Bush’s Bunker Presidency: Galvanized by the news of the “shadow government,” the phrase “bunker mentality” is, appropriately on everybody’s lips with regard to the Bush dysadministration. Reassess the Shrub’s performance since 9-11 in this light and we see, if we haven’t already, that the impression of a confident resolved leader collapses beneath a haze of ‘spin’ by his handlers from his father’s era. James Carroll comments:
George W. Bush’s frantic, ad hoc ”war against terrorism” can seem to be yet another manifestation of presidential unsteadiness. Indeed, an air of low-grade panic has been a mark of Bush’s responses since the very day the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked.
Since then the president’s careless rhetoric and bluster have appalled allies, mobilized new enemies, and turned the US State Department into a damage control center. The vice president’s status as the man in hiding has become a national joke. The Defense Department initiated, then dropped, a Soviet-style office of strategic disinformation. Boston Globe via Common Dreams
As an aside, can we really be confident with the announcement that the disinformation office has been closed? It is more likely that is disinfo…
Sure, one would expect such sentiment from the Boston Globe, but Bush Doctrine: war for the appearance of purpose, an editorial from the Daytona Beach News-Journal (“no hotbed of radicalism, as far as I know”, says Adam in sending the link), suggests that a broader range of people are starting to notice that the emperor has no clothes, despite the ‘popularity ratings.’ Noting with concern that the complimentary profiles of Dubya can’t exactly get a bead on which powerful past president he is supposed to be like —
“to be so often compared to so many presidents should signal alarm, not self-confidence. It speaks of a void at the center of power that must be made up.”
it concludes that, with such a disconnect between blurred vision and reality, coherent doctine is shelved in favor of
“this administration’s best trick: war. War, especially war against a ragged but resilient enemy, at least projects the appearance of purpose while obscuring failures of leadership.”
As Adam asked, how much cognitive dissonance can the nation bear? [thanks, Adam…]
But, of course, in the eyes of some of our friends, the editorial staff at the Daytona Beach News-Journal are aiding and abetting the enemy. spinsanity
