Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy

Boy did I learn a lot! Everyone should read this book to get an insight into how government works. It's amazing with this Administration has gotten away with. If voters would take a little more time, learn a little more about how things work, and listen to the candidates a little more carefully, we can avoid making a mistake as big as Bush & Cheney in the future. And I certainly hope we do.

This book is scary. Not in the horror since but finding out what is going on. Our president has make a power grab that could shake our democracy to the core.

Mr. Savage does a masterful job of reviewing Dick Cheney's career and showing his on-going efforts at instilling more power into the presidency while manipulating the current president. This is a man who revels in ignoring Congress and any type of authority for that matter. Savage portrays in laymans terms the events and the evidence of his lying to investigative committees, demonstrating that Cheney is more qualified to be impeached than Clinton. This is an excellent history of a covert politician.

As a doctor, I should not allow you to read this book in one sitting lest your cynicism and despair find nothing left to weep about. Nope, I'm not being dramatic. Savage moves inexorably through the past generation of presidents, describing in a horribly clear clinical presentation what is happening to our freedom through the actions of those who have only the best of intentions. Are you listening, Mr Bush? Of course, if we remain good little soldiers in this unfathomable war on Terror, no questions and only gratitude, right? (How better to fight Terror than use Terror? What happened to NOT becoming as our tormentors?) And worst of all, some two-thirds through the book, just when you expect some hero to arise who will stand up for what we are supposed to believe in - what we were taught to believe in when our teachers told us we were "the leaders of the 21st century" - you realize there is no hero. There are just plain folks, slogging their way through one supposed emergency after another, making policy based on the poorest diagnoses, wondering (if we are lucky and they are honest) if their therapeutic interventions will make democracy safer. (Does Mrs Cheney murmur that to Mr Cheney after each kiss, even after the 6 o'clock news?) Even the best of us - the bright boys and girls who went to the "good" schools - the Yoo's and the Addington's and their buddies - just your usual schlemiehls and schlemozzles, faithful to the war, faithless to each other. Thanks, Mr Savage: you have made the world a better place for your work; no safer, just better, God damn it. Read the book. You must.

Anyone interested in our Democracy, no matter what their political affiliation, should get this book and send it to their Representatives in Congress, and others (including those who help report the news, as well).

It covers issues which have simply been too often glossed over by an increasingly sound bite and mediocre media. Issues which go to the core of why our Constitution was established in the first place.

That said, the subject matter is neither boring nor irrelevant, and is well covered well. That is, the idea that our country was founded upon: a government of limited, checked powers, and how that principle, and the constitution, have been largely ignored, and what this means for America. It should be required reading for all.