The Situation Room

I saw Stephanopoulos interviewed on TV about his just released book, and, being a fan, I had to get it.

I finished it in 2 days.

The Situation Room was started during the Kennedy administration, after the disaster of the Bay of Pigs.  Though Kennedy took responsibility for what happened, if he had had the information that he would have gotten through the staff of a Situation Room, he would have made different choices.

After that the Situation Room became a regular, growing with each administration.   The Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades.  Stephanopoulos tells all the stories.

This is an amazing book.  It reads like a crime drama...you know all the incidents that he's talking about, but when you see them from inside the Situation Room, there are twists and turns and surprises you never dreamed of.

I was first amazed to read about Nixon's administration and how pretty much he didn't do much because he was so depressed by Watergate that he drank too much, took too many pills and was passed out much of the time.  Henry Kissinger really ran the government until Nixon resigned. 

You compare that with Ford and LBJ how different their ways of acting was.

And read a lot about the Carters and psychics.  You learn about the disaster when Carter tried to free the hostages in Iran...and how Reagan got the credit for it, though it was really Carter who set it up.  The story of the attempted assassination of Reagan was pretty amazing.

The telling of the 9/11 tales and the story of the hunt for bin Laden alone are worth a whole book in themselves.

The stories of the Trump administration are enough to make me terrified that he might be reelected....because this time it will be worse.  

This is a "can't put the book down" book.  I'm not big into political books, but this one was incredible 

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