“Dad, you have to realize that the Cato Institute doesn’t exist inside the Bush White House.” The latter was relayed to me by Minneapolis investment banker Roger Conant back in 2005. Conant was referencing a conversation with his son, who was a deputy to Josh Bolton, George W. Bush’s then chief-of-staff.
At the time I was a fundraiser for the Cato Institute, the world’s leading libertarian organization. Conant was a donor, and we used to complain to each other that Cato’s view of the world wasn’t remotely informing the policies of the Bush White House. Conant’s son helped explain why.
This long ago anecdote came to mind while reading Evan Osnos’s very well written, but ultimately very disappointing new book, Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury. The disappointment is in a very real way a compliment. Osnos’s spectacular and largely fallacy-free 2014 book on China, Age of Ambition, had me yearning for his next big project.
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