Secret Lives of the Presidents
Timothy Egan
NYT
We see more of them than we do most family members. We know what kind of dog they like and what beer they drink. Strangers bring up the most intimate details of their lives for rabid dissection, and intimates bring up the strangest details.
Yet for all the perceived closeness Americans have to their presidents, we don’t really know them, as a slew of recent revelations make clear. They are layered thick with the armor of artifice.
George W. Bush, who got Ned Flanders Nation to see him as a righteous Christian guided by Biblical principle, had a soft spot for gay marriage, and didn’t believe his own speeches on the subject. This from ex-speech writer Matt Latimer.
Bill Clinton, the master multi-tasker who never seemed to sweat despite his many self-inflicted travails, was actually quite fragile just before the Monica Lewinsky affair. “I cracked,” he said, in the recollections of chosen chronicler, Taylor Branch. “I just cracked.”
(More here.)
NYT
We see more of them than we do most family members. We know what kind of dog they like and what beer they drink. Strangers bring up the most intimate details of their lives for rabid dissection, and intimates bring up the strangest details.
Yet for all the perceived closeness Americans have to their presidents, we don’t really know them, as a slew of recent revelations make clear. They are layered thick with the armor of artifice.
George W. Bush, who got Ned Flanders Nation to see him as a righteous Christian guided by Biblical principle, had a soft spot for gay marriage, and didn’t believe his own speeches on the subject. This from ex-speech writer Matt Latimer.
Bill Clinton, the master multi-tasker who never seemed to sweat despite his many self-inflicted travails, was actually quite fragile just before the Monica Lewinsky affair. “I cracked,” he said, in the recollections of chosen chronicler, Taylor Branch. “I just cracked.”
(More here.)
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