Jul 29, 2010 03:34 PM
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George W. Bush is slightly more popular nowadays compared to a couple years ago. (That doesn't mean he'll be campaigning this fall.) But he will be "flooding the airwaves" around election time to promote his memoir, which has Republicans fretting.
The Daily Beast's Matt Latimer — a former White House speechwriter near the end of Bush's reign who just sat around meetings quietly and then trashed his former boss in his own whiny memoir, released last fall — notes that while Bush's book, Decision Points, won't come out until after the election, the pre-release hoopla will be well underway in October.
Former President George W. Bush and his corral of Texas-based surrogates are preparing to flood the airwaves in anticipation of his new memoir, another step in a carefully crafted rehabilitation strategy. The publication date of Bush's Decision Points is set for early November, one week after the congressional elections. But, as with any likely bestseller, the details of the book are certain to leak out earlier-meaning the Bush years could be re-litigated and re-explored during the final, pivotal weeks of the campaign.
[...] "Monumentally bad timing" was the reaction of one former Bush aide who learned of the book release date. Another prominent conservative compared the Bushies' public-relations savvy to LeBron James. "Selfish and stupid" was another noted right-wing columnist's reaction.
Latimer seems to think that Bush's book "will shape the 2010 campaign," but it probably will not do that! If people are unemployed or indebted enough to vote out members of the current party in power, then seeing a book that reminds them of George W. Bush's existence will probably not change that so late in the campaign season.
Send an email to Jim Newell, the author of this post, at newell@gawker.com.
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