Bill Barr's Book: One Damn Thing After Another.

Six weeks ago I urged people not to buy Bill Barr's new tell-all memoir.

Medford journalist Tam Moore had already bought it.

I was dismayed that former Attorney General Bill Barr waited until after Trump was out of office, and after the second impeachment, before he revealed information the public--and the impeachment trial--would have found useful. He could have helped our democracy. Instead, he helped book sales. 

Tam Moore is a lifelong journalist, who worked in television in his early days and then in print, writing for the Capital Press, a regional newspaper focusing on the agricultural industry. In the mid-1970’s, Moore served as an elected Jackson County Commissioner in southern Oregon. He was elected as a Republican in 1974, back at a time when Oregon Republicans were progressive on civil rights, when there were pro-choice Republicans elected locally and statewide, and when Republicans supported cleaning up the environment.

Guest Post by Tam Moore.

A review of One Damn Thing After Another

There’s no shortage of ”insider” books about the troubled Trump presidency. Former Attorney General Bill Barr weighed in with his memories of Trump times in early March. Some commentators – including the Up-Close blog – saying you ought to save your money. 

One Damn Thing After Another is worth a read, and your money, for several reasons. 

Tam Moore

First, it is a memoir of Bill Barr’s life. There’s insight into what shaped the son of a couple of Columbia University professors into a lawyer who would come out of retirement to take the thankless job of U.S. Attorney General for a president who in 2017 and 2018 had verbally savaged the prior AG in very public ways. Barr came to maturity wanting to be a China expert for the CIA, didn’t get into law school until after he joined the agency. 

Second, Barr is a good writer – who wouldn’t be with a couple of loving professors looking over your shoulder while doing homework. Usually, Barr recalls, help was needed with math problems. “My father would put down the book he was reading, grab a yellow pad, draw a line across the page, and say: ‘Now, let’s start with the number line.’ An hour later, he’d be just getting into the mysteries of long division, and we’d be ready for bed. My brothers and I referred to this as getting the ‘number line’ treatment.” (page 16)

Third, Barr cares about his country, its laws and its institutions—including ramifications of the constitutional crisis which almost always seemed just around the corner in the last two Trump years. Wherever you are politically, it’s helpful to know what those in leadership positions think as they pull the levers steering our republic. If you are a resident of Portland, Oregon, for example, Barr takes you through what the federal government debated as mobs triggered by the murder of George Floyd did their nightly riots around the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse.

“But arguing at this stage over which set of extremists is more dangerous is largely a waste of time and diverts us from a far more important task. Instead of jockeying for political advantage on the issue, both parties have a solemn obligation to take a clear and unequivocal stand against all political violence.” (page 486)

Finally, you need to read this book to enjoy Barr’s recollection of learning how to play the bagpipes as a teenager. You’ll discover that decades later, he threw family parties, Ceildh in Scots, with traditional music and dancing. Barr’s ceildh filled hotel ballrooms. “It was essentially like having a large wedding reception every year. In addition to food and drink, we’d have bagpiping, of course, and I’d also book a traditional Celtic dance band and a “caller” to guide people through traditional Irish and Scottish dances—which are analogous to American square dancing.” (pages 153-154) 

Many years ago, I set out to buy a book written by a longtime acquaintance. Sitting at his kitchen table I observed how difficult it is to get everything right. I know the burden of trying to be accurate from editing untold thousands of words in news reports and from helping a friend organize his book about experiences as a prisoner of war. At the table, while he autographed the gift books that would become Christmas presents, this particular author smiled and told me “Tam, that’s why they call it a memoir, it’s the way I remember it.”

Thus, I cut Barr some slack for all the direct quotes which turn up in his memoir. Folks judged this book from the excerpt published March 3 in the weekend Wall Street Journal. It’s the sensational prologue to One Damn Thing After Another -- tightly written prose of a December, 2020 meeting with President Trump laced with direct quotes which are what Barr remembered being said. He was there. We weren’t.

Barr deserves credit for repeated efforts to get the defeated president to move beyond loss of an election, and he got some credit right here in this blog. 

Reading the Barr memoir leads me to recall another book which – regardless of how you view contemporary events in this troubled democracy – give insight into what got us to where we are. I’m referring to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Stony The Road, a 2019 best seller. It documents post-Civil War Reconstruction and the White Supremacy backlash which followed, fueling some of the divisions seen in our current society. Gates does the job by presenting significant quotes from material printed at  particular times in our recent history. 

He spices up the understanding of what got people at the time thinking the way they did with a collection of political cartoons and images of colorful advertising. All of this makes you contemplate messages as you recall the history.

Barr tells his own story well, like he’s still amazed that as a young man he was picked by President George H. W. Bush to be Attorney General. You learn Barr’s experiences as a corporate lawyer, leading up to being chief counsel at Verizon, the communications giant. 

The significant insights come in the last 15 chapters, where two years with the Trump administration are recounted with reflections on school choice – “It is time to stop destroying the future of these inner-city children and start giving them the opportunity to attend schools of their choice” (page 400) –to letting Afghanistan’s government collapse – “China is now poised to ally with the Taliban and to develop Afghanistan’s mineral resources, gaining even further control over materials essential to numerous advanced technologies.” (page 407)

One of the most significant insights – given Barr’s Republican credentials and his gig with Verizon -- is that this Attorney General wanted to go after Big Tech—seeking legislation on how online platforms justify removing content published on the Internet (page 448). If you are in the free-speech camp, reading this will give you some thought – “The issue of Big Tech’s economic dominance and choke hold on Americans’ free speech rights was a constant worry during my second time as Attorney General.” (page 449)

Barr wraps up the Trump years with a succinct analysis of the former president’s base: “Trump voters aren’t won over to him by this low and puerile behavior; they’re willing to overlook it because they dislike the alternative more.” (page 562) That’s something to ponder with mid-term elections little more than a half-year away.