Harry Reid In PRINT: Bush Is Kind of a "B**ch" Like His Mother

Believe it or not, this was in dingy Harry Reid's book last year. Apparently, the first person is just now starting to read the thing, which tells you a lot about it. I didn't even know Reid wrote a book, but anyway. Mark Hemingway reviewed the book that apparently nobody read. From the Weekly Standard (HT: HotAir headlines):

Mark Hemingway reads Harry Reid's memoir The Good Fight, so you don't have to:

Released a year ago, the book got one glowing review: from his hometown paper. Every other major media outlet has been standoffish. Take this blurb from the Washington Post, proudly emblazoned on the back of the paperback edition: “Recounts fights with everyone from classmates to the man who would eventually become his father-in-law, preparing him for a senatorial life of battling the Bush White House and Republican filibusters.” Beware the value-neutral blurb: In fact, the Post never reviewed the book — the quote comes from a gossip column published a month before the book’s release. One of the most powerful men in Washington published a book, and the entire journalistic establishment’s reaction seems to have been, “If you can’t say something nice . . . ”

Of course, Reid doesn’t always have nice things to say himself. While no one expects Reid to praise George W. Bush, the degree to which he is judgmental and catty regarding the former president pretty much speaks for itself. Three pages in, after lamely trying to establish his bipartisan bona fides by talking up George H. W. Bush, Reid shares this charming anecdote about his early days in the Senate: “[Former Texas senator and vice-presidential candidate Lloyd] Bentsen went on and on effusively about what a quality man President-elect [H. W.] Bush was. Then he paused and said, ‘But watch out for his wife; she’s a bitch.’ I have never had anything against Mrs. Bush, but guided by Bentsen’s crude advice, I’ve always said that our forty-third president is more his mother than his dad.”

What’s the purpose of recording for posterity a bit of hearsay defaming a woman Reid admits he has no cause to dislike? Is Reid really so petty as to insult someone’s mother? Why yes, yes he is.

Ouch. That Harry Reid - what a class act! The entirety of Hemingway's review can be found at NRO: Speaking Bluntly. Hemingway simply skewers Reid in his review and for good reason. For example, here is just one snippet that speaks volumes:

In a passage describing a meeting the two men had at the White House on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Reid writes: “That day he wore on his face a look of bravado that we’ve all come to know, and said something I will never have the words to adequately describe. But to understand what he said is to understand something profound about the problem at the heart of the administration. Speaking of the fact that the war was being used by radical Islamists for jihadi recruitment, Bush said, ‘Of course, al Qaeda needs new recruits, because we’re killin’ ’em.’ He then gave a smirk — that ‘Bring ’em on’ smirk — that we’ve all come to know. ‘We’re killin’ ’em all,’ he said.”

...And here’s what happened two days later: “I publicly said that the war is lost.” Perhaps Reid should have worried that one of the United States’ most powerful politician’s declaring the war lost would be a ginormous jihadi-recruitment tool. But no, after pages of describing what a dangerous, shoot-from-the-hip, totally-unwilling-to-genuflect kind of guy George W. Bush is, Reid responds to the remark that will forever define his political career by reiterating that he won’t apologize for having said it.

Sure sounds like Reid made himself out to be the moron in his very own book, certainly unintentionally. Could Reid be that shallow as to not even realize such a thing? He apparently wrote his book with the same competence that he leads the Senate with...Ace of Spades has more to say on this: Harry Reid Wrote A Book And Revealed Himself To Be An Enormous Tool.

I seem to recall Democrats going after John McCain because he didn't beat up an old lady who called Hillary Clinton a bitch, though he did chastise her. Now here's the current Senate Majority Leader proudly associating himself with someone who called another first lady a bitch. Democrats will be outrageously outraged in 3-2- oh look over there, it's Sonia Sotoamayor!

It's almost like there is a double standard for Democrats and Republicans when it comes to public behavior. Who knew?

Commenters at Ace went into "yo momma" jokes. So apropos...