings, and the decision-making process of Bush & his cabinet, Baker's political narrative delivers a thorough, fair-minded evaluation of the Bush administration. Having said that, this book is not what I expected at all.

Because of the title, my concept of Cheney as a puppeteer, and Baker's position as the White House correspondent for the New York Times, I thought the book would provide a harsh examination of Bush's (non-existent) leadership skills. Fortunately, that's not the end result at all. Instead of writing as a dirt-digging, liberal-leaning reporter, Baker writes with a responsible journalist's need for the truth and an historian's eye for the comprehensive compilation of detailed facts--from all sides.

By the time I was halfway into this book, I found myself really liking George W. as a person. And by the time I was finished reading, I found him to be much more of a critical thinker than I had previously judged. This is not to say that Baker gives Bush hall-passes on his bad decisions; it's just that Baker allows an alternative view of the ways in which these decisions transpired. And no, he doesn't merely repeat the mantra that Bush's actions were based on his inclusion in the good-old-boys network. Instead, he looks at how Bush's tendency toward a binary moral ideology facilitated an often-destructive valuing of loyalty over independent, internal debate. The factors that shaped those loyalties and ended in undesired consequences (many of which we are still paying for) are too complicated to describe in a few sentences, but Baker does an excellent job of providing a view into the private world of the White House so that readers can reach their own conclusions about the Bush presidency.

As far as the portrayal of Cheney: I still don't like him, but he doesn't come across as the ogre that he appears to be in the mainstream media. Basically, I don't agree with anything Cheney did or said, BUT I think that everything he did, and does now, is out of love for this country. Oh...and I think he really loves his family. (And that's about as nice as it gets as far as I'm concerned.)

No matter what you think of the legacy of the Bush presidency--good or bad--this book is really good for helping to develop a multi-layered view of it rather than a simple, myopic one. And as an added bonus, there are all kinds of interesting tidbits here like what Bush & Cheny thought of Palin (hint: it wasn't good), what Bush initially said about Obama (also not good), and his interactions with Pelosi and Boehner during the build-up to the auto bailout (Hint: he got along with one much better than the other and it's probably not the one you'd guess.)

Despite its length, this book is definitely worth it. But I am so glad to be finished. I need to spend a few weeks with some lighter fare, so my brain can have a break...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many good qualities to this book to put it in the strong recommendation category.

The writing is very balanced, well researched and unobtrusive. The events of the narrative take center stage and flow effortlessly. It always felt like there were sufficient details to convey the story without getting bogged down in unnecessary minutiae.

Here’s a sample:

“Liberation, however, proved to be messier than anyone had hoped. Cheney and Makiya were right when they said that Americans would be welcomed as liberators by Iraqis. They were, at first. Long-suffering Iraqis were jubilant at Hussein’s fall. The stories of torture that spilled out in those days after the statue fell made up a Stalinesque tapestry of cruelty. Where Cheney and Makiya got it wrong was presuming the welcome would last or that the joy over Hussein’s overthrow necessarily translated into enduring amity for the overthrowers.

“Iraqis had endured a dozen years of international sanctions that Hussein had blamed for widespread malnutrition, disease, and every economic malady. They had been told that a rash of cancers was the result of depleted uranium in American bombs left over from the Gulf War or used to enforce the no-fly zone. Shiites and Kurds were resentful that after freeing Kuwait, the Americans did nothing to help as Hussein brutally crushed their uprising in 1991. And there was deep-seated suspicion that the Americans had come back not to help them but to take their oil. It did not help that American troops sat by and did little to keep order amid the chaotic scenes following the collapse of the Hussein regime as looters ransacked government buildings. “Stuff happens,” Rumsfeld glibly said. But forces were being set loose that would take years to control."

[Travis Kurtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Baker takes you into the most polarizing presidency in modern time. President George W. Bush had the highest approval ratings of any president; yet, by the time he left his president saw the highest disapproval ratings since the Gallup poll began. In his book, “Days of Fire” you feel as if you’re inside the White House while the decisions are being played out. Baker leaves you with many sources and commentary; the story itself makes up 653 pages with well over 100 pages of endnotes. It is evenhanded and gives you an insight on the presidency that is praise worthy. Particularly interesting was Baker’s description on the relationship between Bush and Cheney played out during 9/11 and the Iraq War. Personally, like most other Americans, I have a negative view towards Bush’s time in Washington. The book however, gave me more respect for what it takes to be a leader and how the fear of man can be so damaging when making decisions. Because of this as you read this book you begin to cut President Bush some slack. From a practical perspective the book has pointed me to be less quick to criticize leadership and understand that D.C. politics is a complicated machine, and becoming all the more complicated given the growth of our federal government. President Bush certainly made poor decision and had unwise council, yet his attentions were, for the most part, good. Unfortunately, to error is human, even for those who have the best of intentions.

[AJourneyWithoutMap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent for The New York Times, who has an eye and ear on the many goings-on during the Bush administration, is no child's play. A tome of over 800 pages, it is an arduous journey through the turbulent eight years of the Bush presidency, and it is a book which many readers may not read through to the end unless they are staunch supporters or strong critics.

However, this assumption is not based on content but merely on the length of the book. Content is far more fascinating and riveting than most people have painted of the Bush administration. Days of Fire explores their tumultuous relationship, compelling decisions that drive the presidency, the agenda thrust upon them by September 11 terrorist attack and many other aspects.

George Walker Bush was a president many chose to hate. "Mission Accomplished!" will never be erased from memory. But Baker has painted a picture of a presidency whose agenda was hijacked by circumstances that were beyond his control. You may hate or love him but once you read Days of Fire you'll understand his actions and get to know him better as a person. But this book is not just about Bush it is also about Richard Bruce Cheney. And together, they formed a partnership whose decisions impacted American way of life even today.