“One Damn Thing After Another” begins with a fond evocation of Barr’s childhood in a conservative family nestled in the liberal enclave surrounding Columbia University in New York City. His mother was Catholic and his father Jewish (though he later converted to Catholicism), and Barr nicely describes his primary education at the local Corpus Christi church. (George Carlin went there too. Go figure.) Barr moved on to Horace Mann and then to Columbia, where he developed an interest in China. After college, he worked briefly with the CIA while attending night school, where he excelled. He rose through the ranks of the Justice Department until the first President Bush appointed him Attorney General in 1991 at the age of 41. He was a largely non-ideological figure, mainly concerned, like many at the time, with getting the rising crime rate under control.
The next quarter-century brought Barr major financial rewards as the top attorney for the company that, in a merger, became Verizon. In fact, it entailed a hardening of his political views. Barr has a lot to say about the modern world, but the gist is that he’s against it. While Attorney General under Trump, he dabbled as a culture fighter, and in his memoir he lets the missiles fly.
“Now we see an increasing effort to affirmatively indoctrinate children with the secular progressive belief system — a new official secular ideology.” Critical race theory “is essentially the materialist philosophy of Marxism, replacing racial antagonism with class antagonism.” On crime: “The left’s ‘root causes’ mantra is really an excuse to do nothing.” (Barr’s only complaint about mass incarceration is that it’s not massive enough.) Barr hates Democrats: President Obama, a “left-wing agitator, … has slowed down the economy, lowered culture, and weakened the strength and credibility of the United States.” in foreign affairs.” (Barr likes Obama better than Hillary Clinton.) In general, his views reflect the party line at Fox News, which he oddly doesn’t mention in several jeremiads about left-wing domination of the news media.
Barr is clearly too smart to miss what was in front of him in the White House. He says Trump is “prone to commotion and exaggeration.” His behavior regarding Ukraine was “incredibly idiotic”. Trump’s “rhetorical skills, while powerful within a very narrow range, are woefully ineffective on questions that require subtle distinction.” Indeed, towards the end, Barr concludes that “Donald Trump has shown that he has neither the temperament nor the persuasiveness to provide the kind of positive leadership needed.”
Barr’s strange theory that good Trump turns into bad Trump may have more to do with his feelings for Democrats than with the president he served. “I have no illusions about who is responsible for dividing the country, embittering our politics and weakening and demoralizing our nation,” he writes. “It is the progressive left and their increasingly totalitarian ideals.” In a way, it’s the highest praise Barr can offer Trump: he had the right enemies.