Bush has finally done it, he’s fused my neurons

President Bush called reporters at about 2.30 ET aboard Air Force One to issue a very strong defense of port deal… He said he would veto any legislation to hold up deal and warned the United States was sending “mixed signals” by going after a company from the Middle East when nothing was said when a British company was in charge… Lawmakers, he said, must “step up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard.” Bush was very forceful when he delivered the statement…

On reading the above, and also this, I am (figuratively) stretched out on the ground, stunned, my jaw is (at the moment, literally) hanging open. There are things that go beyond one’s ability or desire to analyze or discuss.

But one thing stands out. Just as Bush REALLY cared about getting his totally unqualified crony Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court, and even got his wife to label Miers’s opponents (Bush’s entire conservative base) as anti-woman, he REALLY cares about giving this contract to the Arab country of Dubai, and he calls opponents of the deal (almost the entire country) biased against Arabs. He’s never vetoed a bill in five years—now he’s threatening a veto if Congress squelches the deal whereby an Arab country becomes responsible for managing six U.S. ports.

The good side of this is, it could trigger another Miers-type uprising among the conservatives (as seen in the Free Republic thread at the first link above), which was, so far, the only time in five years that the conservatives showed some life and stood up against Bush’s ongoing dismantling of conservatism.

Carl Simpson writes:

I guess we’ll have to change his nickname from the “Messiah from West Texas” to the “Mahdi from West Texas.” Just when you think he can’t get much worse—he does!

Mark writes:

I’ve never been that interested in Bush as a person, or in his motives, or the question of whether his personality has a distinct influence on his policy decisions.

But the absurdity, and political idiocy, of some of his recent decisions almost force one to consider what is going on.

After Harriet Miers and the UAE port story, I can only speculate that Bush enjoys sticking it to people. And, when they object, rather than conciliate and self-examine, he basks in their discomfort. Yesterday, when he threatened a veto to preserve this UAE deal, I was stunned. Why bother, unless one enjoys the bother? The guy is monumentally bored, and creates false crises to stimulate himself. Then, he flatters himself that he is “principled” and a man of “strength,” and then throws bombs like “sexism” and “discrimination” to tar his opposition.

There is something strange going on here. One can only surmise that we have 3 more years of strangeness ahead.

Shrewsbury writes:

Bush’s apparently idiotic conduct, nominating the Harriet Miers non-entity for the Supremes, and now threatening to veto any attempt to prevent our ports being turned over to Sheik Kamel Jokky, seems actually all of a piece if you just assume that the only loyalty of which he is capable is to his “friends,” and, more broadly, his crony-capitalist class….

And no doubt the Bush family trait you have erewhile identified, what is apparently almost a compulsive need to betray those not of their circle whom they have bamboozled into supporting them, also plays a role….

I thank Shrewsbury for his perfect encapsulation of that Bush family trait.

It’s worth recapitulating Bush’s astonishingly consistent pattern of behavior:

Item: Patriotic Americans try to protect our border from the Mexican invasion; Bush, standing next to his amigo, the anti-American president of Mexico, calls the patriotic Americans vigilantes.

Item: Principled conservatives rise up in outrage against Bush’s nomination of a totally unqualified, liberal-leaning female crony of his to the U.S. Supreme Court; Bush’s wife calls the conservatives anti-woman.

Item: The whole country is shocked and outraged that Bush would hand over control of U.S. ports to an Arab country, the leaders of which are doubtless Bush’s personal friends; Bush says that opponents of the deal, meaning almost the entire American population, are biased against Arabs.

What a great guy! What a high class individual! What a patriot! What honor and dignity he’s restored to the office of the presidency!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 22, 2006 02:10 AM | Send