WHAT DRIVES GEORGE BUSH?

Mikevotes continues probing the significance of Bush's position on Iran as opposed to Iraq. As always, Mike digs deep and challenges us to do so.

Do you see it? If you believe Hersh's reporting, Bush doesn't want to leave the thing that's not a problem yet, Iran, to a weaker president, while at the same time seems more than willing to leave the thing that is a problem right now, Iraq, to a future president more than two and a half years from now.

I think there's something profound in this about the Bush presidency although I can't nail down exactly what. Maybe it says something to me about their sense of their place in history versus the very real and obvious incompetence in the present. Maybe the difference in self image and total unaccountability. I don't know.

I think it's at least partially due to Bush's basic nature. He fancies himself a man of action. Iraq is "been there, done that" to him. He's BORED with it and anxious to take on new "challenges."

The "hard job" of governing has never appealed to him. There's always another fish to catch, another score to settle, another campaign to wage (although that avenue is cut off from him now), another dramatically staged speech to deliver, another war to start. He's a very confrontational guy, impatient with the slow sure path of diplomacy. He needs ACTION to feed his self-image. He is, at bottom, an adventure junkie.

Consider his history. He was an indifferent student without focus. He tried for law school at the U. of Texas (couldn't get in). He found flying planes exciting for a while, but when he got bored he just walked away from the Texas Air National Guard. He fed his craving for excitement with fast women, hard drugs and drink, went to business school, bounced from job to job, from politics to oil wildcatting and then corporate board memberships, drank more, followed by a dramatic religious conversion to which he still gives lip service but shows no convincing signs of a sincere study of that religion. He bounced from job to job again, managing (or fronting for) a ball club, then entered politics again.

As president he was listless until the events of 9/11. Rather than giving serious thought to how to address the international issues that gave rise to the attacks, he demanded immediate action. When our attacks on Afghanistan seemed to yield results, he went looking for the next fix. Iraq.

Now he's tired of that little adventure (it's such "hard work!"), so he's manufacturing a new crisis in Iran.

The man is clearly incapable of giving his sustained attention to or interest in anything. But his ego demands accomplishments, real or not, to give basis for the sense of entitlement that was nurtured in him from birth. Tax cuts, he thinks, will make him a hero to those who count, his "base" (I'm convinced he looks upon those folks as his acolytes), so he keeps coming back to them. Yes, his legacy is important to him. It will establish him as the rightfully superior being he has always fancied himself.

In addition to everything else, he's consumed with an Oedipal complex that drives him to try to best his own father. He demands that those around him worship at his altar, and his Messianic utterances demonstrate a severely disturbed id.

American Heritage Dictionary defines "id" as "In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs." Sound familiar?

Tags: George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq