Shrinkage
Peering Inside Bush's Head
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 2, 2007; 1:58 PM
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?"
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.
True, dat.