Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

reviewed September 2019

First: a disclaimer. I’m sure I’ll be making many references in this review to the Jean Edward Smith biography of George W. Bush which I read immediately before reading this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the Smith biography even though his criticisms of W came off as a bit harsh. Perhaps not unnecessarily harsh, but somehow I got in my head that THIS book portrayed the Bush administration a bit more favorably. I figured I would read this thing for balance. Well, let me just say right off that whereas the Smith bio was ‘especially’ negative, this book wasn’t ‘especially’ positive either. In fact, these two books are essentially a mirror of each other. They both come to the same conclusion – Bush was a decent man who truly wanted to do what was best for the country. However, once he got the U.S. embroiled in the Iraq War, things fell apart quickly and left a permanent, justifiable stain on his presidency.

This book is essentially an overview of the eight years of the Bush presidency. Even though Dick Cheney is pictured on the front cover, and the subtitle includes his name, I really didn’t feel like the focus on Cheney was necessarily relevant to a lot of the story. What author Peter Baker tells us between the lines is that Bush relied on Cheney’s advice and strong knowledge early in his tenure as president, but as Bush got more seasoned, he became his own man and seemed more at odds with his Vice-President as time went on. As bad as the Bush presidency ended up, I came away with the impression that it could have been much worse had Bush continued to listen the VEEP. Unlike Bush, Cheney was a staunch conservative hawk who was unflinching in his views and refused to let anyone alter his opinion. Whenever there were issues that needed bipartisan cooperation, Cheney was the most stubborn, thick-headed person in the room. He would never budge an inch and seemed to form a kernel of mistrust within the cabinet and inner circles that had the Bush team more at odds with each other as opposed to demonstrating anything representing unity.

Unlike the JE Smith bio, Peter Baker reserves the majority of his opinions within the pages and lets the reader make up their own mind. Again, for me anyway, once my mind was “made up”, I was left with the same conclusions as JE Smith. Overall I feel this was a good thing. If you read one book and the author tries to sell you their point of view, a small dose of skepticism should be warranted. If you read a second book by a different author that basically says the same thing, you feel much more comfortable with your conclusions. In fact, there were many times where I felt I was reading the same book over again. This didn’t really bother me though, as the narrative was very strong even though one wishes that things would have turned out better where the whole Iraq thing was concerned.

The one area about Baker’s book that I enjoyed more than JE Smith’s account was the description of the overall atmosphere and feeling of the nation in the weeks and months immediately following 9/11. Baker reminds his readers just how scared and uncertain the population was as they faced the worst calamity in 60 years. Once the towers fell and a plane crashed into the Pentagon, the immense sadness and grief was coupled with the fear and anxiety that something far worse could occur at any minute. Add the anthrax scare and a couple of White House evacuations in the middle of the night, one comes away with the feeling that George W. Bush couldn’t have responded any better at the time when the country needed him the most. This probably accounted for his 92% approval rating at the time. Whereas JE Smith lightly brushed over these events, Peter Baker devotes much more page space which helps remind readers why we went into Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place. Hindsight tells us Iraq was a major mistake, but most in the government stood behind the president at the time – even Senators Clinton and Obama.

So Iraq takes up the majority of this book, which it sadly should. We read about the other events that shaped the Bush-Cheney administration, but all of it takes a backseat to Iraq. I came away with the exact same conclusion that I did after reading JE Smith’s bio; Bush could have gone down in history much more favorable had he not gotten us into the whole Iraq mess. Peter Baker engages in a few hypotheticals; mainly that, whatever mistakes were made in Iraq, there hasn’t been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, which is what most Americans feared the most at the time.

I came away with a liking for Bush the man, but felt he didn’t have the tools to make a good president. As far as Dick Cheney goes, I came away with not liking him at all, and couldn’t help but feel he steered Bush into waters best left not sailed. Fortunately for Bush, he stopped relying on Cheney’s advice during his second term and ended up cleaning up some of the messes on the home front, but by then it was far too little and far too late.

If you enjoy this book, I would recommend the Jean Edward Smith bio as well. Yes, as I stated, the two are quite similar and don’t really contradict each other, but it’s nice to read when two different people essentially make the same observations and come to the same conclusions about an eight-year period in American politics. Even if the conclusions aren’t necessarily pretty.

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