Speech-less: Tales of a White House
Survivor
By Matt Latimer
(Crown Publishers, 283 pages, $26)
Matt Latimer has written this year’s most entertaining book
about what goes on — or doesn’t — in Washington. This is a
laugh-out-loud book with a serious message, for those willing to
hear it. It has also generated controversy.
Latimer was a geeky kid from Flint, Michigan, who set out for
Washington (via law school and journalism school) determined to
write for the president of the United States. America is a country
where just about anyone can grow up to become just about anything
— and that’s just the problem, George Will said after Bill Clinton
became president. Some Bush people feel that way about Latimer.
Latimer worked for a congressman and two senators before
becoming a speechwriter for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and then
President Bush.
He is complimentary of Rumsfeld (as he is of Vice President
Cheney), but he is critical of others, including some who helped
him along the way. His treatment of President Bush is…frank.
Latimer has a gift for storytelling, but he’s a bit unpolished
at times (and he doesn’t seem to understand the pluperfect). He
says he had the feeling that White House chief of staff Josh Bolten
“would stand at the window late at night to see who was still
working,” a snide comment he doesn’t give any support for. He
relates that in his interview with Secretary Rumsfeld, he told him
about “all the long-winded speeches that senators gave to empty
chambers, while their staffs praised them for their mediocrity.” He
says Rumsfeld “loved that observation.” How does he know? “Rumsfeld
seemed to like that observation” would have been better journalism,
without any sacrifice of immodesty.
Latimer thought that working for the president would be the
experience of a lifetime, and it was, but not in the way he had
expected (that’s the pluperfect). In the end he was disillusioned,
but that’s the way Washington is. Mostly. It wasn’t for those of us
who worked for Reagan.
In the final chapter he lashes out at “professional Republicans”
who, he says, are only in it for being close to power for the sake
of power, and who are more interested in keeping their lucrative
contracts and cushy Georgetown houses than in supporting candidates
who believe in Republican ideals. Yes…but. On Election Day,
Latimer voted for Obama. Is the naïveté of voting for Obama better
than the consultants’ greed (that would be Latimer’s term) in
supporting McCain?
Latimer came in at the end of the second administration, and saw
only the worn-out Bush, but he gives him full credit for the
conservative actions he took: reducing taxes, supporting missile
defense, and starting a discussion on Social Security. That’s
generous. It was not always great at the beginning. No tax cut
could, or can, offset McCain-Feingold or Sarbanes-Oxley, both of
which were enacted early on in the administration and neither of
which President Bush vetoed.
Was Latimer disloyal to President Bush and to the others he
worked with? That’s the charge of my good friend Bill Bennett, who
called Latimer a “worm” and has consigned him to the lowest circles
of Dante’s inferno which, Bill reminds those of us who haven’t
washed since college, is for “for people who are disloyal in the
way this guy is disloyal, and at the very lowest point Satan chews
on their bodies.” Whoa! A lot of learning can be a dangerous thing
too. Satan chewing on Latimer’s body? Hell, Matt’s so young, Satan
could suck him through a straw. Besides, they say the lowest circle
has been completely renovated in compliance with Consumer
Product Safety Commission standards (Charlie Rangel is rumored to
have a still-unreported income producing property there), and you
can even hear Bill Bennett’s radio show, when the furnace is low,
but only if you also subscribe to the New York Times.
Incidentally, what was Dante doing, slipping us the skinny on
Hell?
The people whom Latimer criticizes, and their supporters, need
to relax. Washington, after all, is a town where people don’t take
friendship personally. Or insults. Most of those whom Latimer
criticizes are adults with considerable achievements, whose only
damage will be to their egos. Unless they make his criticisms a
two-day story.
Latimer’s a talented writer and could be a valuable resource for
the conservative cause. Whatever his sins, a lot can be forgiven a
man who reveals to us that President Bush said, “If bull—-t was
currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire.” Who has done more to
rehabilitate the former president? Don’t miss this book.
