Is Our Children Learning?
The Case Against George W. Bushby Paul Begala
Simon & Schuster, 160 pp., $12 (paper)
Begala is Jim Hightower without the charm but with twice the folksy twang. He’s also one of President Clinton’s consultants and ardent defenders, so his new book — a tired collection of mostly borrowed anecdotes and quotes — reads more like a campaign operative’s polemic than the work of a seasoned political writer. Not that we’re big Bush defenders, mind you: It’s just that (to borrow a Begala-ism) vultures always flock to a big meal they can pick clean. Is Our Children Learning? — the title is an actual question Bush asked during a speech on education — goes beyond the merely smarmy (a section titled “Tax Cuts for the Rich: Now There’s an Idea”) and tired (repeating Molly Ivins’ well-worn claim that Bush “was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple”) to the downright embarrassing (“$1.9 trillion is, as we say in Texas, ‘a right smart o’ money.'”). Bush as a target is almost too easy, and the material presented here, while useful to those totally unfamiliar with this year’s presidential contest, is presented more thoroughly in the many books and articles cited in Begala’s extensive bibliography.
This article appears in October 20 • 2000.