Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, a new book by Bush 43 speechwriter Matt Latimer, offers vignettes that are riveting for at least two reasons. First, they shed some light on what the president who rigidly stuck to his script and expressed so little of himself in public appearances was thinking. Secondly, they deepen the question of why he often seems to have thought something different from what his policies and public statements would have led Americans to believe.
(An example that surfaced years before this book: though he expressed doubt about global warming in public statements, Bush actually convened a committee in 2001 to devise high-tech solutions to the problem of climate change.)
According to Latimer, Bush seemed, privately, at least, not to disapprove of gay marriage. In 2008, someone suggested that a criticism of gay marriage be inserted in a commencement address planned for Furman University. But Bush was unwilling to add remarks he called "condemnatory." "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married," he said.
And, though the White House was reserved in its support for the McCain presidential candidacy, Bush's first reaction to McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate is still eye-opening. Bush warned White House staffers who had been cheered by the enthusiasm Palin whipped up among conservatives to wait "until the bloom is off the rose," and said, Latimer reports, "This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for. She hasn't spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let's wait and see how she looks five days out."
As McCain's rally attendance went into what Bush called a "five-spiral crash," Bush himself had to go on television and explain a bailout plan which, he learned shortly before the appearance, was not simply a matter of "buying low and selling high." "Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don't understand it?" he demanded. For his aides, it was a disillusioning time; Latimer writes that when Bush press secretary Dana Perino heard that 77 percent of Americans thought we were "on the wrong track," she "said what I was thinking: 'Who on earth is in the other 23 percent?'"
