Pacific Views

Bush, Left Out in the Cold

Does Bush really understand how often his "advisers" are gaming him? As I've noted before, Bush's advisors seem to be more than comfortable providing him with mis-information or partial information and pretending that he has all the facts at hand to "make a good decision". And Bush is always more than happy to make decisions and as he said, decisions come easy to him. He has convinced himself that he is always right and so never, ever has to worry about bad decisions or have doubts about what he decides.

Today Brad DeLong said, sometimes it makes one almost feel sorry for Bush who has advisors that don't bother giving him real information or real choices.

One almost feels sorry for Bush. His Treasury Secretary thinks he cannot remember whom the members of the Business Roundtable are. His advisers are all trying to manipulate him by inserting phrases they think push hot buttons into their statements. People like Karl Rove talk way over his head about the number of years the tax code allows businesses to take to amortize asset purchases. Josh Bolten and Glenn Hubbard allow him to misinterpret what Hubbard's claim that a $200 billion deficit raises interest rates by only 0.03% means. One almost feels sorry for Bush. But not quite. One feels sorry for the rest of us.

But then, I remember that it is us, the American public, that are getting screwed by Bush and his bad decisions. He has more than enough people out to catch him if he falls. Unfortunately, the rest of us will be paying for his blindness, his willful carelessness and obstancy for decades. And just like Brad, I realize that I really feel sorry for us.