The Psychology Behind the Worst Possible President

From AlterNet:

The propaganda that Bush's sponsors and handlers have poured forth has ceased to persuade the voters but succeeded beyond all measure in convincing the man himself.

He will tell himself that God is talking to him, or that he is possessed of an extra measure of courage, or he that he is simply compelled to do whatever it is. The soldiers will pay the price in blood. We will pay the price in money. The Iraqis will pay the price in horror. The Iranians will pay the price, possibly, in the almost unimaginable terror of nuclear attack. Probably, the Israelis will pay the price, too.

Little George isn't the same guy he was in 2000, the guy described by Gail Sheehy in her Vanity Fair profile -- hyper-competitive and dyslexic, prone to cheat at games, always swinging between screwing up and making up, hating criticism and disagreement, careless of others but often charming. He is no longer the guy who the Republicans thought they could control (unlike, say, McCain).

The small pathologies of Bush the candidate have, thanks to the purposes of the neocons and the religious right, been enhanced and upgraded. We have a bona fide madman now, who thinks of himself in a grandiose way as single-handedly turning the tide of history.

Click here for the rest.

I've been reading Greg Palast's recent book Armed Madhouse, which I got for Christmas, and the section I'm on right now is putting together a pretty compelling argument about how the White House managed to fail so spectacularly with Iraq's occuption. The long and short of it is that the neo-cons and the oil industry, both of whom enjoy to this day incredible influence with the Oval Office, both had competing plans for Iraq's oil. The neo-cons, driven by "free trade" ideology, wanted to privatize Iraq's oil fields, double or triple production, and break OPEC's back, which would ultimately lower oil prices greatly. The oil industry, however, just loves OPEC, which is able to artificially inflate oil prices by keeping production down, because Big Oil can make much more money with the cartel in power--in order to keep a lid on production, oil reserves must be state-owned; otherwise, each individual oil company would produce as much as it could in order to maximize it's own profit, rather than looking out for the industry as a whole. Instead of choosing one plan over the other, Bush enacted both plans, which obviously cannot mix well together. The resulting confusion infected and botched all levels of the reconstruction, which essentially made daily life for Iraqis totally miserable, which, in turn, made desperate people even more desperate. Under such chaotic circumstances, mass insurgency was inevitable. So was sectarian strife.

The point is that, in this case, it appears that Bush was either unable to or uninterested in resolving the differences between these two very influential groups.

That's why I think making general declarations about what's actually going in the President's head is jumping the gun. From all outward appearances, yes, Bush seems to be delusional. But there is just as much evidence suggesting that he's simply allowing himself to be pushed around by his advisors, or that he knows he's in over his head and has simply withdrawn from the decision making process. For that matter, there appears to be just as much evidence to support that he's simply stupid. There's just no way of knowing right now what's really going on.

I mean, we know it's pretty bad within the executive branch, but that's about all we really know.

But one day, the sad tale will be known to all. I can't wait. You know it's got to be fascinating, however it turns out.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$