Salon: A deluded king and his court lickspittles

[regnaD kciN]

From Sidney Blumenthal:

Republicans representative of their permanent establishment have recently and quietly sent emissaries to President Bush, like diplomats to a foreign ruler isolated in his forbidden city, to probe whether he could be persuaded to become politically flexible. These ambassadors were not connected to the elder Bush or his closest associate, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was purged last year from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and scorned by the current president. Scowcroft privately tells friends who ask whether he could somehow help that Bush would never turn to him for advice. So, in one case, a Republican wise man, a prominent lawyer in Washington who had served in the Reagan White House, sought no appointments or favors and was thought to be unthreatening to Bush, gained an audience with him. In a gentle tone, he explained that many presidents had difficult second terms, but that by adapting their approaches they ended successfully, as President Reagan had. Bush instantly replied with a vehement blast. He would not change. He would stay the course. He would not follow the polls. The Republican wise man tried again. Oh, no, he didn't mean anything about polls. But Bush fortified his wall of self-defensiveness and let fly with another heated riposte that he would not change.

http://salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/03/02/bush_flattery/

The article goes on to talk about how Bush compares himself to Abraham Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator" who fought on to bring freedom to the downtrodden despite harsh criticism from defeatists in Washington. :eyes:

(Let me recall...didn't Nixon, just before the end, make a point of comparing himself to Lincoln over and over? :shrug: )

[The Icon Painter]

1. Read this Article!

This is an important and fascinating look at what is happening as Beloved Leader spirals down the toilet bowl of history. It tends to confirm some of the suggestions made in Capitol Hill Blue over the past year. There is more than a hint of the Mad King Ludwig in our thief executive.

As to the Lincoln comparison - when the masks of FDR and Truman kept slipping off, the madman picked up the one of Lincoln's face. It fits no better than the other two.

The description of the types of flattery required to keep the lunatic calmed is revelatory. This article explains much which had seemed curiously irrational.

[giant_robot]

2. Excellent article! K&R!

I just read this and surfed over to DU hoping to find a thread on it. Blumenthal nails it again! Sadly, as he noted, criminal heads of state are seldom punished for their actions.

[rodeodance]

3. abe lincoln comparison. uga uga

...Just a month earlier, on April 20, Bush had dedicated the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library in Springfield, Ill. Segueing seamlessly from the Civil War to the war on terror, from Gettysburg to Iraq, he conflated Lincoln's struggle and his own: "Our deepest values are also served when we take our part in freedom's advance -- when the chains of millions are broken and the captives are set free, because we are honored to serve the cause that gave us birth ... So we will stick to it; we will stand firmly by it."

This year, on Jan. 23, at Kansas State University, in one of a series of speeches he gave to explain once again his Iraq strategy, Bush digressed into a reverie about Lincoln's troubles. "I believe in what I'm doing," he said. "And I understand politics, and it can get rough. I read a lot of history, by the way, and Abraham Lincoln had it rough. I'm not comparing myself to Abraham Lincoln, nor should you think just because I mentioned his name in the context of my presidency -- I would never do that. He was a great president. But, boy, they mistreated him. He did what he thought was right."

[rodeodance]

4. "It is an infallible rule," Machiavelli wrote in his chapter on flatterers

The greater Bush's difficulties, the more precipitously he falls in the polls, the more he is beseeched by anxious Republicans, and the harsher the realities, the tighter he clings to his self-image. Cheney and the others encourage his illusions, at least partly because the more intensely Bush embraces the heroic conception of himself, the more he resists change and the firmer their grip.

"It is an infallible rule," Machiavelli wrote in his chapter on flatterers, "that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised, unless by chance he leaves himself entirely in the hands of one man who rules him in everything, and happens to be a very prudent man. In this case he may doubtless be well governed, but it would not last long, for that governor would in a short time deprive him of the state."

[Demeter]

5. Well, Neither Rove Nor Cheney Qualifies as a Good Puppetmaster

and they both are in deep hot water, so who's left to pull the strings? Condi, Karen, Babs and Laura: the four Graces.

Boy, are we in trouble.

Oh, yes, don't forget Harriet. Sigh

[katty]

6. "People don't need to worry about security." --President Bush, on the deal