NO RUSH ON BUSH’S MEMOIR…. The president hasn’t said he has plans to write a book after he leaves office, but there’s a certain expectation that a memoir will be published.
That is, if Bush can find a publisher.
In less than three months, President-elect Barack Obama will take office and the Bush administration will belong to history. With the president reportedly interested in writing about his White House years, publishers have a suggestion:
Take your time.
“If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage,” says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton’s million-selling “My Life.”
How discouraging is the market for Bush? Regnery doesn’t seem particularly interested.
“Certainly the longer he waits, the better,” Marji Ross, president and publisher of the conservative Regnery Publishing, said. “There’s a pent-up frustration among conservatives that will focus their attention on a Barack Obama presidency and lead them to buy a lot of books about Barack Obama. But that’s not the kind of emotion that anyone is going to use to turn to reading a memoir by a conservative president.”
I’m not even sure time will heal the wound. The vast majority of the nation, and even a strong number of Republicans, is anxious to see the end of this reign of error. The idea of shelling out $29.95 to read about the president’s reflection on eight years that most of us will prefer to forget, doesn’t exactly scream, “best seller.”
