BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Thursday, June 17, 2004
INSIDE BUSH'S BRAIN. Is
George W. Bush barking mad? Until recently, I can't say I seriously
considered the question. Recently, though, I linked
to an item on the not-especially-reliable Capitol
Hill Blue website that
portrays Bush as raging against the world as he lurches about the
White House, quoting from the Bible and denouncing his
enemies.
Now comes meatier fare - a
Salon review
of three books on the presidential psyche. Unfortunately the
reviewer, Laura Miller, uses up most of her space on Justin Frank's
Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, even
though she calls it "a sloppily written and edited book, padded with
repetitions and laced with dubious psychological theories," not to
mention overtly partisan.
But Frank is at least
well-qualified to explore Bush's brain: he's a clinical psychiatrist
at George Washington University medical Center. Miller
writes:
While the conventional
wisdom might suggest that Bush fears being unmasked as a dolt,
Frank believes that Bush's rigidity - also manifest in his
ironclad daily routine - protects him from inadvertently revealing
the darker emotions he's never come to terms with. In addition to
the fear of not living up to his father's example, there's the
anger at being expected to, and the fear of the destructive power
of that anger should it ever be unleashed. The primitive moral
vision Bush subscribes to - in which the world is divided into the
good, "freedom-loving" people of America and "evildoers" like
Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - is another inflexible schema
that imposes order on the internal chaos that's always threatening
to rise up and swamp him. Maintaining such control takes a
considerable amount of energy, according to Frank, which may be
one reason why Bush needs so much sleep and finds it so hard to
concentrate.
As Miller observers, such
characteristics do not guarantee presidential failure; some of our
best presidents have been psychological basket cases. And it's always
hard to know how seriously to take psychoanalysis from afar. ("Not
very" would seem to be a pretty good guide.)
Still, this is fascinating stuff,
and may help explain how we got to where we are today.
O.J. AND REAGAN, TOGETHER AT
LAST. Looks like Frank Rich's column in next Sunday's New York
Times will be a must-read.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. Write, twist, smear, and sneer: meet
Mark
Steyn, the most toxic
right-wing pundit you've never heard of.
posted at 9:17 AM |
1 comments
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link
1 Comments:
The Steyn-piece just isn't very good. It's too long, does a good bit of spinning on its own, and doesn't really make a case for itself, it basically just says, at best, that Steyn should work harder and write less. There should be more of a take-home for the reader than that for such a long story. Somebody at the Phoenix should have done a better job editing the article.
Call it an off week for DK. I'm sure he'll bounce back next week.
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
