I began studying Invoice O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s new 400+ web page e-book on Friday.  I completed it final night time — Monday night time.  That ought to offer you an concept of how vital and fascinating Confronting the Presidents is. 

It’s subtitled “No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden”.  However that obscures what the e-book truly is: assessments of US Presidents from Washington to Obama, co-written by O’Reilly and Dugard, adopted by assessments of Trump and Biden written by O’Reilly, and assessments of Trump and Biden written by Dugard.  I will clarify close to the tip of this evaluation why I believe that distinction is essential.

First, let me start by saying I used to be on the O’Reilly’s Fox present, The Issue, a number of instances over 20 years in the past (this is the video of my first look in January 2004), and 4 instances on O’Reilly’s No Spin Information podcast a number of years in the past.  We’ve got strongly totally different political beliefs, however I very a lot loved our conversations.  O’Reilly has written quite a few best-selling books, and O’Reilly and Dugard have a best-selling sequence (the “Killing” sequence about assassinations, tried assassinations, killings of terrorists, and many others), which I have not learn, however primarily based on the writing in Confronting the Presidents, I count on that I ultimately will, or at the least learn a few of the books.

That writing is crisp, informative, and even thrilling.   Partially as a result of most of it’s within the current tense — “At the beginning of Jefferson’s second time period, he’s sixty-one years previous.  He’s not the younger idealist….”  And partially as a result of it has so many information, large and little, that I did not know and, after studying them in Confronting the Presidents, I believe I ought to have identified.  Like Theodore Roosevelt planning to run for a 3rd time period as president in 1919, earlier than he died, and LBJ having a decades-long affair with Alice Glass, which Woman Chicken knew about, and solely ended when Alice left him as a result of she was so livid in regards to the Vietnam Conflict.

We study what every president ate for breakfast (proper, I discover that attention-grabbing), what sort of train they most popular, and the way they died.  There’s plenty of humor within the e-book, however cradled in an underlying gravity and mortality.   And this isn’t due to what occurred to Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK, and nearly occurred to a number of others, however as a result of because the authors clarify, the job of president, given the facility to make one’s goals come true, is nearly assured to not be fulfilled, which means your goals will find yourself damaged, their solely likelihood being some future president could choose one up and carry it to victory in some extra hospitable time.

One other salient level of historical past which I already knew as a media historian, and Confronting the Presidents makes abundantly clear, is that the extreme polarization in our present world, (wrongly typically blamed on social media, I might say), truly has been in the US of America from the very starting.  Editors of newspapers had been prosecuted beneath the Alien and Sedition Act that John Adams signed into regulation, and O’Reilly and Dugard inform us that Alexander Hamilton wrote that Adams was “a mere previous girl and unfit for president”.

As a professor and lifelong pupil of communication and media research, I used to be additionally glad to see that Confronting the Presidents notes that First Woman “Carrie” Harrison introduced electrical energy to the White Home however she and her husband Benjamin (1889-1893) had been afraid of being electrocuted, radio started to have a giant affect on politics within the Nineteen Twenties, and naturally TV took middle stage within the Nineteen Sixties.  (See my regularly up to date McLuhan in an Age of Social Media for a way and when tv gave strategy to the social media president.)

***

However this powerhouse e-book, brimming with fascinating, helpful, and vital data, concludes its confrontation of presidents with Barack Obama.   An “Afterword” briefly provides O’Reilly’s and Dugard’s assessments of Trump and Biden independently.  The rationale for this transformation in format is not given, but it surely have to be as a result of Trump’s presidency will not be completed (he is at the moment operating for a second time period), and on the time the e-book was written, neither was Biden’s (he had not but withdrawn from the present election).

I am making such a giant deal about this as a result of O’Reilly’s assessments of Trump and Biden are the primary within the e-book I strongly disagree with.  No point out is fabricated from Trump’s remedy of COVID, and the assault on the Capitol he instigated on January 6, 2021 is barely talked about, as a political mistake, not the basic assault on our democracy that it was.  Much more extremely, O’Reilly ranks Biden because the second worst president in American historical past (after James Buchanan).  

As I stated at first of this evaluation, O’Reilly and I are on reverse sides of the political spectrum.  However I used to be nonetheless greatly surprised by what he stated about Biden and did not say about Trump as a result of I discovered his joint assessments with Dugard about different progressive presidents like Obama and Clinton, and conservatives like Nixon, to be proper on key.  

Clearly, Dugard was a moderating issue, and he had lots to say in his personal evaluation of Trump about January 6, 2021.  He additionally had some reward for Biden, and went as far as to say he hopes Biden wins in 2024 (the e-book was accomplished, once more, earlier than Biden withdrew from the race).

So what you may get from Confronting the Presidents is a good and balanced — to make use of that Fox cliche — evaluation of each American President previous to Trump.  Then, for Trump and Biden, separate assessments from every creator, which taken collectively precisely mirror the present polarization of this nation.

I am unsure what I might have prompt to the 2 authors previous to publication about methods to conclude this e-book.  Perhaps conclude with Obama with no Afterword.  Or possibly battle to search out some frequent floor because the authors did for each different president.  However I can say I like to recommend this e-book to anybody who’d prefer to have a useful, accessible information to the individuals who have been on the high of our noble, imperfect experiment with democracy.