MY FATHER, MY PRESIDENT

The life of the former president viewed through the eyes of his admiring and devoted daughter.

In her literary debut, the former First Daughter finds precious little evil to see, hear or speak—certainly not concerning anyone in her family. Her parents (and grandparents and all other progenitors, clear back to prehistory when the Bushes were still in the trees) were the best. Her brothers are awesome. The author can’t understand why so many in the press hate Republicans. And Democrats are dirty campaigners. Daddy was an outstanding student, a brilliant athlete. Respected and admired and loved by everyone who ever met him. (Lots of people—even Secret Service agents—cried when he left the White House.) John Dean was “an arrogant little creep.” The booming economy during the Clinton years was due to Daddy. So was the fall of the Soviet Union. Iran-Contra was “blown out of proportion.” Newsweek had no business putting that Daddy-is-a-wimp stuff on its cover. Peggy Noonan takes too much credit for Daddy’s speeches. Lee Atwater had no idea that Willie Horton was black. She quotes her father: “All this Anita Hill stuff was transparently phony, in my view.” And Daddy did know how a supermarket checkout scanner worked. Daddy’s heart was broken when a storm damaged the Kennebunkport home. Jeb Bush cried when he thought Gore had won Florida in 2000. Daddy cried when his son won the White House. Daddy and Bill Clinton are now pals, though Clinton’s amity is probably just a ploy to woo some GOP voters. Arnold Scaasi designed a cool salmon chiffon dress for her second wedding. The author shuffles into her daffy deck of history some stories about her own vicissitudes (divorce, re-marriage, travel on the Trans-Siberian Railroad—whose sad amenities she compares with those experienced “in the Siberian gulags”). And with all the testimonials to Daddy she reproduces here, the entire volume becomes a Festschrift, her father’s visage a huge smiley-face.

Her heart belongs to Daddy.