The Fog of Self by Lewis Lapham (April Harper's, on *)

[carolinayellowdog]

Not available online, his Notebook in the current issue has some great lines about * and his appearance on MTP. Here's my favorite passage:

Even the bad reviews contrived to miss the point. Like the president's critics, the president's admirers make the mistake of assuming that he gives much of a damn about the intelligence product, about what does or doesn't happen in Iraq...To the President's way of thinking, the only important story is the one about George W. Bush-- what he feels and how he looks...the only actor in the play, must please George W. Bush, the only audience.

To Russert the President had said, "And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is," which, of all the tales told to the NBC cameras, was by far the most fantastic. Mr. Bush sees the world the way he chooses to see it, preferably in a mirror. For the first time in the country's history, this year's federal budget has been illustrated with handsome four-color photographs, twenty-seven of them of the President-- at the foot of the Washington Monument, in front of the American flag, blazing a trail through the Santa Monica mountains, teaching a small child to read the alphabet.