WHY HE'S LIKE THAT

In a post on Thursday on the question of whether the Bushies actually know what they're doing, Barbara at the Mahablog quoted this televised exchange in which Keith Olbermann and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter talked about the president's most recent visit to New Orleans:

OLBERMANN: … At this point, who does he think he is fooling? And why is he bothering to do it?

ALTER: That's a great question. All he has now is photo opportunities. His administration is basically over. He's just playing out the string here. And he does need to show up for a basic sense of respectability.

But why doesn't Bush seem to want his administration to do a better job in New Orleans for a basic sense of respectability? And why hasn't he ever seemed to want that?

The same with Iraq. Why did his administration refuse even to consider the possible pitfalls of going to war there? Why did his team do none of the things that might have helped them avoid those pitfalls? Why, from the beginning of the looting to the resignation of Rumsfeld, did Bush seem to have no interest in trying to correct any possibly correctable errors being made in Iraq? Why does he not seem to care now that the surge isn't getting him any closer to a good outcome than anything else has?

First of all, I think he simply doesn't understand that bad life situations are truly bad. I don't think he has even the most basic understanding of suffering -- the suffering of Katrina victims or Iraqi refugees or dead soldiers' parents. I think it's a toxic combination of lack of experience with true pain and lack of empathy. Oh, sure, he's learned to stand by the bedsides of grievously wounded troops and mimic their relatives' tears, and he probably really thinks he shares their grief, but he's been sheltered from true pain all his life and he's an utter narcissist, so he never considers the suffering of others when making decisions.

Also, he has absolutely no fear of what you and I would consider failure because, to him, what normal people call failure simply isn't bad.

Think about his life: Every time the world has said Bush screwed something up, in short order he was better off than he'd been. That includes screwing up Iraq -- especially Iraq. (He had been screwing up the war for a year and a half by Election Day '04, from the looting to Abu Ghraib, and he got 25% more votes than in '00.) So his rule of thumb is that either everyone who says "George W. Bush has screwed up" is wrong or screwing up is actually good. He's never had to suffer any real consequences no matter how many times he (according to the world) screwed up, and, in fact, his life has been pretty darn good. So why argue with success?

To some up: If you say his Iraq policy or his Katrina policy is a failure, that must mean things are going to be looking up for him very, very soon. And if you say his policies are causing pain, he just doesn't feel a thing.