gwb's personality flaw ; the WH press corps could expose the "real" gwb

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

by asking the right questions.

Intellectually, gwb is a lightweight. However, he's able to learn and repeat just enough to sound marginally OK, especially for MSM soundbites of two sentences, or less.

The intelligence which gwb is severely lacks is Emotional Intelligence.

EI is defined as, "as the capacity to understand emotional information and to reason with emotions."

The prominent researchers in this area describe the components of EI. The two most prominent studies vary slightly, however, the underlying principles are very similar.

Mayer and Salovey's four areas:

1.The capacity to accurately perceive emotions.

2.The capacity to use emotions to facilitate thinking.

3.The capacity to understand emotional meanings.

4.The capacity to manage emotions.

Goleman's five areas:

1.The ability to identify and name one's emotional states and to understand the link between emotions, thought and action.

2.The capacity to manage one's emotional states — to control emotions or to shift undesirable emotional states to more adequate ones.

3.The ability to enter into emotional states (at will) associated with a drive to achieve and be successful.

4.The capacity to read, be sensitive to, and influence other people's emotions.

5.The ability to enter and sustain satisfactory interpersonal relationships.

The five areas are hierachal in Goleman's model, and one cannot acheive #5 without successfully achieving 1 through 4, in sequence.

I won't belabor the obvious; gwb publicly displays the EI of a gnat, and snippets of private conversations to which we've been privy (remember Cindy Sheehan and gwb's jovial remark of "OK, now who are we gonna be honorin' here today!") confirm his inability to connect in a meaningful way with others.

The way to exploit this...make him talk about his feelings. A lot. Now that he's having more press conferences and taking more unscripted questions in that venue, as well as at "town halls", it's time to ask him about his feelings.

Not about plans for Iraq, not about what he "thinks" about policies.

Ask him over and over, how do feel when you hear that 70% of the soldiers in Iraq want to come home now?

How do you feel about your admitted incompetence with Katrina?

The American people want to hear how you feel about the tremendous loss of life of Americans and Iraqis that have occurred because of your policies.

Tell us your feelings about your friend Ken Lay (Tom Delay, Bill Frist, etc.) and their current legal woes..

How do you feel about so many Americans losing their pensions (or fill in jobs or homes) over the last few years?'

Of course, a single feeling question would catch him off guard just a bit, allowing for a bit of stammering and recovery. A theme, a drumbeat, of "feeling" questions would make it impossible for him to maintain composure and would eventually allow for one of his idiotic, and very telling, slips.

I would speculate, he hasn't a clue how he feels at any given time. (except for maybe terminal smugness).

I certainly don't believe he can express those feelings in coherent way. Especially, since there's a strong possibility his true feelings run counter the general sense of most Americans.

Sadly, we need the press to do this, especially the WH press corps, which is inconsistent at best when it comes to grilling the prez.

I plan to e-mail this information and request to Helen Thomas (maybe she can pass it on) and David Gregory.

Just a thought.:hi:

MKJ

edited to add link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

1. Someone nice enough to rec, so I'll shamelessly kick :-) n/t

MKJ

[Canuckistanian]

3. Me too!

:thumbsup:

[Frank Cannon]

2. I've heard him asked these kinds of ?s before. He does ok with them.

Of course, he just parrots horseshit that Karen and Karl have prepared for him, or that the voice in the earpiece feeds him.

Where Bush always screws up is when he is asked a question that involves some sort of knowledge of either history or current events, and the voice on the earpiece can't feed him the answer in time. That's when he really screws up and begins to get flustered and angry.

I don't disagree with you about his EI, though.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. You're right, if it's just one or two, he'll stammer and recover. It would

need to be a theme, at least one press conference, complete with follow up questions, asking for his personal feelings again and again.

LOL, I'd love to see that mixed in with some esoteric references to historical and/or recent events that he should have a clue about, but doesn't! MKJ

[sasha031]

4. Bingo, you are defiantly on to something BleedingHeart

I believe a personality disorder would have an impossible time explaining how they feel,they imitate people because their is such a disconnect.... I can picture *ush babbling about something how his mother had locked him in the closet for days at a time, if he was questioned about feelings.

:think: this is a brilliant idea, it should be sent to Helen Thomas (if she ever has another chance at shrub.)

