Books about Administration from Amazon.com

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The former White House counsel faults Republican mismanagement for the current state of the government

John Dean has become one of the most trenchant and respected commentators on the current state of American politics and one of the most outspoken and perceptive critics of the administration of George W. Bush in his New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse than Watergate.

In his eighth book, Dean takes the broadest and deepest view yet of the dysfunctional chaos and institutional damage that the Republican Party and its core conservatives have inflicted on the federal government. He assesses the state of all three branches of government, tracing their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Unlike most political commentary, which is concerned with policy, Dean looks instead at process--making the case that the 2008 presidential race must confront these fundamental problems as well. Finally, he addresses the question that he is so often asked at his speaking engagements: What, if anything, can and should politically moderate citizens do to combat the extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and increasing focus on divisive wedge issues of so many of today's conservative politicians?

With the Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, the stakes for the 2008 presidential election have never been higher. This is a book for anyone who wants to return government to the spirit of the Constitution.

Questions for John Dean

Amazon.com:Broken Government is a book unabashedly about governmental "process," which, I'm sure your publisher told you, is not considered the sexiest of topics. But you make the case that voters are actually often more concerned with process than with policy. Could you explain?

Dean: Actually, my wife was the first to tell me that "process" is not sexy. In fact, if you think about it, process can be quite sexy. Allow me to translate into a different context. Dating, seduction, and courtship are all types of processes, while the object of one's efforts is a policy decision. The kind of car you drive is a policy decision, but the way you drive it is a process matter. To take the leap to government--the machinery of government is the process, while what we do with that machinery is policy. Most Washington insiders are more interested in process than they are policy because it is truly the name of the game. In making the case that many voters are actually more concerned with government process than policy, something I have intuitively known for a long time, I relied on empirical research which was uncovered by a team of political scientists at the University of Nebraska. In addition, early responses to the book have confirmed that voters are deeply interested in these operations, when they have discovered what the book is about.

Amazon.com: You assess the state of each of the three branches of government and conclude that Congress, after the Democrats took over from your former party, the Republicans, at the beginning of this year, is "broken but under repair." Congress's approval ratings have remained even lower than the president's. Do you think they are fixing their broken institution?

Dean: Congress has traditionally had the lowest approval ratings of all the branches. In the book I explain why this is the case, along with the irony that most voters give their own representatives and senators high approval ratings, claiming it is merely the rest of them they don't approve of. After explaining the repairs that the Democrats have instituted since regaining control of the legislative branch, I explain that it is a Republican tactic to do all within their power to not allow the Democrats to get public credit for making Congress work again. Indeed, Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 election after years of doing all they could to literally destroy Congress--it was really quite remarkable how they attacked the institution that they were part of, but it worked. Voters concluded that Democrats could not run Congress. After the GOP took control in 1995, they ran Congress not as a deliberative body but in a dictatorial manner that literally excluded Democrats, which meant over half the nation was not represented in Congress. Not surprisingly, by 2006 the efforts of the GOP to make their Congressional majority permanent through blatantly corrupt means and methods had backfired, and enough voters realized what was happening to take away control.

Now the GOP is back to trying their best to make the Congress not function, so that voters will put them back in control. The reason approval ratings are sinking is the GOP is succeeding--and the Democrats inexplicably refuse to talk about what the GOP is again doing to the process, and the media is not reminding voters. If Democrats continue to ignore process issues, if they refuse to make them an issue in 2008, not only will they lose but so will democracy as we know it.

Amazon.com: The battles between the White House and the Democratic Congress over the release of documents to congressional oversight committees raise all kinds of echoes from the Nixon era. How strange is it to see your old assistant in the Nixon White House counsel's office, Fred Fielding, return to the White House as point man in fighting some very similar skirmishes with Congress over executive privilege?

Dean: I cannot imagine why Fielding, whom I brought into the government in 1971, returned to the Bush/Cheney White House as counsel. I suspect his friend Dick Cheney leaned hard on him, for they needed help. Fielding has credibility on Capitol Hill, and while they may not like his stonewalling them, they know he is doing his boss's bidding and they understand that he is no doubt trying to get his boss to do the right thing. Fielding has never worked on the Hill, and his entire worldview of government is from the White House. When all is said and done, I think Fred will be viewed not as his own man, but just another who drank the Kool-Aid. I also know Pat Leahy and John Conyers, who chair the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, who are even more seasoned at the Washington game than Fielding. So it is going to be an interesting battle in the days ahead.

Amazon.com: What's particularly striking is that the White House appears to be winning those battles, or at least stalemating them successfully. What do you think this administration learned from Watergate? Why do you think they have been able to hold the line against congressional oversight?

