Two years after George W. Bush left the White House, TIME columnist Joe Klein has fewer legitimate reasons to invoke the 43rd president as the source of all of our nation?s problems.
So one suspects Klein was happy to see the arrival of the former president?s new memoir. (?Yes! Another chance for some good ol? Bush bashing!?)
Though titled ?A Careless Man,? Klein?s latest column offers occasional kind ? or, at least, not unkind ? words about Bush?s book. ?It reads well,? Klein concedes. ?The anecdotes are occasionally revealing.?
Still, Klein can?t help but return to the theory that Bush deserves most of the blame for what ails us:
In the book, Bush never stops to wonder if, maybe, his team should have spent more time focusing on al-Qaeda before Sept. 11 ? as the outgoing Clinton national security team had strongly suggested ? or whether he should have taken more seriously the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, memo from the CIA warning of an al-Qaeda attack on the homeland.
Klein never stops to wonder, of course, whether Bush?s team inherited the al-Qaeda problem because of the Clinton administration?s lack of seriousness in dealing with the issue.
