Our Adolescent President

Last week, the Pres said that his administration would no longer refer to our policy in Iraq as "stay the course" (or words to that effect). He then went on to point out that HE had NEVER referred to our policy in such a way, and my first thought to that was 'what are you, 2?'. This got me thinking that I might be onto something. (In a rare moment of public disagreement, VP Cheney went on record the following day, saying that the government may no longer refer to our Iraq policy as "staying the course" but that is indeed the policy. Looks like the Pres got off-script in his previous statement. I assume he was chastised accordingly.)

Bush has been mocked for his apparent lack of intellectual prowess, almost from day one of his campaign… a mockery that I have been happy to embrace, if for no other reason than that I find it amusing. But, realistically speaking, for all his touting of his "C" average at Yale, he can't really be as stupid as has been put forth. (Even I've got to admit that, and that's a tough admission for me.)

Then, for a while, I thought "simple" might be a better description of his world view. We're talking 'short bus' simple here, not Mr. Smith Goes to Washington simple. But that's really just an extension of the "how dumb is he" notion, and not nearly as amusing. And, it can be argued, his boiling down of contemporary politics to 'white hat vs. black hat' simplicity can be as much a function of our sound-bite political system and his Texas heritage as any mental simplicity he may actually suffer from.

But childishness… well that's another matter entirely. Bush has made a long-standing habit of denying responsibility. His erroneous statements regarding nuclear arms and Iraq in his State of the Union message before the Iraq war were the CIA's fault. He never ordered the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Lincoln. Earlier this month, when North Korea joined the global nuclear weapons club, he made it clear that, when he came into office there were policies in place that led to this problem, so apparently it couldn't be his fault.

It all reminds me of the behavior my brothers and sister and I used to engage in… finger pointing and denial of any responsibility. "It's not MY fault!" "HE did it, not me!" "I don't know how it happened! I wasn't even in the room!"

This is the kind of behavior most of us outgrow by the time we get into our teens or twenties (god willing!). But not all of us do, so it's not that rare to find adults prone to the same excuse-laden behaviors. You just hope not to see it in our leaders, whom you expect to be capable of a modicum of responsibility (since they're shouldering that whole "Leader of the Free World" thing, you know?)

But maybe GW simply never got past that phase. A little mental arrested development, perhaps. It would go a long way towards explaining that "it's not MY fault" mentality, his reductive "us vs. them" view of global politics and his displays of petulance whenever he doesn't get his way, or gets queried on things he doesn't want to talk about. It may even be a function of his "growing-up privileged" youth. I can't really envision little Georgie being denied much as a child, judging from his behavior these days.

I guess we can take comfort from the thought that he's not really a dim-bulb President… just a bit childish. But hey, there's a lot of that going around, right? And the fact that this child has his finger on the proverbial button, and can now lock up anyone he wants just by waving the magic "enemy combatant" wand shouldn't worry anyone, right?

Yeah. Right.