Manhattan's most powerful?

Graydon Carter, it has to be said, is a very scary man. Out of the 1.5 million people who live in Manhattan, only he is allowed to chain smoke in the office. He has an ego almost as big as his hair (he resembles Big Bird from Sesame Street). For the past 12 years he has edited Vanity Fair, the glossiest of the glossy magazines, which means he can make or break movie stars. Now, though, he has turned his attention to George W Bush with a book entitled What We've Lost. A harder nut to crack than the likes of Reese Witherspoon, to be sure, but Graydon Carter is confident he can help bring down a president.

We meet at the Dorchester, where he is staying with his family en route to New York, after a holiday in the South of France. He has a deep tan and steely grey eyes and is dressed for sailing. He lights up, inhales deeply and sits back with an expression that says: "Give it your best shot." So I do.

My first question is to ask why he decided to write the book now - a 340-page indictment of Bush's policies regarding Iraq, the environment, the judiciary, education, health care, the economy... Isn't it easy to say what he is saying now, when 24-plus other authors of anti-Bush books are proclaiming pretty much the same thing?

Back in February 2000 he obviously thought very differently when he published in Vanity Fair a flattering photo gallery of Bush administration members which trumpeted them as "Courageous leaders in perilous times".

He says he doesn't think George Bush can be condemned for what happened on 9/11. "I thought they were doing the appropriate things. As history unfolds, you realise they had other plans," he says. "This is a war on Iraq and on American civil liberties." He says that when the planes hit the twin towers, "America had the world's sympathy". Watching the events unfold on TV, the reaction of me and my friends was to say: "What on earth has America done to make someone so angry?" But he disagrees: "The American character is peaceful and kindly ... when countries get into trouble America is the first to send aid. Bush doesn't reflect Americans at all, the administration used fear and patriotism to its advantage and I think that period will end ..."

His book has been researched impeccably (he employed a team of nine), and although a lot of the ground has been covered elsewhere, it does contain much that is worth repeating. For example, that nearly a third of US troops in Iraq do not have Interceptor flak jackets, the type that make the difference between "being hit with a fist or a knife"; many that do found the vests were missing the ceramic plates to protect vital organs.

It was left to relatives to order the jackets ($1,500) and the plates ($650) over the internet and post them to their sons and husbands. The lack of armoured vehicles is also astounding, meaning many troops have their legs blown off when they drive over landmines; soldiers refer to their vehicles as "soft tops". "The number of amputees is horrifying," Carter says, "the doctors in Iraq say they see injuries the like of which they have never seen before."

There is also the astounding fact that Bush, the first president in a time of war not to attend a single military funeral for any of his fallen serviceman or woman, tried to cut the "imminent danger" extra pay for soldiers in battle zones from $225 to $150 a month. And that Bush has undone 30 years of environmental progress and rolled back more than 200 rules and regulations concerning clean air and water, protected lands and endangered species (the nation's polluters had donated $44 million to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign).

Did you know that in one year the difference between driving a regular car and an SUV, which Bush exempted from fuel standards and which account for half the vehicles sold in the US, is equivalent to leaving your TV on for 28 years? The Bush administration is keen to give up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Naturalists say the ANWR is "America's Serengeti". The Bush administration calls it a "flat, white nothingness". There is understandably very little humour in the book; what there is, is provided by Dubya himself in the quotes that precede each chapter. For example, "Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?"

The son of a Canadian test pilot, Graydon Carter grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa. He dropped out of university and got a job as a writer on Time magazine. A turning point was when he met Peter Cook in London in the 1970s, who was then running Private-Eye. Carter was inspired to found an American version, Spy magazine, which went on to become the scourge of the establishment. In its heyday in the 1980s it ran a regular feature calculating the number of column inches given by the New York Times to a tragedy. The greater the number of dead US citizens and the closer they were to Times Square, the more space the NYT would give it. Every month, Spy's algorithm was correct: a murder in Fifth Avenue was worth hundreds of flood victims in Bangladesh.