[niallmac]

6. Very insightful. Isn't this emotional achilles heel

the same description given of a sociopath?
:kick:

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

12. I don't know enough about sociopathy to say. Do sociopaths exhibit at

least a facade of EI? For some reason, I thought sociopaths could superficially relate to others, however, I just don't know enough to speculate further.

My introduction to EI was through my job. My employer is looking very closely at the EI ablilities of its leaders and the information I've read on this makes a lot a sense.

I would guess that President Clinton is the perfect example of a high level of EI. MKJ

[niallmac]

15. I am a sidewalk psychologist myself but I thought an almost

total lack of conscience or guilt or emotional attachment to your actions was a
key element of sociopathy. I cannot see our pResident staring at his reflection and doubting himself,
questioning his decisions that have caused so much death and despair.
I think of this he is incapable. Religion, in this instance it seems to me, can
be a comfort to those who choose not to believe in personal responsibility.

[formercia]

7. How can you elicit honest answers from a Sociopath? n/t

I'm not a professional in the field, but he appears to be one from where I sit.

[speedoo]

8. Interesting thought, but it's not practical.

As mentioned by others, it's not likely to work because he is prepped to sidestep such questions.

More effective are the confrontational questions that force him to either restate his lies directly, or to make an idiotic response like "I can't think of any mistakes I've made (paraphrasing)."

And the press needs to anticipate the way he would be prepped to respond to obvious questions that must be asked, and word the question to make it difficult for him to answer the question the way he is prepped to answer it.

For example, don't ask him "why did you authorize the leaks" or "did you authorize the leaks". Those questions will be responded to with the non-responsive answers he will be prepped to give ("ongoing investigation" or "I declassified the information"). Instead, word the questions in a way that will make it either impossible for him to use the non-responsive answers, or make him look idiotic if he does.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

10. I am still waiting for him to be asked,"How do you feel right now?"

If he asked for clarification, ask, "How do feel right now with everything that's going on?"

Nothing more than that. Most of us could answer that question quickly and clearly, since most of us are in tune with our emotions and able to express them cogently.

If he didn't respond quickly, or tried a non-answer, say, "Mr President, the American people very much want to know how you personally feel as all these events unfold."

Watch him dance. MKJ

[WinkyDink]

9. Pretty much why I (and others) have always believed he's a psychopath.

[ginnyinWI]

11. He does understand aggression, war, violence, power.

This is where he is most articulate: when it comes to war. It's the way he understands relationships, within a structure of "winner" and "loser". He really doesn't know any other way to look at things. He's also a bully and terribly afraid of being a loser or out of power, so he is overly aggressive. He surrounds himself with people as willing to attack and destroy as he is--both literally and politically. He has no soul.

[vickitulsa]

13. VERY interesting idea, MKJ ... really got me thinking.

Since I was a psych major and also worked in the field many years of my career (as an executive secretary, though, not a clinical psychologist), I'm a little surprised that I have not before now tried to diagnose Dubya to the point of attaching a term from the Diagnostic Standards Manual to him.

But since you and others have used some common psych terms in speculating about his personality in this thread, I gave some patient thought to it this morning and then sought some definitions online that would best describe what I see as a proper diagnosis.

Oddly, the best description I found didn't come from the sort of source I had thought to use, but rather from a special Website geared to educating people about BULLIES! In particular, this site was considering workplace bullies or bullies in organizations.

If you're interested, check this out:

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm#Sociopath

For the clearest picture, I suggest clicking the link that says The Sociopath, located in blue in the top headings. This is also titled when you get there: The Socialised Psychopath or Sociopath. (You may note British spellings throughout, as this is a Brit source.)

With the notable exception of "has an extreme verbal facility," GWB's traits are outlined in great detail in the bullet points you find in this section, IMO.

And even on that exception, I think we must admit that GWB's ability to use words to finagle his way along somehow and to worm out of trouble and fool people kind of flies in the face of our many accusations that he's almost a verbal nincompoop....

