Well, Matt Latimer has a book out.
Don't all rush at once to your Barnes and Noble.
The real scoop on young Mr. Latimer, a Bush speechwriter who has
now penned the requisite poison pen letters to his president and
colleagues, is revealed in this
great piece over in the Wall Street Journal by
William McGurn -- Matt's boss in Bushland.
Ouch!
Since I don't know Mr. Latimer and haven't read the book, there's
no contribution here on his substance. But if McGurn is right,
and there's no reason to suspect otherwise, this book is just
another one of those insipid White House aide books in which the
disgruntled author uses the gift bestowed on him by trusting
superiors to turn the boss and colleagues into human fire
hydrants, with the author playing the role of Spot the dog.
There is zero intellectual effort, just an attempt to use the
publishing industry to make a quick buck and get a fast fifteen
seconds of face time on cable TV. The hero of the piece is
apparently Donald Rumsfeld. No problem -- I like Rumsfeld. But
the author apparently never tells the reader he's helping Rummy
with his, Rumsfeld's, memoirs, a necessary fact if one is going
to dump on others but not the former Defense Secretary.
Latimer's post-White House career has gotten off to a rocky
start. As future employers realize this is the way he treats a
former President-boss and the people he worked with -- who wants
to work with a guy like that?
Once upon a time, before I actually got to the White House, I
loved reading books like this as a kid, on the mistaken
assumption they were real history. In fact, books like this are
to history what McDonald's is to a gourmet meal in a four star
restaurant. So once on the scene and understanding a bit
better how the world worked, I adopted a rule if I felt the need
to buy. Never buy these odious missives in a bookstore. Wait
until that next summer vacation when you are ambling through a
used-book sale and -- voila! -- what once was twenty-something
bucks is now a nickel.
Mr. McGurn's advice, it is clear, is to go the nickel route.
I think he's on to something. If the late spy novelist Robert
Ludlum were telling this tale, I suspect he'd call it "The
Latimer Stupidity."