It was surprising, then, that Carter would subsequently take the helm of a magazine that is now, according to one commentator, the most boring publication to come out of Condé Nast's shimmering HQ in Times Square, which, when the stable includes Modern Bride and Lucky, is really saying something. VF, say critics, has become "a Hollywood love sandwich" which no longer goes after the Hollywood moguls because Carter is too busy pitching movie ideas, notably the one that became A Beautiful Mind.

He has indeed recently produced two documentaries: The Kid Stays in the Picture, about the maverick Hollywood mogul Robert Evans, and 9/11, made by two French brothers. He refutes the charges absolutely. "I have no interest in Hollywood, trust me," he says. "The documentary about 9/11 I did completely pro bono, and the Bob Evans film, well, I had a great time doing it, and it did well, but I didn't make any money out of it. I'm going to do one of these every few years, but it doesn't compromise my role as an editor."

Far from being in cahoots with Hollywood, he says he finds it "a quiet, isolated place", and only travels there for two weeks a year, for the annual post-Oscars party he founded. ("If the kids didn't want to go I'd stay home watching TV instead".) Is he aware that The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal all have reporters sniffing around a cash-for-covers scandal, that he has "gone beyond the scope of his editorial duties" ...

"That is too ridiculous for words," he says, laughing. "If that was the case I simply wouldn't have the job. We rarely get approached by stars for covers, we sit down and we think: 'Who do we want?' A Vanity Fair cover is the ultimate accolade."

Toby Young's hilarious book about working for Vanity Fair, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, is understandably not on his bedside table. "I don't think I've ever had a meal with Toby and I don't think I've ever had a private conversation with him," he says wearily. "He was so detested and so distrusted by the staff that they never let him see anything. For Toby to proclaim himself an expert on me and on Vanity Fair is like the doorman of the Pentagon saying he knows how everything is run ..."

Carter is even more tight-lipped when I broach the subject of his private life. Twice divorced (he has four children, aged 11 to 20, who make sure he is able to tell the difference between the scarily interchangeable Freddie Prinze Jr and Ryan Philippe), he has recently become engaged, at the age of 55, to London PR Anna Scott Byng, 19 years his junior. She is a former debutante, the daughter of equerry to the Queen, Sir Kenneth Bertram Adam Scott. He won't be budged on the subject, except to say that the Daily Mail, when it ran a story entitled "Anna and the King of I am", got "40 per cent of the details wrong. Why are people interested that I am going to marry someone lovely?" he asks, apparently incredulous.

Wouldn't he be upset, though, if he sent a reporter to interview David Beckham and they didn't broach the subject of his alleged affair? "We don't out people in the magazine; I really don't care that much about people's private lives, I am much more interested in great success or great failure or great conflict. I wouldn't ask David Beckham; he is entitled to a private life." (Beckham's Virgin Marylike VF cover was not a huge success, by the way. Readers wrote in to beg that the "self-absorbed multimillion-dollar sports personality" and his "skeletal Spice Girl wife" stay well away from their shores. Carter admits it wasn't a great seller as "soccer is a girl's game". And rounders and netball aren't?)

Does he not think that a book that attacks Bush and his rich friends doesn't sit very well when it is penned by the editor of a glossy that is, let's face it, read by the cream of American society; that features ads for everything from Dior to Ralph Lauren? "Taking a stance hasn't hurt business," he insists. "I make a very good income, but even I haven't benefited from the recent tax cuts. You have to be a lot richer than me - it's for people who invest their money, it's for people who live in Palm Beach and play golf ... Teachers won't feel one penny of this tax cut. Of all my wealthy friends, I know that 99 per cent would give up their tax advantages if it was spread evenly among Americans. Most of the wealthy people I know think they are wealthy enough.

"I was an angry young man, but I think I got complacent. It took a lot to get me riled. I was very content, I had four children and I had nice friends and I liked my life and I worked hard. I think people do become complacent during good times. The war set me off in a way I've never been set off before. It reinvigorated me. If Bush gets in again, Americans will be much more cautious and alert to the signs of moving further to the Right. We won't be duped a second time."

What We've Lost is published by Little Brown, £12.99. Graydon Carter will be live in conversation with Jim Naughtie on Monday 27 September at the Criterion Theatre, SW1, as part of the Orange Word TALK Season. To book tickets, call the box-office on 0870 990 1299.