For those who won't go read the many descriptive points of the social psychopath, here are just a few of them:

-- always charming and beguilingly plausible, especially to those who are capable of protecting or enhancing the sociopath's position

-- excels at deception (this must never be underestimated, but always is)

-- excels at evasion of accountability

-- will often engineer himself or herself into a position of authority as gatekeeper of the organisation and thus the person through whom all information must flow, and the person to whom all requests for services must be referred - which he or she then takes delight in denying

-- is adept at offering weak and inadequate people the positions of power, control, security, influence or respect that they crave but who lack the necessary competencies to achieve - such people are unaware that their consequent dependence on the sociopath makes them permanent manipulatees, pawns and expendable agents of harassment

-- is contemptuous of disrepute to their organisation and of collateral damage and of the destructive consequences for all direct and indirect parties

-- is skilled at identifying, undermining, discrediting, neutralising and destroying anyone who can see through the sociopath's mask of sanity

-- at all times restricts the actions and rights of others (especially those holding the sociopath accountable) whilst aggressively protecting his or her right to do anything without being hampered by social norms or legal requirements

and lastly and perhaps most frighteningly:

-- only after the sociopath is exposed and relieved of position, or they move on, can the full depth of their destructive behaviour be fathomed and the consequences calculated.

There are a lot more details that are fascinating to read at the link if you are interested. Sure seems to fit him to a "t" if you ask me. And certainly disturbing to say the least!

[grasswire]

19. try Narcissistic Personality Disorder

check the diagnostic criteria. It's all there.

[vickitulsa]

20. Yep, I noticed that too.

And narcissistic behavior is included in the social psychopath symptom picture as well.

In fact, note this, from the "Serial Bully" Website I linked to above:


Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

The serial bully exhibits behaviours similar to or congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)

The serial bully exhibits behaviours similar to or congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Some visitors to Bully OnLine have suggested that the bullies in their lives exhibit characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder.


My first thought of a diagnosis was PPD, then I considered NPD, as you indicate fits him well. I then looked up the symptomology of the Borderline Personality but GWB goes way beyond that level of severity.

It's because Dubya seems to have become a "worldclass bully" with all the might of the U.S. military at his disposal that I moved to an even broader diagnosis of Social Psychopath, or as they put it on this site, the "Serial Bully."

His thirst for bullying the world knows no end....

[katty]

22. yeah, I'll go w/that one, plus a laundry list of others

[w8liftinglady]

14. wow...great post..

[JohnnyLib]

16. no diagnosis is really needed--

where I grew up, the saying was "he thinks his shit don't stink."
It applied to everyday jerks or jerkettes as well as privileged children who had no responsibility. I hadn't thought about it this way before, but maybe that's the common sense that told me not to vote for this dud.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

17. The reason he can't experience emotions is

because he's a sociopath which experiencing emotions is beyond their capabilities.

[katty]

23. just at Mom Bar and Poppy, et al

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

18. The text of my letter..

I sent this to David Gregory, with an introduction of niceties and then my request...

A request for a question at future WH press conferences:
Please ask the President about his "feelings" rather than his thoughts.

The American people need to know how he feels at this time...they need to know our CIC can clearly articulate his emotions in a way that resonates with most Americans.

With all the revelations coming from the White House, we, the American people, should be hearing George W. Bush speak about his emotions in addition to his policies.

And if, in these difficult times, our president is unable to express his feelings with persuasive empathy, we, the American people, deserve to know that, as well.

I'd suggest asking him simply "How do you feel right now?". If he's evasive, remind him that the American people should be aware of his personal sentiments, especially to the events that are unfolding in the White House.

I am one of many Americans who believes this president is out of touch and simply unable to express empathy or compassion in a way that connects with and engages us.

I predict he will struggle with this question, especially if pressed for more than just a one word, facile answer.

I ended with a thank-you for his hard work, etc.,etc.

It would be great to see gwb dance around the emotion ring, especially in regard to the recent revelations coming from the WH.
MKJ

[vickitulsa]

21. You are so right!!

I didn't mean to get away from your original OP onto a subthread, BleedingHeartPatriot, since I do agree with your premise about GWB's emotional intelligence. Or rather his lack of it!

And this is a brilliant letter you sent to David Gregory! I hope you'll send one like it to all the White House press corp you can find. Perhaps that way they will discuss the idea among themselves and "gang up" on Dubya for at least one press conference anyway and compel him to respond.

He might have a glib, prepared answer for one question about his feelings, but if he were peppered with many of them, one after the other, he'd be flustered and unable to come up with easy responses to deflect the questions!

[SmokingJacket]

24. You give him too much credit.

You're right -- he wouldn't be able to answer those questions, but he can't answer much else, either, unless he's been specifically coached for it.

He's probably a full-on sociopath, and none too bright, to boot.