“Bush warns Pakistan on Kashmir incursions; he says curbing militants more critical than stopping missile tests.” Read to the end of this San Francisco Chronicle piece, which is more about his conduct during a joint press conference with President Chirac than it is about the warning to Musharraf, for ongoing coverage of what a jackass we have for a President (if you still need convincing). He’s unconvincing in attributing his cognitive difficulties this time to jetlag.

Maureen Dowd in the NY Times is also still on his case, of course. This piece echoes my discomfort at how astonishingly rapidly “fighting terrorism” has become a platitude comparable in its emptiness to “fighting Communism” during the Cold War. If your thinking is as unnuanced and cognitively inflexible as Bush’s, you need meaningless stereotypes instead of concepts.

Like Ronald Reagan, W.’s appeal is that he is an All-American who believes what he believes. And he trusted his gut to create a new dynamic with a Russian leader. But such a lack of nuance over the long term could be worrisome. As Murray Kempton said, there is “the evil of lesser evilism.” The Bushes exhibit a moral myopia, thinking anything they do must be virtuous because they see themselves as virtuous.

I would, however, quibble with Dowd’s repeated description of Bush’s reign as a “Manichaean” presidency. Although the term is often applied to anyone who sees things as all black-and-white, good-or-evil, it is only dumb luck that the President’s conceptual limitations superficially echo a sophisticated worldview (and, ironically, one that was considered an anti-Christian heresy…)