You talk about tv movie quality on pg 58 there’s a moment where George Sr. calls his son on the phone and during the call says “he has an upset stomach and he has to have dinner with the Japanese Ambassador”. If you know what happened at the dinner, the joke still isn’t funny. Not only that we don’t hear what at the dinner. The footage of it is out there. There are assumptions like that made throughout. Bust meets Laura. then a few pages later, they are married. not courtship, no wedding. Then he has two daughters who aren’t even mentioned by name.

The major problem isn’t what’s in there but what’s not in there. Bush Jr. has Daddy issues, but we never get a full sense of what they are. What happened during his childhood that caused them? Granted, he was always in his father’s shadow, but, where did the anger start? Where’s his time in the National Guard? What did he do while Governor? What kind of father is he? The 2000 election? Sept. 11? We hear mention of the attacks in the past sense, nothing of the day, perhaps his most important day as President, the day that would be studied the most, what was going on in his head, the day where you can frame his past around, and you get nothing.

Hopefully it’s all been fixed in later drafts. With Nixon, Oliver Stone showed a flawed man running a flawed Presidency and we understand why it came to be. With this draft of W. he shows a flawed man running a flawed Presidency, and all we don’t know why it came to be except for “Daddy issues”