What We've Lost
By Graydon Carter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
HC, 352 pages US$25/C$34.95
ISBN: 0-3742-8892-5

The day the sky darkened

By Steven Martinovich
web posted September 27, 2004

If the presidential election were to be decided by the publishing
industry, George W. Bush would lose convincingly this
November. Somewhere in the neighborhood of six dozen books
will be released by the time the election rolls around that are
critical of Bush versus an embarrassingly meager collection
singing his praises. Disappointingly most of these efforts, pro and
con on the administration, fall into the category of being
unconvincing ideological rants that preach only to those already
converted.

Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter's What We've Lost is
one of those unsatisfactory efforts. Attacking the Bush
administration on a wide range of issues that include the
environment, Iraq and the economy, Carter attempts to prove
that the United States has been tangibly diminished over the past
three and a half years. What We've Lost, however, is a
disheveled mess thanks to Carter's lack of even the pretence of
honest inquiry, his selective picking of sources, and data that in
some cases been dismissed as inaccurate long ago.

Carter's analysis of the Bush administration's record on
environment is one such case. Although you probably didn't
notice it, on January 20, 2001 America's skies were darkened
by pollution, the amount of arsenic in your water skyrocketed
and every tree in the United States was felled, at least that's the
impression Carter wants the reader to come away with. Despite
the fact that by every conceivable the United States is cleaner
today then it was four years ago, following a trend that dates
back decades, Carter argues that Bush is actively working to
increase pollution through sweetheart deals with industry, all of
whom heavily donated to his 2000 campaign.

His analysis of Bush's nominations to the judiciary is even more
bizarre. Despite the fact that dozens of his nominations have
been blocked through an unprecedented number of filibusters by
Senate Democrats, Carter argues that vacancies are in fact
Bush's fault. It's also outrageous, according to Carter, that Bush
nominates qualified conservatives to the bench because they
believe in the same things that the president does, a charge that
ostensibly only applies to a Republican president's nominees.
Apparently Bill Clinton's near universal nomination of liberal
judges was a stroke for moderation, not the same thing that
every president done since the founding of the republic.

Even where Carter's criticisms are more justified – and to be fair
there are more than a few, such as some aspects of Bush's
economic record, Carter weakens his own case. He fairly takes
aim at the massive spending hikes, increasing debt and growing
trade imbalance, arguing that they are "not only injurious to the
U.S. economy in the short run but may prove catastrophic over
time." He falters, however, when it comes to attacking Bush's
record on jobs. Despite the fact that the current unemployment
rate under Bush is about the same as it was under Clinton – a
period the media described as a vibrant job market – Carter
argues under Bush it is otherwise. Remarkably, he also claims
that any job growth during the first part of this year is a result of
the war in Iraq.

Although What We've Lost is less venomous than anything
Michael Moore has written in recent years, Carter is no less
convincing than his less capable peer. Rather than even attempt a
balanced exploration of Bush's record, Carter merely throws
everything he can against the wall in the hopes of something
sticking. The bulk of his data seems to come from two or three
sources -- the Brookings Institution should have been listed as a
co-author -- and a great deal of it has either already been proven
inaccurate by reporting that Carter had access to or is so
transparently ideological that its valueless.
 
To paraphrase a criticism A.J. Liebling made of Joseph Alsop,
with What We've Lost, Carter is a little like the moon orbiting
the earth, descending from his lofty perch at Condi Nast's
corporate headquarters to lecture George W. Bush on his
failures. There is plenty to reprove about the Bush administration
regardless of where one stands politically but it behooves a critic
to build a reasonably competent case if he is to prove the
charges that Carter lays out. It's hard, however, to take Carter
seriously, not simply because of his demonstrated animosity to
Bush or his questionable research, but because he apparently
allowed his anger to prevent him from fulfilling the first
responsibility of the critic: genuine scrutiny.

Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario,
Canada.

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