Bush the Bubble Boy

Must-read article in Newsweek:

"Bush in the Bubble" by Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe.

Make sure to read the whole article, but here are some key passages:

• "President Bush has always shown an admirable ability to ignore the Washington pundits and make fun of the chattering classes. Yet his inattention to Murtha, a coal-country Pennsylvanian and rock-solid patriot, suggests a level of indifference, if not denial, that is dangerous for a president who seeks to transform the world."
• "Bush may be the most isolated president in modern history, at least since the late-stage Richard Nixon."
• "In subtle ways, Bush does not encourage truth-telling or at least a full exploration of all that could go wrong."
• "Bush generally prefers short conversations—long on conclusion, short on reasoning. He likes popular history and presidential biography (Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington), but by all accounts, he is not intellectually curious. Occasional outsiders brought into the Bush Bubble have observed that faith, not evidence, is the basis for decision making."

Bush may yet rebound, at least in terms of popularity, if not in terms of actual achievement -- and certainly not in terms of the kind of actual achievement that I and his other critics would like to see -- what we would call positive achievement.

But "the record so far suggests that Bush is not likely to change in any fundamental way in the three years that remain in his term".

And that means, poll numbers and approval ratings notwithstanding, that we're stuck with Bush's faith-based mismanagement of the affairs of state.