I had to share this:
Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don’t emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies — the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department — has failed a big test.
Maybe it’s Bush’s sinking poll numbers — he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it’s the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush’s most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.
But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.
An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.
I remember a few years ago President Bush was quoted as saying that he never read the newspaper because he needed to get information straight from sources he trusted, namely his staff. The media filtered information, he said. But if the media filters information, why wouldn’t his trusted advisors?
It’s not surprising to me that the President lives in an informational bubble. He seems disconnected from the realities of the world around him, and in the leader of one of the great nations of the world that’s a dangerous quality. He has at his disposal the power to destroy humanity a dozen times over at the slightest whim, and while that power would disturb a more cautious man Bush seems very much a man who lacks the comprehension of the power at his disposal.
I fear for the future. I really and truly do.