By GEORGE WEIGEL [First Things] – Tony Blair was one of the more engaging public figures of recent years, and in that respect his memoir is precisely what one might expect: articulate, energetic, clever in argumentation. Blair was often accused, not without reason, of being a master of spin. Yet, in A Journey, he is admirably frank about both politics and personalities, although his candor on the latter front can be serially bracing, jarring, and weirdly confessional.

Thus, Blair the bracing, on his longtime communications chief, Alastair Campbell: “In my experience there are two types of crazy people: those who are just crazy, and who are therefore dangerous; and those whose craziness lends them creativity, strength, ingenuity, and verve. Alastair was of the latter sort.” Or Blair the jarring, on his wife: “Cherie didn’t always help herself, and as I have remarked before she had this incredible instinct for offending the powerful.” Or Blair the self-scrutinizer, in confessional mode: “By the standards of days gone by I was not even remotely a toper, and I couldn’t do lunchtime drinking except on Christmas Day, but if you took the thing everyone lies about—units per week—I was definitely at the outer limit. . . . I was aware it had become a prop.” Such self-conscious bluntness does keep one turning the pages, but it also makes one wonder about the author’s sense of propriety.

American readers will be moved (as some of Blair’s fellow Britons were not) by the former prime minister’s love affair with the United States, his confidence in the essential goodness of the American democratic experiment, and his respect for American power. And no one familiar with the increasingly vulgar folkways of the Fourth Estate will challenge Blair’s contention that the 24/7 news cycle—with its relentless hunt for the spectacular and scandalous, its capacity to destroy the reputations of the innocent, and its inability to take policy argument seriously—has become a serious problem for all democracies. Then there is Blair’s openness about the emotional costs of high office, including his profound sense that decisions he made cost some men and women their lives and made sorrow a staple in some families.

Continued at First Things | More Chronicle & Notices.