One Damn Thing After Another

April 1, 2022
Another casualty of the Trump administration tells his story. It was all the Democrats' fault: They refused to cooperate with Trump when he was elected in 2016, and thus they "dictated the tenor of the next four years." Talk about bad timing: Venturing that Vladimir Putin is not such a bad guy and that Russia's leaders "no longer promote a revolutionary ideology that foreordains general antagonism with the West" could stand hard rethinking. But so writes Trump's notably compliant attorney general in this brittle, defensive memoir. Granted, Barr admits, Trump "became manic and unreasonable, and went off the rails" after losing the 2020 election, whereupon a less compliant Barr resigned largely because he would not support Trump's claim that the election was rigged. For all that--and for all that Trump regularly berated him--the author remains a true believer not in the man but in the policies. The man, he allows, would raise "Groundhog Day issues," fixations that ranged from firing " 'Comey's people' and those responsible for ginning up the phony Russiagate scandal" to the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. Barr airs any number of Groundhog Day issues himself in this overlong, tedious harangue. He is especially worked up at the "new antiliberal progressivism...embraced by an increasing number of prominent Democrats, aided by relentless media propagandizing, and reinforced by a co-opted education system"; favors a militarized and vigorously active police force; believes that nonreligious public schools "effectively indoctrinate students in a secular progressive ideology antithetical to the values and perspectives of a religious viewpoint"; scorns "the media and cultural elites" and the "curricula of a race-fixated anti-Americanism"; and seeks an executive branch with largely unlimited powers, albeit perhaps with more sense than to urge a mob to storm the Capitol. Anyone who follows the news will already have Barr's talking points, freeing readers to buy another book.

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March 25, 2022
Former Attorney General Barr begins his book with a dramatic scene in which he informs President Trump that his stolen-elections rants are ""bullshit"" and explains why in detail; then Barr offers his resignation. Trump slams his desk and says, ""Accepted!"" Twice. The account of Barr's adventures in the Trump administration picks up again in the last quarter of the book. In between, it's the William Barr story. He describes growing up in a close Catholic family on Manhattan's Upper West Side; handing out Goldwater fliers in the neighborhood; and devoting time and energy to learning the bagpipes. He then chronicles his legal career in public and private sectors as well as his growing prominence among conservatives. At age 41, Barr became George H. W. Bush's Attorney General, moving afterward to private practice. The particulars of Barr's travels in Republican circles may interest only a select group of readers, but what does grab wider attention is his pugnacious championing of conservative values, juxtaposed against a spittle-flecked denigration of the liberal (i.e., ""Marxist"") tenets he despises, including ""racial and gender ideologies,"" ""radical feminism,"" ""transgender ideology,"" and ""social justice."" Throughout, Barr's smug certainty about so many issues is off-putting, but when it comes to Donald Trump, he's willing to look at both sides. He presents a president who is an ill-informed bully, disdainful of facts, and, by the end, a man who has gone ""off-the-rails."" Yet Barr is unwilling to write Trump off completely, admiring his tenacity, his ""positive agenda,"" his appreciation of religious values(!), and the way he kept fellow Republicans in line (presumably in fear of Trump's tweets). To sum up: conservatives, good; liberals, very bad; bagpipes rule; and Trump would have been great if only he wasn't Trump.

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