Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

New York Magazine has various writers and pundits psychoanalyze Geroge Bush. Here are some selections:

Robert Stone: “Bush is unimaginative, to a slightly pathological degree. He doesn’t cast a shadow; he’s just this paper construction.”

Jonathan Alter: “I see Bush’s behavior as the result of three major forces: the dad, the bottle, and the Vietnam War. For most of his life, Bush tried and failed to follow in his absent father’s footsteps. His father was a war hero; Bush a no-show Guardsman dodging Vietnam. His father did well in the oil business; Bush struck dry holes. His father got elected to Congress; Bush was defeated in 1978.”

Dahlia Lithwick: “The president may be unpopular. His war may be a disaster. But in pursuing that war, he’s expanded presidential authority almost beyond recognition. The prison at Guantánamo may be futile, but he’s won the right to operate it… If securing such power was always the endgame of this administration, the war in Iraq is nothing but a speed bump. And putting two justices on the Supreme Court who appear willing to sign off on an imperial presidency is the cherry on top.”

Peter D. Kramer: “My concern is precisely that Bush is not undone by the current state of the nation and that he’s not going to prove thoughtful in the service of seeking change. Then again, a contrasting possibility—that Bush is more self-aware than I imagine, and more panicked and overwhelmed—might be more humanly attractive but no more reassuring.”

Alan Brinkley: “He has a modest prepresidential reputation of having the ability to work effectively across party and ideological lines. But as those who believe that he is following a wise course shrink to an almost insignificant remnant, as the very architects of the policies he now defends repudiate their own work, as the political cost of his current path becomes increasingly apparent to almost any sentient person, Bush—who may still have time to redeem at least some part of his legacy—still appears to be oblivious both to the downward spiral of his presidency and to his own likely place in history.”

Scott Dikkers: “I think anyone who’s ever read the New Testament knows that there’s very little upon which George W. Bush and Jesus would agree, but in his mind they’re in total consort and he’s his favorite political philosopher.”

Deepak Chopra: “One of the most unnerving things about George Bush is his smile. As the situation in Iraq has grown more calamitous, the smile hasn’t disappeared. It’s become markedly patronizing, saying, “I’m right on this. The rest of you just don’t understand.” A pitying smile. On the night of the State of the Union, the president kept his smirking to a minimum—a surprise. It’s been pointed out that until he became president, Bush didn’t smirk. It’s grown into a disturbing tic, expressing a mixture of contradictory traits: smugness, disdain, self-consciousness, doubt.”

Ted Sorensen: “I think he must know that he’s going to go down in history as the most incompetent president since Buchanan. He came to the White House knowing nothing about national and international policy and consequently relied on Washington veterans—who proved to be incompetent ideologues who got him, and the country, into very deep trouble. Now he’s in a hole, and I’m sure he doesn’t know what to do and has that hopeless, helpless feeling.”

Gary Hart: “I think he’s not totally delusional. The escalation is the last gasp. He had to give it, in his own mind, one more try. The most interesting thing he said was about a year and a half ago: “This war will not be solved in my presidency.” And that was his exit strategy, I think. He had concluded that he did not expect to achieve success.
He clings to a thought that in 20 or 25 years, history will maybe prove him right, and people will say he really knew what he was doing. But throughout all of this, he has seemed so blithe and casual about death and destruction. It would have kept me awake at night. I don’t know how he does it. He must just turn it off.”

Andrew Solomon: “This heartlessness, unlike his achievement of the presidency, is the very hallmark of decadent aristocracy. It is worth noting, however, that most aristocracy is not so far decayed; the queen of England, despite her less cuddly manner, is clearly more compassionate than W.”

Susan Andersen: “As haunting as events in Iraq have been, debate in the White House remains in perpetual lockdown. This may in fact mirror what goes on inside the president’s mind. This same lockdown may exert a chokehold on inconsistent thought, complexity, and contradiction, sequestering such things away in quarantine to enable an unsullied inner confidence and a fixed worldview impervious to external facts.”