COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Bush now:

Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say....

Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath.

"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."

... these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."...

--New York Daily News, October 24, 2005


Bush then:

As war with Iraq draws inexorably closer, President Bush is described by friends as not just determined, but surprisingly serene about the most profound decision he will likely ever make....

"He's totally at peace with it," one close adviser told the Daily News....

--New York Daily News, March 9, 2003

...historians say that almost all [presidents] display certitude in public and more uncertainty in private. Friends and advisers of Mr. Bush insist that this president, in contrast, is much the same in private as he is in public....

..."He's very determined, I would say," said Cardinal Pio Laghi, a Vatican peace emissary and longtime Bush family friend who last week hand-delivered a letter to Mr. Bush from Pope John Paul II asking the president to avoid an invasion of Iraq. "He was very friendly, he was very nice, he was very appreciative, but he didn't give me the idea that he was shaky." ...

People who have met with Mr. Bush have been struck by his tranquillity. "You would never have known that he was sitting on a powder keg," said Don Hewitt, the executive producer of "60 Minutes," who recently spent 15 minutes with Mr. Bush in the Oval Office. "He was amazingly calm and wanted to talk about Harry Truman and not Saddam Hussein."

--New York Times, March 9, 2003

Dropping a few points in the polls and possibly facing the need to let some of his political hand-holders go? He freaks. About to send thousands of people to face death in a war based on specious evidence? Sleeping like a baby.