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Even if Robert Scheer wasn't fired last year from the Los Angeles Times because he dared to tell the truth, we'd still admire the guy. But he was clearly a breath of pugnacious, trenchant fresh air for the LA Times -- and that annoyed the heck out of the editor. (No doubt, the Tribune Company, which owns the LA Times, was getting heat from the White House because Scheer took no prisoners among the Busheviks.)

Scheer is one of those rare journalists who actually hasn't gone through the looking glass. His insights appear all the more astounding because he stood virtually alone in making them for so long among mainstream journalists. Paul Krugman is his closest counterpart on the East Coast, but Scheer has a bit more instinct for where the Bushevik jugular vein is located.

Fortunately, Scheer hasn't left journalism. He now is ensconced at the website Truthdig.com and writes for other publications. We often link to him on BuzzFlash.com.

His new book (May 2006) is a delightful romp through his interviews with presidents going back to Nixon. Scheer has the rare talent to get politicians to open up and utter astounding remarks, which Scheer then goes onto actually include in his interviews.

The fact that Scheer doesn't censor his interviews to make politicians look better has angered at least one of them, George H.W. Bush, who was furious that Scheer actually printed the elder Bush's remark -- and ain't this ironic -- that "you can have a winner" in a nuclear war. (The bad apple doesn't fall far from the tree is all we can say about the current occupant of the White House.) The elder Bush went after Scheer with a vengeance, denying (Cheney-like) that he ever uttered such a statement, even though he was caught on tape.

As for the younger Bush, Scheer, who fills the book with fresh commentary on the figures he interviewed, notes (in a chapter entitled "George W. Bush's Perpetual Adolescence") that he never interviewed him one-on-one, so Scheer includes columns he wrote about Bush.

Scheer introduces the Dubya chapter with these observations: "But the basic problem for anyone attempting to understand Bush's motivations is that they may not be driven by a recognizable engine. His charm, which I take to be his most formidable asset, lies largely in the assertion of the prerogatives of perpetual adolescence, in his insistence that we judge him as a well-intentioned screw-up rather than a responsible adult." Well said, Robert Scheer, well said.

We should note that Scheer was the interviewer who got Jimmy Carter to reveal that he had "lust in his heart." But, in retrospect, what most intrigues Scheer about Carter was that the man from Plains was our first window into the emergence of the "born again Christians" as a political force, even though they, in the end, repudiated one of their own (Carter) because he was too "liberal" on social policies.

"Playing President" is a delightful collection of banter with the occupants of the White House in the last 35 some years -- and Scheer's incisive, no holds barred commentary makes it all the more enjoyable.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS