If you can believe Karl Rove, he and Bush had a friendly competition to see who could read more books each year. According to Rove, Bush read 95 books in 2006, 51 in 2007, and 40 in 2008. That’s an average of more than one book a week over 3 years.
Apparently, Obama is not nearly so well read. According to New York Times reporter Michael Powell, Obama is finding that he has little time to read:
I got talking to him about what he reads and was telling me about these different policy tomes. And I said, “Well, yeah, but come on. I’m out here on the campaign trail with you, you’re up even earlier than I am, and I’ve been carrying around this Philip Roth book with me for two months and I’m yet to even crack it.” He actually laughed at that point, and said, “Yeah, you have very little chance to really read. I basically floss my teeth and watch Sports Center.”
UPDATE: Rove probably anticipated people assuming that Bush was counting such books as “My Pet Goat” so he listed many of the books Bush read, and they do appear to be legit. That is of course, assuming that you can believe anything Rove says.
4 Comments
As much as I enjoy comic books, I’m not sure they count as “books” in this sense.
Whats hard to believe? Bush was taking vacations and trips to the Ranch and Camp David for months at a time. According to some aides “Summarized Reports” had to be summarized even further for Bush. He obviously wasn’t working hard and had plenty of time to read.
I don’t think this is all that surprising when you consider the amount that Obama has accomplished since he was elected and how much Bush accomplished overall. The time Bush was using to kick back with a page-turner, Obama is using to work on fixing healthcare, creating jobs, etc.
I wonder which Andrew Mellon book Bush read. If it was the latest “Mellon” by David Cannadine, it would have been clear to Bush had he absorbed any of it that Mellon lowered the tax rate to the rich from 50% to 35%, allowed the banks to deregulate and led us into the “great Depression”. My guess is that Bush did not absorb the lessons there.