The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power [Paperback]

This is psychobiography without the psychobabble. I found it absorbing, clear, lively and persuasive. I think David Owen is right.

A unique and penetrating insight. Anyone who intends to vote at any election should read this book first.

For many politicians, power seems to go to their head, and becomes a heady drug affecting every action they take. The Greeks called it hubris, where the hero wins glory, acclaim and success - but it is often followed by nemesis. David Owen suggests George Bush and Tony Blair developed a Hubristic Syndrome while in power. He provides a powerful analysis, looking at their behaviour, beliefs and governing style, in particular the nature of their hubristic incompetence in handling the Iraq War. Both of them, and in her last year in office, Margaret Thatcher, developed many of the tell-tale and defining symptoms. A statesman, politician and medical doctor, with personal knowledge of the war in the Balkans, David Owen has unique insight into Blair's premiership, including several meetings and conversations with Blair from 1996-2004. With his long political experience, Owen has written a devastating critique of the way that Bush and Blair manipulated intelligence and failed to plan for the aftermath of taking Baghdad.

Their messianic manner, excessive confidence in their own judgement, and unshakeable belief that they will be vindicated by a 'higher court', have doomed what the author believes could have been a successful democratic transformation of Iraq.