Dean: No question that this administration learned from Watergate, and the landscape has changed significantly in the past three decades. When I returned to writing I never contemplated I would be writing political commentary, but when others were not talking about what was so obvious to me, I felt I had to do so. Republicans have taken Nixon's disgraced tactics and approach to presidential power as their starting point. They have learned that if caught, deny it. If that doesn't work, ignore the fact you have been caught and just keep doing it, and claim you have the inherent power to do so. They can get away with it because right-wing talk radio and Fox Cable News have become the cheering section that did not exist during Watergate. As for oversight, during the first six years of the Bush/Cheney administration, the GOP-controlled Congress could not even spell the word "oversight." Only now are we approaching real tests of whether the Democratic Congress will go the distance to get the information they are entitled to have.

Amazon.com: You describe yourself as a "Goldwater conservative on many issues," but note that conservatives' "fundamentally antigovernmental attitude" can make it hard for them to govern effectively. In other words, if people hate government, why would they be good at it? What do you think are the models of good conservative governance?

Dean: Senator Goldwater said during the 1964 presidential campaign--and I have found him saying the same thing years later in speeches--that when history looked back on his political philosophy that he would be called a liberal. Goldwater conservatism is actually drawn from classic liberalism. I particularly admire Senator Goldwater's positions on "process" issues, the way he rejected the incivility and intellectual dishonesty that has overpowered conservatism. While he did not like big government--in fact, nobody does and he was merely ahead of his time in raising the issue--he believed that which was essential must function in the best interest of all Americans, not merely Republicans. He never embraced the Reagan mantra that government is the problem not the solution. I always thought Senator Goldwater's definition of conservatism a good motto for good conservative governance: "a conservative draws on the wisdom and best of the past to apply it to the present and the future." Today, conservatives are drawing on the worst of the past, not because they are true conservatives; rather they are radicals more interested in power for themselves and other Republicans instead of serving the general public interest.

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The simple revolution has begun. From the design of the iPod to the uncluttered Google home page, simple ideas are changing the world.

Simple Church clearly calls for Christians to return to the simple gospel-sharing methods of Jesus. No bells or whistles required, so to speak.

Based on case studies of four hundred American churches, authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger prove that the process for making disciples has quite often become too complex. Simple churches are thriving, and they are doing so by taking these four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus.

Each idea is examined here, simply showing why it is time to simplify..
Price: $11.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.

Iglesias has long served in the Navy as part of the JAG corps. One of his earliest cases, about an assaulted Marine in Guantanamo Bay, became the basis for the movie A Few Good Men. When Bush chose him to become the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, it was a dream come true. He was a core member of Karl Rove's idealized Republican Party of the future -- handsome, Hispanic, evangelical, and a military veteran. The dream came to an abrupt end when Senator Pete Domenici improperly called Iglesias, wanting him to indict high-level Democrats before the 2006 elections. When Iglesias refused, the line went dead. Iglesias was fired just weeks later. First, he was devastated. Then, he was angry. Now, he is speaking out.

Iglesias recounts his interactions with Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and other key players as he takes readers into his time at the Justice Department to reveal what top Republican officials said and did, and how they subverted justice..
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A bestselling author and award winning journalist follows a year in the life of a big urban hospital, painting a revealing portrait of how medical care is delivered in America today

Most people agree that there are complicated issues at play in the delivery of health care today, but those issues may not always be what we think they are. In 2005, Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, unveiled a new state-of-theart, multimillion-dollar cancer center. Determined to understand the whole spectrum of factors that determine what kind of medical care people receive in this country, bestselling author Julie Salamon spent one year tracking the progress of the center and getting to know the characters who make the hospital run. Located in a community where sixty-seven different languages are spoken, Maimonides is a case study for the particular kinds of concerns that arise in institutions that serve an increasingly multicultural American demographic. Granted an astonishing “warts and all” level of access by the hospital higher-ups, Salamon followed the doctors, patients, administrators, nurses, ambulance drivers, cooks, and cleaning staff. She explored not just the action on the ground—what happens between doctors and patients—but also the financial, ethical, technological, sociological, and cultural matters that the hospital community encounters every day.

Drawing on her skills as interviewer, observer, and social critic, Salamon presents the story of modern medicine, uniquely viewed from the vantage point of those who make it run. She draws out the internal and external political machinations that exist between doctors and staff as well as between hospital and community. And she grounds the science and emotion of medical drama in the financial realities of operating a huge, private institution that must contend with issues like adapting to the specific needs of immigrant groups that make up a large and growing portion of our society.

Salamon exposes struggles of both the profound and humdrum variety. There are bitter internal feuds, warm personal connections, comedy, egoism, greed, love, and loss. There are rabbinic edicts to contend with as well as imams and herbalists and local politicians. There are system foul-ups that keep blood test results from being delivered on time, careless record keepers, shortages of everything except forms to fill, recalcitrant and greedy insurance reimbursement systems, and the surprising difficulty of getting doctors to wash their hands.

