Frank Rich Reviews the Bush Follies

In his new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, Frank Rich writes, "... whatever else 9/11 was, we can see now that it was the beginning of a new national narrative -- a compelling and often persuasive story that was told by the president of the United States and his administration to mobilize a shell-shocked country desperate to be led."

According to Rich, the administration's highest priority was not to eliminate Al Qaeda, but to consolidate its own power, and this aim called for a propaganda presidency in which reality was consistently replaced by "truthiness."

Rich, who became a New York Times op-ed columnist in 1994 after serving for 13 years as the newspaper's chief drama critic, talked to Terrence McNally.

Terrence McNally: Paul Krugman, fellow New York Times op-ed writer, joined the Times as a mild mannered Princeton economist. In fact, he'd been attacked by the left for being a cheerleader for globalization. Then, on the job, he morphed into a fiery critic of the Bush administration. Now here you are, for years an entertainment writer ...

Frank Rich: There's something about the Bush administration that brings out the best or worst in everyone I guess.

McNally: Tell us a bit about that evolution.

Rich: I've had a very strange career. I grew up in Washington, D.C., in a family that was not involved with politics, which is sort of like growing up in Beverly Hills in a family that's got nothing to do with show business. I was always captivated by politics, but I was also stage-struck as a kid and interested in theater and culture. I've always written about both, though I did have a long period when I was a drama critic at the Times. But even then I was writing a bit about politics and culture for the New Republic and Esquire and elsewhere.

I think that in the case of Paul, he's a numbers guy who really understands economics, and he was appalled -- and rightly so -- in the earliest days of the Bush administration when he saw their fuzzy math. The numbers just didn't add up, and I think it offended his professionalism as an economist. I don't think there was anything particularly ideological about it.

In my case, it wasn't the numbers that caught my eye, but the stagecraft. Why are they always putting on a show? Why does everything have a backdrop with Orwellian words telling you what to think? What are they hiding? What is this "Wizard of Oz"-like theater they've set up?

After all the time I spent thinking about the theater, including Washington theater, if I know nothing else, I know empty spectacle when I see it. Not to make light of something that's been tragic for many Americans and the world, but their whole spectacle is like a big empty Andrew Lloyd Webber contraption -- chandeliers rising and falling, people landing in planes on aircraft carriers and celebrating victory -- and it's empty inside.

McNally: I imagine you've wished you could have the same power as a critic of the administration that you were said to have as a critic of Broadway --

Rich: Unfortunately this is not a show that could be closed out of town. It's had quite a run.

McNally: Why did you write this book? Is it because you began to see that the primary narrative of this administration was the fact that they were putting out a "story"?

Rich: That's exactly right. I started talking about this book with my editor at Penguin a year and a half ago, maybe even longer. Because of my strong belief in wanting to tell this as a narrative as opposed to just throwing together collected columns, I felt it had to have a third act curtain. I'm such a creature of the theater and of narrative, that I felt I couldn't sit down and start writing this book unless I knew, in at least some figurative sense, when it was ending.