December 3, 2006
Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
By FRANK RICH
IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.
Great piece by Rich as usual. Thanks for posting. New site looks wonderful!
I, and I’m sure all have regularly followed Rich’s work throught Egalia’s link here for a good while now–ante up, ya cheap bastards!–, are grateful for the service: thank you. SWEETLAWDJESUS! I love the way that man writes & thinks.
Argghhh! Proofread before send: get the sequence, ya dumbastard!: “…all who have regularly followed…”.
Funny thing:
Just a few months ago I was motivated to re-read Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell…
Nuff said
It is interesting that the debate of “Is Bush crazy or just lacking intelligence” comes up all the time. Rich’s thesis that world events are doing him in has a ring of truth to it. I remember Nixon toward the end of his tenure: You could just feel him falling apart. He was isolated, trapped by his own rhetoric and decisions, disrepected by the people in ways that he was exposed to…and it all took a toll. I agree that this is what is happening to Bush now.
Thanks Maribeth and also good to hear from you j, Everett and Ellen.