But, fortunately he was not his father either. He was also a far cry better than the feckless and inept John McCain. But, most importantly, he was also not what the media portayed. I do miss him.

As for Latimer, he is nothing more than a whore and a Judas who has sold his confidences for pieces of silver and notoriety and that applies whether his writing are truth or lies.

But I cannot shake the opinion that someone who was given access, however limited, to the President of the United States is a first class jackass for writing a tell-all book about it. It is simply a betrayal, and there is no other spin to be put on it in my view.

This book didn’t have a thing to do with the people who are attacking him. It is selling someone out to make a buck. For Latimer to portray this as some sort of crusade to diminish the hold of certain people on the Republican Party is a disingenuous crock of crap.

Terrible communication strategy did cripple George W. Bush, but I would like to see the part of the book that details the efforts by Latimer to combat that policy and help the President while he had the opportunity. Perhaps in the second edition…

There is one true fact. Our nation was more respected, the GWOT was progressing adequately and France remained a nation of surrender-monkeys.

Oh how I long for the good ole days.

While Matt Latimer claims to be ‘after’ “The self-appointed loyalty enforcers” every single quote I’ve seen from the book attacks Bush or makes him seem, in most any way, small. The one used at the top of this diary is only the most resent case in point.

Second, Latimer claims to “I like the president, I respect him” yet he had to know that writing this type of book would be used against Bush… and thus the GOP.

I will also note that if Latimer was a pure of heart as he would have us believe, he could have donated the profits of this book to the GOP, or the USO… or even the GW Bush Library. To my knowledge he chooses not to do any of these things, thus profiting from the wounding of a great man and our party.

Lastly, even those of us that live way out here in fly over country know that: “confirmed a long-held suspicion I developed as a congressional staffer during Bush’s tenure – that blind loyalty to Bush the person compromised the ability of many of his staff to counsel and challenge Bush the president.” Means: Bush and Bush’s people didn’t do what WE WANTED HIM TO DO.

Contrary to the popularly held media narrative Bush refused to politicize the war in Iraq. Bush kept the office of the President in the role of Commander in Chief, out the petty inside the Beltway attacks and in the single minded task of winning that war, and keeping the country safe.

Many brave man and woman gave their lives for this same goal. Bush choose not to cheapen their sacrifice with petty Washington politics.

We too in the party suffered for this choice… are suffering for it yet today.

I did not like Bush’s choice of “appallingly bad communications strategies” but I understood them then and understand them now.

Are we to follow Bush’s noble choice of sacrifice, the sacrifice of politics, of popularity, of doing what is right for the nation or follow Matt Latimer’s path to a moment of media glory?

Swallow hard and make the choice. I have made mine.

There will be no end to the judging of President Bushes choices. Some will rightly be critsized by loyal Republicans. Some will be defended to the end of time as the right thing to do. I have complained about some of them myself. It was a tough eight years. I have never in my life experienced and witnessed as difficult an eight year period. Much of the noise was brought on by not having a good spokesman or spokeswoman. Tony Snow effectively, no did outstanding defending the Presidents policies. One thing certain in my mind is that the President did not avoid making the diffucult choice when he felt it was one that was necessary and best for the Country. The Democrats love to say its a matter of being smarter or having a smarter person in office (shockingly this always seems to be a Democrat). I have found in life it is harder to find courageous people than it is to find smart people. God Bless George Bush and God Bless America!

First off, I consider myself a libertarean-leaning Christian Conservative (like Sarah Palin)

I supported the Iraq war. I thought we should have bombed Iran into oblivion by now. I think Obama is a dangerous Marxist.. And I believe we’re about to enter a financial catestrophe that will destroy the US Dollar and that will cause the inablity to pay for oil and a destruction of our military.

So thats me in a nutshell.

I think Latimer’s book is great so far. It’s extremely funny… and I like how he makes a pop-culture reference in nearly everything he talks about it.

He writes about his serving on Spencer Abraham’s staff, then his local MI House Rep staff and I’m current in his Rumsfield years.

I think his critiques of the things he’s seen are totally valid.

I haven’t read and have no interest to read ego-fest books like those from Richard Clark or that idiot autistic guy who was the Press Sec before Tony Snow… I’m inclined to not like people who “betray” his friends… but in Latimer’s book he is not betraying his ultimate “friend”.. .. what is best for American Government.

Good job Mr Latimer… I haven’t finished your book yet, so I hope it’s appropriate for me to say now that your parents must very proud that they raised such a principled man.. even if you did end up being a Conservative Republican

one of the prices you pay for a job like that which Latimer had, a speech writer, is your silence. To effectively articulate the views of your prinicpal, he must be sufficiently comfortable with your sense of discretion that he can confide in you, perhaps, in a way that is not complimentary to himself.

What Latimer did, again in my view, is simply dishonorable. He traded upon the confidence granted him for profit. Why anyone would ever employ this man again, in any capacity, is simply beyond me.

Also the diarist’s statement that the loyalty given Bush was a personal type, Bush had groupies while Reagan was surrounded by men of principle, is so far off the mark that it is beneath disdain. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Reagan presidency knows that to be absolute balderdash and the best and diagnosably delusional at the worst. Was this guy alive during the Iran-Contra hearings?

Any staffer — particularly a speechwriter — who does what Mr. Latimer has in this case violates as basic of a code as there is in the business of politics.

