The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations On A National Disorder

The Story

It Seems like too easy a target, too cheap a laugh, but Mark Crispin Miller, with the deftly trenchant wit that always distinguishes his writing, uses the blunders and malapropisms of George W. Bush to make a larger point about the way in which we elect our presidents.Miller places Bush in the context of other notorious dunces-in-chief, and shows him indisputably in a league of his own. The book is a raucously funny ride -- whether it's Bush envisioning 'a foreign-handed foreign policy' or Miller skewering vociferous cultural conservatives like William Bennett and Lynne Cheney for their silence on Bush's particular 'West Texas version of Ebonics' -- but there is also a strong undercurrent of outrage. Only because our elections have become so dependent on television and its emphatic emptiness, Miller argues, can a man of such sublime and complacent ignorance assume the highest office in the land. To quote Bush himself, 'It's not the way America is all about'.