The Assault on Reason: How the Politics of Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision-Making [Paperback]

The American political scene has shifted greatly since 2000 in ways that most Republicans like and most Democrats do not. Although Al Gore's title suggests a broader topic, The Assault on Reason focuses on the Bush methods of running the government and the Republican Party. As you might imagine, Al Gore doesn't like anything about what has happened.

If you were to boil this book down into one single idea, it would be this: Absolute power corrupts absolutely and is a danger to us all. Gore takes the point of view that the Bush administration has been and is mostly about gaining and holding power in order to reward Republicans and those who pay for Republicans to be elected.

As examples, Gore cites the following evidence:

1. The administration always knew that there never was any connection between terrorist attacks and Iraq (nor any threat of weapons of mass destruction being produced in Iraq), but made invading Iraq a high priority for pursuing its oil-focused strategy of controlling the Middle East where major oil companies and contributing contractors have been rewarded.

2. The Bush administration seeks to maximize fear of terrorism to gain ever more power for itself, usually by ignoring the limits on government power in the Constitution.

3. Fund-raising for Congressional Republicans is now controlled by the White House so the administration hasn't had any oversight from either party in Congress, a sharp departure from past practices.

4. When the president signs a new piece of legislation, he almost always indicates that he won't follow the law that was enacted (this has occurred over 1000 times). As a result, President Bush operates as though he is free from any legal restraint, including treaties that the United States has signed and honored for decades.

5. The Justice Department has been used to punish political enemies rather than seeking to enforce the law in a fair way.

6. Judges (who are supposed to be independent) are threatened with violent rhetoric and having their courts discontinued while they are wooed by special interests at high-priced seminars that serve as vacations.

7. Special interests that support Republicans make all the Bush policy decisions in secret, often contrary to the best evidence of what's in the public interest.

Against this backdrop of raw political hardball, Gore points out that the electorate isn't in the ball game. Most people don't know that Congress and the courts are supposed to be a restraint on presidential power. About half the electorate still thinks Saddam Hussein was the guiding force behind the terrorist attacks on 9/11. People prefer to see news reports about celebrities than news reports about public issues. When the president sponsors legislation that says it's a "Clean Air Act" hardly anyone knows that the bill will actually make air dirtier.

What's the diagnosis?

1. Restore balance between the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government.

2. Start debating major decisions with emphasis on looking carefully at the best evidence.

3. Re-establish the rule of law.

Those ideas will be appealing to those who are deeply steeped in the history of how the U.S. government evolved. But in the last 40 years, schools have done little to teach about how government is supposed to operate. Polls show that many people favor having the government run like a CEO leads a private company, with no role for the legislators, judges, and citizens.

I think the remedy has to be a lot more fundamental, starting with recreating a consensus on what it means to be a citizen of the United States, what proper government behavior is, and what the United States wants to stand for in the world.

The book has three weaknesses that you should keep in mind when you read it:

1. There's no discussion of the inherent problems of having political parties in the government system that our founding fathers created. The original idea they had was to avoid parties. The solution lasted about as long as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were able to stay friends. Much of what Gore decries is an outgrowth of greater partisan battling. What's to stop a continuing escalation of that trend?

2. In the area of public debate, Gore relies a lot on the idea that experts usually know the answers. But that's not always true. In addition, what the experts know if often incomprehensible to everyone else. How effectively can you debate such technical issues when most government leaders were primarily trained to be lawyers and the general electorate has little technical knowledge?

3. The essence of getting elected is to create a temporary coalition of voters. Voters mostly look for "someone like me." That's a pretty big disconnect between proposing an approach to having philosopher-kings (of the sort that Plato liked to write about) who even-handedly make careful decisions that benefit everyone.

You may also find yourself wanting to snooze a bit as Gore describes brain physiology to explain why television is the guilty party for many of our anti-thinking woes.

But, all in all, this is a book that should spark a lot of public discussion. That would be good.

If you don't know much about the political theory behind our methods of governing over the last 200 years and the history of the U.S. government, this book will be even more enlightening. Gore is at his best in citing sources that capture the essence of those perspectives.

Polemic? Yes. Turgid? Absolutely not! This isn't a book you would anticipate sitting down to at the airport, or reading whilst lying down at the beach sunning yourself. It doesn't tackle light and easy subjects, it addresses the very basis of the American constitution and why that is currently being subverted, so inevitably it isn't a page turner. It needs to be read at a measured pace, but is not difficult to read. In reading it though and for those of us who are relatively ignorant on the subject, it provides an excellent insight into the fundamentals of the American polity, the approach taken by the Founders of the US to ensure a degree of rationality and reason and fairness in US government and also to try to safeguard this framework from the efforts of those who might wish to subvert it.

Whilst in hindsight it might be obvious, but this book has made it clear to me how unpatriotic Dubya and his pals are, how everything they are doing runs counter to the Founders' aims and is not with a view to ensuring the primacy of the US Constitution but with a view to ensuring self-interest and to hell with the rest. So in that sense it is infuriating, it does amaze me and does make me wonder how a nation with such a strong foundation in democracy (seen in the aims of the aims of it's Founding Fathers) can allow itself to be so betrayed by those in power.

I can't disagree more with what the reviewer wrote below. This book is very informative and well researched - if you don't agree with what it says than research the facts yourself to see if they are the truth and then complain.

The problem I had with this book was that is was little convoluted when far more straight forward language could have been used. Saying that, Al Gore gives a very good summing of what is so wrong with modern day politics and Media - especially in the United States.