The scruffy charms of an insecure president

Biographer Robert Draper explains that Bush has a surprising intellect but is incapable of curiosity and owning up to mistakes.

By Rob Patterson

Read more: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Politics, News, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq War, 2008 election

Sept. 11, 2007 | Revelations from "Dead Certain," Robert Draper's new biography of President George W. Bush, have received marquee play since the book's publication on Sept. 4. The disclosures have ranged from the petty -- Bush, a stickler for punctuality, once locked a late Colin Powell out of a meeting -- to the momentous. Among the more uncomfortable for the White House: Bush's claim that Paul Bremer, head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, made the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army without Bush's knowledge, an assertion rapidly rebutted by Bremer.

What Draper, a writer for GQ, really does with great skill in "Dead Certain," however, is debunk caricatures of George Bush, both positive and negative. Draper, who first spoke to Bush for GQ in 1998, did six additional interviews with Bush for the book and had access to the president's inner circle. In place of the dimwitted boogeyman of the left and the resolute hero of the right, Draper introduces a three-dimensional man full of contradictions. His George Bush is charming, petulant, open and insecure, smart but allergic to inconvenient facts.

On Friday, Salon spoke with Draper about "Dead Certain," his many encounters with George Bush, whether he likes the president personally, and how some former White House staffers have responded to the book's ambiguous, often unflattering portrait.

Newsweek headlined its article about your book "A Biographer Off Message" and called you "Bush's wayward biographer." How do you feel about that characterization, or the sense that you somehow got access to the Bush White House and then burned your sources, including the president?

It's a little bit silly, because it presupposes that I had some kind of handshake deal with the White House and have broken that. I did have a deal with the White House, and that is that I would write a fair-minded, nonjudgmental literary narrative of Bush's presidency, and I think I've delivered that. I do think that the writer of that piece, Richard Wolffe, whom I know and admire, is right that the book has thrown the White House off message when Bush is trying to turn the page on a lot of things. That's not my book's intention. Its intention is to be a lasting book, and I told the president that when I was making my pitch to him -- a book that was not just for and about the news cycle. But I have to say that I am grateful that it's in the news cycle, and I'm glad that people are interested in it and talking about it, and that has the consequence of reporters asking the White House questions about it, too. That sort of comes with the territory.

In the book you write that Bush asked you, "What is the purpose of this book?" And you don't record how you answered. What did you tell him was the purpose of the book?

I'd already given him the reply, and the reply is, "to write a first draft of the history of Bush administration -- and to answer the question that someone might pose 50 years from now." That question wouldn't be, What does Robert Draper think about George W. Bush? It is, How did an un-ambitious Midland [Texas] oilman change the world, for better or for worse? That's precisely the question that I told the president in August 2006, when I had this meeting with him, that I intended to answer. I thought that people would want to know. Who was this man who, before he became this pivotal character on an international landscape, was a virtually anonymous figure whom no one viewed as having leadership capabilities? How did he become a leader, and what did he do with it?

How did you get under the cone of silence of this very secretive administration? And how did you get the president to agree to talk to you?

While I was doing it, it didn't seem terribly difficult. But it was, from time to time. But what would happen would be -- it was Journalism 301 -- I would interview one guy and it would go well. And he'd say, yeah, sure, you can come back. And I'd say, by the way, you mentioned so-and-so in the interview. Do you know how to get in touch with him? And then I'd drop the name of the person I [then] interviewed. And so I moved closer and closer inside the circle.

And in the multiple interviews they became more and more candid even as they were also giving up other names of people for me to talk to. In the course of this too, they all began to talk among themselves about what I was up to, and I think that came back to the president. It helped that [Bush media strategist] Mark McKinnon had put in a good word for me to a handful of people. And he's a bike-riding companion of the president, and on a number of occasions mentioned to the president that I was doing a stand-up job and hoped that the president would speak to me.

I have to say: People have been trying to demystify how I got this access. Being a Texan I'm sure helped, but there's a lot of Texas reporters. Being Mark McKinnon's friend helped, but he has a lot of buds in the media. I don't have any particular gifts as a reporter. I don't have an interviewing technique that spellbinds people. Which is a long-winded way of saying I really don't know how. I just kind of plodded along. I think it meant a lot to this president -- it's the sort of thing that does mean a lot to him -- that I never asked it to be handed to me on a silver platter. I went about my business with the supposition he wasn't going to talk to me.

It helps to exhibit a true interest in the topic and the people you're talking to. I really was interested in [Office of Management and Budget Director and later White House Chief of Staff] Josh Bolten's relationship with the president, and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagen's take on things. I did find all of this stuff interesting; there was no artifice to that. And I am the kind of person whose interest can be palpable. So perhaps I pleased a lot of these people.

And I'll add one final thing: These guys are tight-lipped and they don't do much talking. But people like to talk. They like to talk about what they are doing. So maybe that was some of it: Once I got in a little bit, all these people were sort of relieved to have the opportunity to share their insights and recollections.

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