This is the dynamic universe of small and large concerns and personalities that, taken together, determine the nature of our care and assume the utmost importance. As Martin Payson—chairman of the board at Maimonides and ex-Time-Warner vice chairman—puts it: “Hospitals have a lot in common with the movie business. You’ve got your talent, entrepreneurs, ambition, ego stroking, the business versus the creative part. The big difference is that in the hospital you don’t get second takes. Movies are make-believe. This is real life.”.
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Short, sharp, and oftentimes shocking, Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments” have made his nightly MSNBC program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, must-see viewing–and the fastest-growing news show on cable TV. In these segments, Olbermann calls out the perpetrators of mismanagement, brutality, cronyism, and the appalling lack of accountability at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In so doing, Olbermann goes where most of the mainstream media fear to tread–and his rapidly expanding audience eagerly follows.

In Truth and Consequences, Olbermann collects the best of his Special Comments, presented here with additional observations and other new material. Whether taking to task the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and (the thankfully former) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who compare critics of the Iraq War to Nazi appeasers, or giving his impassioned perspective on why torture is un-American and what it really means to support our troops, or grilling timid lawmakers who fail to rein in presidential overreach and abuses of executive power, Olbermann’s devastatingly blunt (and at times wickedly funny) commentary cuts to the core of the duplicity and cynicism of a government that has lost the ability to distinguish between leading our great nation and ruling it.

Naturally, Keith Olbermann’s candor and razor-sharp polemic have earned him many detractors and enemies. His antagonists in the media, such as Bill O’Reilly, have mocked him and accused him of rank intolerance. Yes, Keith Olbermann is intolerant–of hypocrisy, demagoguery, fear-mongering, and especially the equation of dissent with treason. In Truth and Consequences, he fights to reclaim for himself and all Americans the dignity of speaking one’s mind and acting on one’s conscience.

Praise for Keith Olbermann
“A truth-telling, Bush-bashing accidental liberal hero.”
–New York

“The most honest man in news . . . Olbermann clearly relishes his feuds and doesn’t seem to worry much about sparking new ones.”
–Rolling Stone

“Part Jon Stewart (the funny), Dennis Miller (the erudite and biting sub-references), [and] H. L. Mencken (the skewering of power and stupidity in equal doses) as well as crusading journalist . . . Olbermann has emerged as a kind of force of nature.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Intelligent, well-read, forceful and incisive.”
–Rocky Mountain News.
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All church leaders have faced the questions that arrive with newcomers: Do they feel comfortable? Is there more we could do to serve them? Will they want to come back? Creating an environment that both embraces our newcomers and excites them enough to return does not happen by chance. We must be prepared to be effective stewards of the newcomers God brings us. And, why shouldn t the Church be the epitome of service at its best, as modeled by the greatest server of all time? Built on The Journey Church of the City s Assimilation Seminar, Fusion embodies a step-by-step, biblically grounded, tested and proven plan for establishing a relationship with newcomers that ultimately prompts them to become fully developing members of our congregations. This innovative, practical guide is full of how-to information, testimonials from the recently assimilated and from participating church leaders, examples of the assimilation materials used and check points to make sure the reader is on track. Engaging, informative and immediately applicable, here is help for setting newcomers on the path toward true life transformation and spiritual maturity..
Price: $7.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"It’s Tuesday morning and Hope walks into her office with puffy eyes, a swollen head and a broken heart. Unfortunately her company, EZ Tech, is in worse shape than she is. The fact that their computer batteries are catching on fire are the least of their problems. Employees have been posting negative comments about management on internet blogs for the world to see, the media is attacking the credibility of the company, morale is at an all time low, negativity is at an all time high and the stock price is falling faster than the Titanic. As head of Human Resources, Hope is charged with finding a solution to overcome the biggest challenge in her company’s history. In the process of battling her own adversity she discovers The No Complaining Rule and other positive ways to save her company and herself from ruin."

In the spirit of his international best selling book, The Energy Bus, Jon Gordon once again shares an inspiring and enlightening story that reveals a powerful way to tackle the biggest problem in business and life today… negativity. It costs organizations billions of dollars and impacts the morale, productivity and health of individuals and teams. Based on an actual company that created and implemented The No Complaining Rule, Gordon delivers an engaging story filled with innovative ideas and practical strategies to develop positive leaders, organizations and teams. For managers, team leaders or anyone looking to turn negative energy into positive solutions, The No Complaining Rule shares powerful principles and an actionable plan to win the battle against individual and organizational negativity. When you implement The No Complaining Rule you’ll spend less time and energy on problems and more time focused on solutions..
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