I have not read much of the criticism of Mr. Latimer — he suggests instead that you should judge the book on its content. I read the entire excerpt in GQ, and found its content to be the worst kind of pointless reminiscing and inaccurate gossip. It’s worth noting that the only staff tell-all of the past two decades which is defensible on the merits is Stephanopoulos’s All Too Human — the least gossipy entry in recent years, it also showed that Stephanopoulos had a good understanding of his personal limitations and his own weaknesses, and exposed President Clinton to precious few attacks at the time it was published. Mr. Latimer gives no signs of having any of this humility, and what’s more, his focus seemed to insult and defame as many people as possible who trusted him during times of great difficulty.

No matter what’s in the rest of the book or Mr. Latimer’s intent in writing it, no one should ever hire him to write another political speech after this, or the response from William McGurn. They should be aware that every slip, every foible, every unknown fact, every mistake that they make behind the scenes and in front of Mr. Latimer is not just unlikely to be subject to staff privilege, but certain to appear in the public square.

Anyone of us who’s worked in Washington for politicians has embarrassing stories we could share about their personal limitations and foibles — they are human, after all — and more than one of us has fallen on a sword on occasion for those we served. The very activity of writing a political tell-all which exposes private work-focused moments of a politician you formerly swore to serve works directly contrary to this. It is, in my view, execrable. It’s like listening to a doctor share his patients’ most embarrassing diseases, or a lawyer with a few in him spill the beans about the other partners. Whatever the intent — whether to entertain, to gossip, to score points — it’s a terrible practice, and I think it’s shameful that Mr. Latimer is profiting from it. How very modern it all is — he would make the Commander in Chief of the United States nothing more than a pathetic male version of The Devil Wears Prada for the rags to chew on.

This is the lowest form of the Washington gossip game. Will it entertain? Of course — that’s why it’s done. Will anything come of this book other than burned bridges, broken promises, and profit from sales for Mr. Latimer for selling out those he once worked alongside (profit that, like Damon Linker and others before, he may find rather dwindling a few years from now, when he may find he will have to spend the rest of his days as a score-settler)? Of course not.

Whatever the case, I hope for his sake he never hires a secretary who aspires to a writing career.

That said, Rich Lowry has an interesting exchange with Latimer, asking him to confirm or deny that he said he was leaving his White House job early to work on Don Rumsfeld’s memoirs, but got no answer.

The exception would be when one is revealing criminal or immoral activity. From what I have gathered here, this book does neither, and therefore comes off a bit like Mommie Dearest.

…on the comments so far (most of which are very thoughtful, and some of which have only made me dumber for reading them).

To those who accuse Latimer of selling out his prior boss to get rich, I have two comments: 1) the book, which many of you have not read, paints a very sympathetic portrait of Bush and a dreadful one of many of his staff (i.e., Bush was not “sold out”), and 2) relatively unknown individuals do not get rich in America by writing political autobiographies, so that charge really doesn’t hold much water.

On the first point, I’m pretty sympathetic to the disloyalty charge, although as a conservative, my loyalties to the movement supersede my loyalties to any one individual. True conservatives are worthy of praise and apostates worthy of disdain. If incompetent staffers undermine a president’s ability to do the right thing, then I believe the public should know about it. In that vein, Latimer’s book has done a great service to us by illustrating once again that personnel is policy. Hire incompetents and you’ll end up with incompetence.

On the second point, former senior staffers generally have three options post-presidency: 1) get a real job, 2) write a book, or 3) become a lobbyist/PR hack and sell your access/knowledge to the highest bidder. Most are horribly unqualified to exercise the first option, leaving them with only two. What’s worse: writing a book, or hoarding your access/information and becoming a lobbyist for those who suck off the government teat? I would suggest the latter, given that it almost always results in an increase in the size of government. Give me the one-off book before the lifelong addiction to government largesse any day of the week. Most of those attacking Latimer’s credibility chose the latter route. I would be far more sympathetic to their charges if they weren’t also attempting to get rich off their previous jobs.

Finally, the Rich Lowry/NRO charge that Latimer “protected” Rumsfeld in some corrupt pay-for-praise scheme is pretty absurd on its face. The far simpler explanation is that Latimer actually trusted, respected, and genuinely liked Rumsfeld (which probably also explains why Latimer offered to help Rumsfeld with his book).

Even though Lowry has given Ed Gillespie an all-access pass to NRO to bash Latimer’s book, Lowry has never disclosed to his readers how much cash Ed Gillespie’s repeated NR cruise participation has generated for NR. Does that mean he’s deliberately hiding a corrupt financial scheme between the two men and giving Gillespie access in exchange for a boatload of cruise cash? Lowry also has never disclosed how much revenue has been generated for NRO by the continued posts of numerous former Bush staffers who feel slighted by Latimer (Perino, Wehner, Thiessen, Gillespie, etc.). Does that mean Lowry’s secretly allowing them to bash Latimer in exchange for the added revenue from their contributions to NR? C’mon.

The simplest explanation is that friends help friends. Latimer obviously respected and trusted Rumsfeld, and Lowry obviously trusts the opinions of his friends who don’t like what Latimer had to say about them. It ain’t rocket science. And nevermind the inanity of using one hand to accuse Latimer of disloyalty to Bush and the other to accuse him of being too loyal to Rumsfeld. As a congenital troublemaker, I love the back and forth, but I’d also like to see at least an attempt at consistency.

And, for the record, if and when the first staffer of the current administration bolts to write a juicy tell-all book about any behind-the-scenes nonsense or corruption, I’m going to read the whole thing and I have a feeling the rest of you will do the same.

I could understand if the people who were criticized in the book didn’t like it. but after I read it,,.. I say they deserve it.

I share Latimer’s dillusionment. This is a Conservative book.

I recommend it.