The class is American Government and Politics

In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush," journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy." But Bush did not care -- he was comfortable with Cheney and "saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place."

Draper, a national correspondent for GQ, first wrote about Bush in 1998, when he was the Texas governor. He received unusual cooperation from the White House in preparing "Dead Certain," which will hit bookstores tomorrow. In addition to conducting six interviews with the president, Draper said, he also interviewed Rove, Cheney, Laura Bush, and many senior White House and administration officials.

Draper writes that Bush was "gassed" after an 80-minute bike ride at his Crawford, Tex., ranch on the day before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and was largely silent during a subsequent video briefing from then-FEMA Director Michael D. Brown and other top officials making preparations for the storm.

He also reports that the president took an informal poll of his top advisers in April 2006 on whether to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

During a private dinner at the White House to discuss how to buoy Bush's presidency, seven advisers voted to dump Rumsfeld, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, incoming chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, the outgoing chief, Andrew H. Card Jr., and Ed Gillespie, then an outside adviser and now White House counselor. Bush raised his hand along with three others who wanted Rumsfeld to stay, including Rove and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. Rumsfeld was ousted after the November elections.

The book offers more than 400 footnotes, but Draper does not make clear the sourcing for some of the more arresting assertions -- such as the one about Roberts's role in the Miers nomination, which has previously not come to light. Roberts's nomination was highly praised by conservatives, and they criticized Miers as lacking conservative credentials.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that he had no comment on the book, including the claim about the Miers nomination.

Draper offers some intriguing details about Bush's personal habits, such as his intense love of biking. He reports that White House advance teams and the Secret Service "devoted inordinate energy to satisfying Bush's need for biking trails," descending on a town a couple of days before the president's arrival to find secluded hotels and trails the boss would find challenging.

He also makes new disclosures about the behind-the-scenes infighting at the White House that helped prompt the change from Card to Bolten in the spring of 2006. By that point, he reports, some close to the president had concluded that "the White House management structure had collapsed," with senior aides Rove and Dan Bartlett "constantly at war."

He quotes Gillespie as telling one Republican while running interference for Alito's Supreme Court nomination: "I'm going crazy over ...