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Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy Into a Joke

Ask a 30-something to impersonate George H.W. Bush, and chances are you'll get the "Saturday Night Live" version — an imitation of former cast member Dana Carvey nasally intoning, "Not gonna do it" or "Wouldn't be prudent."

As time passes, the senior Bush will be remembered more by those Carvey impressions than for his actual accomplishments, suggests Russell Peterson, a former stand-up comic who teaches American studies at the University of Iowa.

That's just one example of how late-night comedy can influence the way we think of, and remember, our political figures, he writes in "Strange Bedfellows." It's a trend that leaves him concerned.

Overall, Peterson doesn't break much new ground, and the points are based more on anecdote than scientific analysis. His book still makes for a satisfactory read, but its subtitle makes readers expect something different.

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

As he watched the breach and then the break between Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former White House speechwriter Ted Sorensen was reminded, as he is so often, of his years with John F. Kennedy.

It was September 1960, Kennedy was addressing a gathering of ministers in Houston, responding to concerns that a Catholic could be trusted as president — a major obstacle then for Kennedy's campaign.

"All of those conservative Protestants were glaring at him in the audience," recalls Sorensen, speaking from the living room of his apartment overlooking Central Park, light rain falling on a cool spring morning.

"And he referred to the fact that a lot of these pamphlets quoting popes and priests and prelates from the Catholic church were from other countries, and sometimes other centuries, and then he said, 'I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts. Why should you?'"

"And I've always felt that that's what Obama should say about Rev. Wright," Sorensen says of Obama's former pastor.

Sorensen turns 80 this spring, but over the decades he has changed little in his dapper appearance and in his ideals and adoration for his former boss.

— The Associated Press

War and Decision

Douglas J. Feith opens his memoir, "War and Decision," by asserting that his goal is "not to write a polemic, but rather to make a contribution to history."

That noble intention lasts about a page and a half. Then Feith the polemicist takes over.

From start to finish, this book seeks to revise what the author calls "the now-standard story" that depicts President George W. Bush and his advisers "as militaristic and reckless, closed-minded and ideological, thoughtless at best and even dishonest — and hell-bent on war with Iraq from the Administration's inception."

Like the president he served, Feith is arrogantly unwilling to question the wisdom of what the administration has done. Feith lays more emphasis on the reasoning that led to key decisions than on the horrendous consequences that followed.

No doubt Feith will present a thorough defense in the circle of hell being reserved exclusively for him.