George Bush's Three Goals

I'm exploring the following idea to see how it stands up.
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Rove, Wolfowitz and Perle seem much more learned and capable than Bush. They may be the driving forces, while Bush simply goes along as the mouthpiece for the administration, hanging on as best he can. Those people are running the plan.

I would expect powerful people to shun publicity. Making deals and influencing people is best done quietly, with time to study and think. Being a public leader is a huge distraction to being a thoughtful, long-term power broker. They are incompatible. I would expect the President's job is mostly to give speeches and present the face of the government -- managing public perception rather than creating the strategies, tactics and persuasive decisions.

Bush might be played by others by
a) catering to his ego (finish what your father started!)
b) manipulating his "duty" (help the Iraqi people, save the world)
c) simplifying his view of "us vs. them". (Lower taxes, so the Dem's will never have a chance to grow. No other reason but to maintain control).

I've seen too many business executives. Everything is a power play -- every word, sentence and action, public or private.

Bush is a dry drunk, so his emotions are easy to contrive and manipulate, and his grasp of the world is not self-made. A dry drunk tends to be very image-oriented, script-driven, bull-headed yet held by their own patterns -- the *perfect* kind of person to be manipulated. If I was a power-broker behind the scenes I couldn't ask for a more perfect vehicle to suggest and use. If my agenda was to control the Middle East, oil or through it the world, Bush would be the perfect chump and fall-guy to take all the heat.

In four years he's disposable and gone so who cares what an idiot or jerk he looks like? He won't harm the people in power. The policies, direction and industry contacts will still be in place.



Theories that insult the president may make us feel better. They are fun. But stories about Bush avenging his father are far more complimentary and easily dealt with -- than the vicious truth of how Washington works. Power becomes a conniving cesspool of greed, treachery, and inhumanity.

I think your analysis makes sense, but there's a lot more too.
Simple theories won't explain what really happens in a pit full of vipers.

He's a fascist asshole?

codeborg
Good analysis.

Codeborg, add to the things you listed Georgie-Poo II's fundy born-again-ness, and his "close personal relationship with God" and he would be the ultimate manipulable little twerp!

BBB's dry drunk post of several months ago
I'm reposting the article about dry drunks I posted several months ago so that anyone who didn't read it will know what CodeBorg is referring to.
---BumbleBeeBoogie
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Dry Drunk Syndrome
Not Drinking, But Not 'Of Sober Mind' Either

Unfortunately when many former drinkers go through the grieving process over the loss of their old friend, the bottle, some never get past the anger stage.

It is a very real loss. The drink has been their friend for many years and one they could count on. When the whole world turned against them, the bottle never let them down. It was always there ready for the good times, the celebrations, the parties, as well as the sad, mad, and lonely times, too.

Finally their old friend let them down... they got in trouble with the law, lost a job or career, almost lost their family, or the doctors told them they had to stop drinking... whatever the reason, the circumstances of their life brought them to the point where they made a decision to say "so long" to the bottle.

Whether they realized it or not, they began the stages of grieving -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance -- the same stages most people go through when they have a great loss in their lives or have been told they have a terminal illness.

First comes the denial -- it's really not that big a deal, I've always said I could quit anytime -- and then the anger and depression when they realize just how much that had come to depend on their old friend alcohol.

Many make it through the process to the final stage -- accepting the loss, learning and growing through the experience, and moving on.

Some never make it. It's sad to see them, sometimes many years later, still stuck in their anger, bitterness, and resentment at having to make the change in their lives. They haven't had a drink in years, but they have also never had a "sober" day.

" I've been in the program 16 years," says an old-timer while the newcomers lean forward hoping to gain some wisdom, "And my philosophy is: Don't drink and go to meetings."

You even see them in the 12-step rooms... been in the program for years and years and their lives seem to be a constant unmanageable struggle. All those years and they have no more of a spiritual awakening than they did the first time they walked into the room.

"Dry Drunk" has been described as "A condition of returning to one's old alcoholic thinking and behavior without actually having taken a drink." Or as one wise old drunk put it, if a horse thief goes into A.A. what you can end up with is a sober horse thief. Or a personal favorite: you can take the rum out of the fruit cake, but you've still got a fruit cake!

Those who quit drinking but are still angry about it, wind up living miserable lives and usually make everyone else around them miserable too. If it has been said once in an Al-Anon meeting, it has been whispered thousands of times, "I almost wish he would go back to drinking."

Okay, I don't like it, now what?

The simple answer to that question is to find something that you do like, but that is not always as easy as it sounds.

There is a theory that in order to fully recover from the effects of alcoholism, the alcoholic must replace the obsessive behaviors in his life with their spiritual opposites. Frankly, there are those who believe that without such spiritual help from a power greater than themselves, true recovery is impossible.

The Alcoholics Anonymous program has championed this theory for many years to millions of "hopeless drunks" who are now living happy and sober lives. It's hard to argue with that record of success.

But beyond the spiritual side of recovery, there are other steps that can be taken to help make life fun again, without alcohol:

Develop a hobby. Take up gardening, start or expand a collection, build something, go fishing, or learn how to develop your own web pages! Try to find some activity to fill those leisure hours that you used to spend drinking.

Get healthy. All those years of drinking probably took some toll on your physical health. Join the YMCA, take up walking or jogging, or play a sport. Get on some kind of regular (daily) exercise program.

Improve your mind. It's never too late to learn new things. Get a library card, take a continuing education class, improve your job skills, or surf the 'Net.

Spend time with your family. Maybe you can't replace all those times that you neglected your wife and children while you were in the barrooms, but you can make a new start. Take your wife out to her favorite place, take the kids or grandchildren to the park, or start a project in which the entire family can participate.

Life doesn't have to be a miserable experience just because you quit drinking. There's a whole world out there for you to explore and learn about.

repeat post re "All the Presidents' Children"
Doug Wead, the author of "All the Presidents' Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America's First Families, recently stated in a C-Span Book TV presentation that presidential children often strive to complete or conclude goals their presidential fathers failed to achieve.

Wead opined that this may be behind Gorge W. Bush's obsession with finishing off Saddam Hussein to compensate for his father's failure to rid the world of the Iraqi dictator.

Wead also opined that Bush's clinging to reducing taxes is based on his drive to erase the elder Bush's failed statement "READ MY LIPS; NO NEW TAXES" policy reversal and make good on it.

Wead should know something about W. He worked for George the First's administration.

Re: the hobby...George II has a hobby....raping the country and invading others.