As might be expected, most of Bush’s books have been biographies and histories. Biographies are usually about great men who often did the unpopular thing and were later vindicated. As for histories, they are replete with cautionary tales. That might explain how the 1961 classic, Hugh Thomas’s “The Spanish Civil War,” made it onto this year’s presidential reading list. Had Hitler (and Mussolini) been stopped in Spain, much misery would have been avoided. Substitute Iraq for Spain and you have, for the president, some reassuring bedtime reading. …

But the books themselves reveal – actually, confirm – something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks – and sees – vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.