Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media

STRATEGERY: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media

BY BILL SAMMON REGNERY PUBLISHING, INC. 2006, 336 PAGES, $27.95

Third in a series of New York Times best sellers chronicling George W. Bush's presidency, Strategery follows Fighting Back, examining changes in the presidency after 9/11, and Misunderestimated, analyzing the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Strategery begins with John Kerry's candidacy in March 2004 and continues through the hard-fought election and the following 14 months. As senior White House correspondent for the Washington Times, as well as a political analyst for Fox News Channel, Sammon had "unprecedented access" to Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and other senior White House officials; he interviewed the President "more times than any other journalist."

The title of the book comes from a "Saturday Night Live" George Bush-AI Gore debate skit during which Chris Parnell (moderator) asks Will Ferrell (Bush) to sum up the best argument for the Bush candidacy. With exaggerated cockiness, Ferrell replies, "Strategery" (pronounced struh-TEE-jer-ee). The Administration enjoyed the humor, and Rove began to term his weekly assembly of top strategists "strategery" meetings. However, the title might very well have been, How the Liberal Mainstream Media Is Out to Get Bush.

Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media correctly previews the subject content. Sammon has exposed the inconsistencies and inaccuracies of liberal bias intended to change the momentum of the 2004 election and denigrate the Bush Administration. He points out that the Democrats and the mainstream media never stopped complaining about Iraq while downplaying that same country's political, economic, and military accomplishments. During his third prime-time press conference on April 13, 2004, Bush explained how the U.S. was defeating terrorists--for the first time the world was seeing a concerted response to the ideology of terror, a series of powerful, effective blows. "We will stay on the offense until we bring people to justice" The media "pilloried" the President's Iraqi policy, yet never offered a clear alternative.

Sammon explains strategies Republicans use to confound Democrats and deftly defuses liberal-slanted mainstream media stories. The author relates Bush's philosophy about campaigning, the war, and life in general, and he includes from Rove and Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman several insightful quotes defining the "real" George Bush. Sammon describes the Bush haters, a new political phenomenon, as "a virulent strain of acid partisanship," led by National People's Action, a radical group espousing guerrilla tactics "to achieve its left-wing goals."

Bush dislikes press conferences because most reporters concentrate on making themselves look clever as they try to make him look foolish; he especially dislikes reporters who obviously attempt to set up a "gotcha" story. Sammon points out that, on May 23, 2005, the Pew Research Center released a poll showing "self-identified liberals" in the national press outnumbered conservatives by five to one. The press also promoted Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes "egregious misrepresentations" the mainstream media rationalized as "courageous expressions of free speech." Republicans called Moore's film "crockumentary." At the same time, the press generally ignored "What We Have Accomplished," a film Chris Wallace (Fox News) produced as a tribute to the troops.

The book explores the scandal about Sandy Berger's "accidentally" removing classified documents from the National Archives when he served as Pres. Bill Clinton's National Security advisor. When the facts proved Berger guilty, former Clinton aide and current TV political analyst George Stephanopoulos suggested that Attorney General John Ashcroft was responsible for "leaking" the story. Sammon exposes the media's attempt to use a "stink bomb" at the very end of both Bush campaigns. The weekend prior to the 2000 election, the media released the story that, in 1976, Bush had been arrested for DWI, and just 36 hours before the polls opened at the end of his second campaign, the media accused the Administration of failing to safeguard a cache of Iraqi weapons missing for more than 18 months. When an Osama bin Laden videotape overshadowed the impact of the weapons story, Walter Cronkite suggested on CNN's "Larry King Live" that "Rove probably set up bin Laden to do the tape."

Sammon disproves the Newsweek article about flushing a Koran down a toilet; even after the story proved false, author Michael Isikoff asserted, "It is important to remember that there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards." Some journalists even suggested the story was "a grand conspiracy by the diabolical Bush Administration" to leak false information to make Newsweek look bad.