MSN / Slate on Bush's arrogrance: "He needs no validation"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

This is the test Bush has failed. He has failed to produce evidence for his prewar claims of Iraqi WMD and operational ties to al-Qaida, or for his postwar claims of success against the insurgency. Now he's going further. He's not simply failing the test. He's refusing to take it.

Listen to Bush's words again. "The president's job is not to take an international poll," he says. "Our national security decisions will be made in the Oval Office, not in foreign capitals." Bush doesn't say these decisions belong to the United States. He says they belong to the Oval Office. He frames this as patriotism, boasting that he doesn't care whether he offers evidence sufficient to convince people in France. He shows no awareness or concern that evidence is also necessary to convince people in Ohio. He says it isn't his job to take a "poll," to hear what others think. He needs no validation.

Bush pretends he's just blowing off the French. But his comments show a pattern of blowing off external feedback in general. He shrugs off information that debunks his claims about WMD, arguing that it's more important for a president to understand the overall nature of the world. He defines credibility as agreement with himself. He reinterprets evidence of policy mistakes in postwar Iraq as evidence of success. In Thursday's debate, he dismissed unwelcome reports from that country as too offensive to heed. And according to Sunday's New York Times, he and his aides exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capability, ignoring warnings from "the government's foremost nuclear experts."

Bush claims he has done all this to protect you. But that claim is precisely what's challenged by the evidence he conceals or disregards. What he's protecting you from is the ability to measure his assertions against the world that you and I can see. That's the global test he's mocking. And he expects you to applaud him for it, because he thinks you resent the French so much you'd rather have a president accountable to no one.

[mac56]

1. this is great

Do you have a link for this?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

4. Ooooops...sorry! Here ya go

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107690/

:toast:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. I used to work for a sociopath.

Really. Full on Narcissistic Sociopath. A walking, talking, lying horror show. Watching Dear Leader the other night, I was gobsmacked by the parrelels. Just like My Little Sociopath. Played the same games. Openly loses interest in any news that he doesn't like. Openly disdainful of anyone or anything that disagrees with the world he has mapped out for all of us. I was watching him and I just KNEW what life in the White House is like.

Utterly damned dysfunctional. Pretty much a waste of a smart person's time, but just the place for someone as screwed-up as he is, and I am sure there is no shortage of screwed-up people in the maladministration.

[indepat]

3. The Lodges speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots only to God:

We must accept GWB as God on earth, not just an emperor, mind you, but the Almighty himself. And tens of millions of Americans buy into this questioning nothing he does or says. Ever wonder what our storehouse of treasures on this earth will be, what just desserts are in store for a people who buy into this?

[SidDithers]

5. Good article...

thanks for posting.

Sid

[MrBenchley]

6. Kerry insults our allies, so fuck the French

The internal contradictions in Bushspeak never fail to be jaw-dropping...

France is a real country that has been our ally since the founding of the Republic; Allawi is the appointed head of a occupied "government" that pretends to control Baghdad's green zone...and we're supposed to pick Allawi and his phony outfit over France as a friend, why, exactly?

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Very perceptive! He blows off all except those who conform..

to his own narrow worldview, which he shares with a cadre of Texans (like those who financed the Swift Boat ads), other greed-driven individuals who already have more money than they know what to do with (oil and gassers, Jack Welch), the extremist-right fringe, and religious fundamentalists. He not only blows off France and the world community, he blows off the great majority of Americans -- but many, many of them remain fooled.

[BeyondGeography]

8. He called millions of protesters a "focus group"

just before the war.

He needs to move out of John Kerry's house, real soon.

[democratreformed]

9. Unfortuantely some people do admire him for it.

Poor, misguided souls...