Scott Rhee's Reviews > One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General

Despite its length and occasionally monotonous long-windedness, William P. Barr’s memoir “One Damn Thing After Another” was, for the most part, an engaging glimpse into the mind of a modern-day conservative, one that actually possesses a virtue that many of his Republican peers seem to currently lack: integrity.

It must be stated that I vehemently disagree with nearly everything Barr stands for, politically. He states frequently in the book that he supports and agrees with most of Trump’s policies, and he also frequently voices the same talking points that I have heard many Republican pundits espouse, ad nauseam. That said, I can’t always fault him for his logic in his arguments. Unlike some of his Republican peers, he actually has logic.

Barr approaches the issues with a level-headedness and actual thoughtfulness that his job as Attorney General requires.

I may not agree with his particular political stances, but I don’t dislike him for them either.

There used to be a time when Republicans and Democrats could vehemently disagree with one another but still shake hands afterwards and behave civilly. I am of the (perhaps old-school) belief that disagreement does not equal dislike. That belief isn’t very popular nowadays, sadly.

Barr is a remnant of that old-school party politics. At age 39, in 1989, Barr was picked to be Assistant Attorney General by then-president George H.W. Bush, perhaps one of the last old-school “gentleman” politicians. A year later, he became Deputy Attorney General. During his watch in that position, a prison riot at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama broke out, resulting in prisoners holding nine people hostage. His coordination of the rescue effort—-utilizing the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT)—-resulted in no loss of life, garnering him high praise among Republicans and Democrats alike.

In 1991, he was chosen by Bush the Elder to be Attorney General. He held the post until 1993. By all accounts, on both sides of the aisle, Barr was well-liked as AG. Even then-Senator Joe Biden was impressed.

In all honesty, a large portion of the middle section of the book droned on endlessly for me, as Barr waxed rather blandly but straightforwardly about his childhood in New York; his life-long devotion to Catholicism; his love of bagpipe music; his early career post-college in the CIA; his part in the Iran-Contra affair; his hard-line approach to crime (he is for harsher laws, more prisons, and pro-death penalty); his work post-AG for the telecom company GTE, which later became Verizon Wireless and where he became a multimillionaire as Verizon’s executive Vice-President; his brief stint at Time Warner.

I confess to zoning out occasionally during his long-winded chapters in which he defended his views on abortion, religious freedom, military spending, and desire to build more prisons; largely because I didn’t agree with his views, but also because he wrote like a lawyer laying out a closing argument.

It wasn’t until the latter part of the book, where Barr writes about his second tenure as Attorney General under President Donald Trump, that the book picked up a little bit more steam.

While I had a hard time with his defense of Trump’s policies, it is clear that Barr did not necessarily like Trump as a person. That dislike gradually grew into stronger castigation during the last year of Trump’s presidency.

Trump’s mishandling of the global Covid-19 pandemic, his narcissistic obsession with campaigning for re-election, his ridiculous and disastrous performance during the presidential debates, his misguided beliefs of a stolen election and voter fraud perpetuated by his idiotic team of lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani, his out-of-control Twitter feed that helped to fuel January 6, and his petty dismissal and horrible treatment of Vice President Mike Pence all led Barr to the conclusion that any potential positive legacy that Trump could have left was ruined by his last few months in office.

Barr resigned as Attorney General on December 14, 2020.

I read this as an Audiobook on CD, read by Mark Deakins.