Mr. Cole states in his essay:
There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush’s Presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted “from the gut,” and was economical with the truth until it disappeared. Under his command, the United States launched a needless and unjust war in Iraq that resulted in terrible loss of life; at the same time, an unknown number of people were confined in secret prisons and tortured. That Bush was anti-intellectual, and often guilty of malapropisms and mispronunciations (“nucular”), formed part of the liberal aversion to him: he didn’t know much about the wider world, and did not much care to learn.
His successor couldn’t have been more different. Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history—as befits a former law professor—and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.
I understand the prism through which he sees former President Bush, but it may not be accurate based on what Mooney writes:
In 2006, Bush read 95 books to Roves 110: a Herculean pace of nearly two books a week - in an election year to boot - for the ex-president. But, according to Rove, Bush's reading slowed a bit in the final years of his presidency, finishing a not-too-shabby 51 books in 2007 and at least 40 in 2008.
And if that's not impressive enough, Rove also said Bush found time to read the Bible "from cover to cover" every year.
Irrespective of the political differences, I consider myself a pretty avid reader, yet I'm not hitting even 50% of the pace that these two set. Last year I was in the 40's for the number of books read. My question, how the heck does the president of the United States find time for 95 books in a year?
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