Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

At the Harvard Business School, which George W. Bush attended, there are many case studies about business partnerships. One of the recurring themes is that in tough times partnerships are easy. When everyone is struggling for a common goal, unity is always easier. But when a business starts to succeed, the partnership is always a lot tougher.

Political partnerships are different, but still similar. There is no bottom line to worry about, but when one partner starts to succeed politically, ahead of the other, usually there is trouble and strain on the relationship. The Bush/Cheney partnership is a good example.

It seems that every modern Presidential aspirant, when he picks a Vice-Presidential nominee, says that it’s going to be a unique and special partnership. The Bush /Cheney partnership was certainly true to that, especially given the events of 9/11 and the impact that the partnership had on the nation, in ways that we’ll be living with for decades to come.

That’s why New York Times, Chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker's new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House is so important and so central to understanding the history of the Bush administration.

My conversation with Peter Baker:

Tom Ridge and the TEST OF OUR TIMES

The reality of government is that it is never as good as we'd like it to be, or as bad as we usually think it is. This is abundantly clear and a kind of recurring theme in the new memoir by Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania and the first Secretary of Homeland Security. In The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...And How We Can Be Safe Again he comes across as an honorable man, trying to do an impossible job, amidst a nest of Bush administration vipers. There are so many questions and areas we did not have time to cover, but it's a reasonable overview of his tenure.

My conversation with Tom Ridge:

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