What's In Bush's Mind?

Ill: The Worried Shrimp

Our guess: cotton batting, extreme denial & a pound or so of dustmites

The WaPo, having dissected Dick Cheney, who's been in government so long he leaves (despite his best efforts, & a fetish for secrecy bordering on paranoid neuroticism) a distinct trail of standing for something, although nobody much likes it beyond the most deluded wingnuts, now turns its attention toward George himself, & can't seem to come up with any very good reasons George is the way he is ~ which is to say, obtuse, arrogant, inattentive & so overprivileged that he's never had to pay the price for any of the foregoing. Wealth & privilege have sheltered the bad boy all his life ~ there have been no real no consequences proportionate to the misdeeds.

Now it is showing, & neither he nor the country has any idea what to do about it.

Dan Froomkin highlights the article on Bush (title bar) so:

"It's open season on psychoanalyzing President Bush.

"The Washington Post this morning unfurls a 3,000-word attempt to figure out what's going on inside Bush's head as his presidency collapses around him. A particular mystery: How he is able to remain so calm and resolute amid so many signs of his own failures.

"Peter Baker leads his piece with word that Bush has been summoning authors and philosophers to the White House -- 'looking for answers,' it is said, to such questions as: 'What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?'

If Bush is really seeking answers to these questions ~ & I seriously doubt that, somehow ~ (all indications so far are that he believes his own hype & is perfectly capable of staying on message despite a level of cognitive dissonance that would cause any sane person's head to explode) ~ he might keep in mind that the framing of a question has everything to do with the "answer" reached. If he really cannot think beyond the overly simplified black-white/good-evil dichotomy & begin to perceive the shades of grey, & there's been no indication he can (& nobody around him seems to have enough influence or sufficient inclination to disabuse him of his so-far disastrous world view which takes every conflict, domestic & foreign, to its extreme), he just has no business being President. He has neither the temperament (judicious use of intellectual firepower), nor any respect at all for the power & responsibilities of the office he holds. He betrays no particular knowledge of even recent history, & seems content to think himself beyond legal or basic moral constraints ~ a frat-boy despot who cannot comprehend why all of the rest of us don't get the joke. Isn't that why we "elected" him?

One suspects he really has no depth of self beyond that which his handlers (Cheney, Rove) taught to stay still & look into the camera. Like Popeye, with his exaggerated "musckles," Bush would probably be happy to tell you "I yam what I yam" ~ a one-dimensional character.

Froomkin goes on, "But to me, it sounds like Bush is looking not for answers -- but for rationalizations for his behavior. There is no sign of genuine introspection, no sign of acknowledgment of mistakes, no sign of any significant change of course. In a pattern familiar to anyone who has ever had a drinking problem, Bush appears to be engaged in a furious effort to persuade onlookers that he's fine -- even if he isn't.

"In fact, one could even argue that Bush's search for 'answers' from a parade of easily cowed visitors allows him to avoid a hard look at the one place he is most likely to find an explanation for his predicament: Within himself."

That's always been pretty apparent, in fact. The question we as a country might more appropriately (& fruitfully) ask is why we allowed ourselves to be bamboozled into "voting" for George Bush not once, but twice.