Train Wreck

Train Wreck

The End of the Conservative Revolution
(and Not a Moment Too Soon)

By Bill Press

Well, this book was kind of a disappointment. Press tries to argue that the Bush administration (the "train wreck" alluded to by the title) is the culmination of conservative governing policy.

Press tries to make the point that, "when you start out hating government, you can't make government work," but the only place he really makes that case is when talking about how President Bush gutted FEMA in the run up to Hurricane Katrina.

Under George W. Bush, it was deliberately designed to fail, as part of his conservative determination to privatize and minimize the role of federal government.

So far, so good. But the rest of the book is just about how incompetent Bush is and how corrupt the Republican Congress is, leaving open the excuse that "ideologues will never admit their ideas are wrong, only that mistakes were made in the way their ideas were carried out."

It's the old Communist excuse that true communism was never given a fair chance.

Bill Press tries to deflect that excuse by pointing out that conservatives helped Bush every step deeper into the morass we're now in, but a "true conservative" would just argue that the Republican Congress wasn't truly conservative. I've heard that myself on conservative radio.

So, Press' book is a good reminder of all the bad things that happened under the Republican reign, but I was looking for something like how the Republican Party is tearing its own guts out over illegal immigration and the role of religion in government. There's nothing like that in this book.

Train Wreck is basically a "Hey, remember how f---ed up Bush's administration was?" kind of book. Kind of a jaunt down memory lane remembering how we got to this dismal point in American history.