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Woodward's "inside account" of the Bush administration focusing on the first 100 days after Sept. 11, from the terrorist attacks to the preliminary victory in Afghanistan, portrays a decisive leader with a firm grip on power. Countering the notion that Bush is a puppet president -- a man who waits for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or his father to tell him what to do -- Woodward boldly places him at the center of this narrative, the hero in America's struggle against Islamic fanaticism. Woodward's Bush is smart -- the "most awful moments" for Condoleezza Rice, the brainy national security adviser from Stanford, came "when the president thought of something that the principals, particularly she, should have anticipated." Woodward's Bush is disciplined, "deliberate, patient," yet bold -- he pushes his advisers to target terrorism itself not just Osama bin Laden. Woodward's Bush is humanitarian -- even while planning a war against the Taliban he wants to fulfill America's "moral mission" by easing the Afghans' suffering. And he is visionary -- Woodward enthusiastically describes the president's ambition to make the world safe for Americans. In fact, Woodward's Bush is downright Reaganesque, a shrewd, centered leader who enjoys being underestimated. The implication is clear: Bush was the right man at the right, though tragic, time. His simplicity and clarity of vision are what Americans needed after Sept. 11. "Bush at War" contains no headline-generating scoops. Nothing here compares with earlier Woodward revelations of a drunken Richard Nixon praying with Henry Kissinger or a mystical Hillary Clinton communing with Eleanor Roosevelt's ghost. Based on more than 100 interviews, including two sessions with Bush, and spiced with quotations from 50 National Security Council meetings, the book provides the flavor of the complicated strategic debates, and intense jockeying for position. Woodward skillfully reconstructs many critical scenes that have shaped the last two years. He captures Donald Rumsfeld's media-friendly macho lingo, with his call for "boots on the ground," meaning deployed soldiers. He introduces Americans to the obscure but even more colorful CIA counterrorism director, Cofer Black, who vows of the terrorists: "When we're through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs." Less blustery yet moving moments include Condoleezza Rice leading strategists at Camp David in a singalong, including "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." It is, of course, premature to declare victory. A work in progress, the war on terrorism is a hologram: What you see changes depending on your point of view and the particular dynamics of the moment. Still, Woodward's book emphasizes Bush's initial achievements: disrupting al-Qaeda, crushing the Taliban, and reassuring the American people. Revisiting press reports from October 2001, when media naysayers were already using the "Q" word (quagmire) to claim that America was bogged down in Afghanistan, Woodward endorses Rumsfeld's views that impatient reporters have "the attention span of gnats." Woodward also applauds the president's reassuring leadership style, which unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt's in World War II, did not demand that Americans sacrifice. Actually, in Woodward's, and Bush's, war, the fight is best left to professionals. The book describes CIA agents wandering around Afghanistan with millions of dollars in cash, distributing them carefully, honestly and with maximum bang for the buck. As with the portrait of the president, this picture of the super-spies at work is too positive to believe completely. Both plotlines tell Americans what they want to hear, and will boost book sales. Since Sept. 11, Americans crave tales of a purposeful president and a smooth, surgical intelligence service, reinforced by military might and American resolve. This triumphalism makes the book useful as an artifact of cultural history. Woodward's career follows a generational trajectory from his and Carl Bernstein's expose of Richard Nixon, through his derision of Bill and Hillary Clinton, to today's credulity. Like Woodward, so many baby boomers exchanged their "September 10" cynical anti-authoritarianism for warmer, more patriotic incarnations. And yet, Woodward's book also contains some disturbing revelations. For instance, when the CIA Director George Tenet heard about the World Trade Center attack, he wondered if it had "anything to do with this guy taking pilot training," meaning Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker." More broadly, Tenet, a Clinton holdover, claims to have appreciated how dangerous bin Laden was, but could not mobilize either Clinton or Bush. Woodward asks whether Sept. 11 was an "intelligence failure" or a "policy failure" without analyzing the question. Furthermore, once the war started, the Colin Powell versus Donald Rumsfeld fight makes the administration look dysfunctional. There are always court rivalries around presidents, especially between diplomats and soldiers. "Insider accounts" of deliberations emphasize such battles. And yet, one wonders about Powell's standing in the administration, given Powell's many policy losses and Bush's "tepid" endorsement. As the book progresses, emphasizing good news over bad, one senses another agenda at work. Do Bush, Tenet and others come across so well because they have been good sources, because they have wisely paid homage to the intrepid investigator, Bob Woodward himself? Given Woodward's cottage industry of quickie insider best sellers, given Bush's clear sensitivity to politics -- even as he flamboyantly refused to read post-Sept. 11 polls -- one wonders whether this book is simply another improvisation of what Woodward elsewhere calls the "Potomac two-step." Moreover, the book's minimalist, dare we say Bushian, style, is too telegraphic. At one point, even while hailing the president's "Wanted: Dead or Alive" approach to terrorism, Woodward agrees with Powell that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's behavior is often "irrational." The next paragraph reports Rumsfeld's assessment that the Saudis feared America was "unhappy" with them, and that even though Rumsfeld believed he had "tamped down" that idea, the Saudis needed "senior-level attention regularly." A more thoughtful book might have questioned why Israel's use of Bush's approach to fighting terrorism was "irrational," yet Saudi Arabia, homeland of most of the 9/11 hijackers, deserved hand-holding. Still, as a "first draft" of history, this book is useful. Woodward is one of the few reporters with the access and the tenacity to uncover these behind-the-scenes stories. His portrait of a steely George Bush will set the template for future tributes, if the early victories of last fall and winter develop into a resounding defeat of those merchants of murder whom President Bush and the American people must confront.
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