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Want to understand Bush better? Check out Noam Scheiber's latest piece in The New Republic. It's quite lengthy, but as I always say, well worth the time. Here's an excerpt:

Conventional wisdom holds that the president is a conservative hard-liner bent on upending the Middle East and the U.S. tax code. But, while those may be the practical implications of the decisions he's made as president, the way George W. Bush makes sense of the world isn't through ideology. It's through narrative. Bush has always been a sucker for a good storyline--and never more so than when it involves him. In his own mind, Bush is the central figure in an ever-unfolding series of dramas. As such, Bush prides himself on possessing the qualities of a hero: compassion and justness on the one hand; boldness, principle, and resolution on the other. Bush almost always supports policies that appear to reinforce this image of himself; he opposes policies that appear to contradict it.  To be sure, these are qualities that often make Bush a decent, even likeable human being--as when he extemporaneously came out against legacy admissions (a policy he'd personally benefited from) at a recent conference of minority journalists in Washington, D.C. The problem with Bush's penchant for making decisions based on whether they reinforce his own internal storyline is that, when divorced from logical argument or empirical evidence--neither of which Bush has much patience for (see Franklin Foer, "Closing of the Presidential Mind," July 5 & 12)--narrative is an essentially contentless proposition: You can construct equally compelling narratives to justify either side of just about any decision Bush has had to make as president. The Bush tax cuts could be framed as an effort to upwardly redistribute wealth (as Bush initially presumed) or as a bold, principled plan to turbocharge the economy (as Hubbard and Rove subsequently convinced him). Iraq could be framed as a disastrous departure from the war against Al Qaeda or as an attempt to weaken Islamic fundamentalism at its geographic heart. Unfortunately for the country, during Bush's presidency, it's the advisers who favor the most radical policies who have been most successful at telling their stories.

One of the things that's always confused me so much about Bush is that for someone supposedly defined by principles, he just doesn't come across like on. I'm not sure I can put why into precise words - it's really more of a "vibe thing". He just simply doesn't seem like someone who works from a core set of principles and values above all else. Even the language he uses, while being value laden in the extreme, isn't presented in a way that's ever made me feel like he believed, truly believed, what he was saying. I wish I could explain myself better here, but it really is all about his vibe.

So in that regard Noam Scheiber's description of Bush being driven by a quest for a "narrative" in which he is the "central actor" makes perfect sense. What is more, the idea that his advisors, and not he, are the principle drivers in the administration fits nicely without resorting to conspiracy theories. More importantly it explains how he could have so completely abandoned the conservative philosophies of his father and of Reagan without even realizing he is doing it. It's impossible to explain his massive expansion of Medicare using conservative philosophies. But a narrative in which he is the prime actor, the 'hero'? Now *THAT* makes sense. In fact, virtually everything in his original and so-called 'compassionate conservative' agenda fits nicely in this conception. After all, 'compassion' is something that most conservatives think should be outside the realm of government action entirely. To me, the concept is one that never really made sense. Until now.

Continuing on:

Bush's habit of making snap decisions based largely on emotion would obviously be exasperating for an administration official trying to forge coherent policy. Aides have responded by heavily regulating the flow of information to the president. Meetings between Bush and his top officials are almost always choreographed. Woodward notes that "[Rice] liked to deliver the president clear, unambiguous summaries that reflected their thinking. The best way frequently was to orchestrate and script the next day's [National Security Council] meeting. They agreed on who was going to say what, and in what order." Suskind writes in The Price of Loyalty (which drew heavily from interviews and documents provided by O'Neill), "Before most meetings, a cabinet secretary's chief of staff would receive a note from someone on the senior staff in the White House. The note instructed the cabinet secretary when he was supposed to speak, about what, and how long. ... [O'Neill] had been in many White Houses. He had never heard of such a thing."  The other reason aides have taken to scripting their interactions with the president is more sinister: It makes it easier to exploit Bush's view of himself as a tough, bold leader. Every other word out of Bush's mouth in the first few days after September 11 reads like a two-bit John Wayne impression. "That's what we're paid for, boys. We're going to take care of this," Bush announced to his staff aboard Air Force One the day of the attacks. "And, when we find out who did this, they're not going to like me as president." Not long after, Bush informed Cheney, "We're going to find out who did this, and we're going to kick their asses." In late October, when intelligence suggested an attack on the White House might be forthcoming, Bush refused to consider leaving, bellowing, "Those bastards are going to find me exactly here."

This section nicely explains another trait we've all seen in Bush that's positively baffling - His ability to believe things that are obviously untrue. We all know that Bush is kept in a policy bubble. That's been a given among those on both the left and the right for some time. This explains that bubble in a way I had never conceived. It's not his lack of intellect (after all, the man did get elected President. He simply cannot be as dumb as he makes himself out to be). Rather its an attempt by his ideological and/or opportunistic staff to manipulate him. After all, every President is in a bubble to some extent. It's just part of the nature of the office. The key, however, is that he recognize this and act whenever possible to break through, to seek a diversity of opinions from a diversity of sources. Bush, given his own admitted interest in 'clarity of thought' and 'firmness of action', purposely seeks to avoid conflicting opinions, thus opening the way for manipulation by his staff.

Think about it. "Freedom is on the march." It's a brilliant narrative, one that undoubtedly has been spun to him by his staff. And since he doesn't question, he not only believes it, he regurgitates it.

Too conspiratorial for you to swallow? Think about it this way. How many of you out there have had a job working for someone who is easily swayed when issues or events are portrayed to them in a specific way. I'd venture to guess that every single one of us have worked for someone like that. And when we did, what did we do? OF COURSE we 'spun' things to them in whatever way would best help ourselves, our projects, our work. Remember this is a President who prides himself on the 'CEO model.' The one thing I hated about working in a corporation above all else was the incessant need to spin my boss. Shouldn't we have seen this coming?

More:

Bush's preferred narratives, by contrast, have always been vague enough to lead to almost any policy. One outgrowth of Bush's image of himself as a heroic leader has been a near-evangelical zeal to spread freedom around the world. Bush's response to Powell's plea in August 2002 about the potentially chaotic consequences of invading Iraq was, "[M]y job is to secure America.... And that I also believe that freedom is something people long for. And that, if given a chance, the Iraqis over time would seize the moment." Bush told Woodward in December 2003, "I say that freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is God's gift to everybody in the world. I believe that. As a matter of fact, I was the person that wrote the line, or said it. I didn't write it, I just said it in a speech. And it became part of the jargon."  But, unlike Reagan's determination to save the world, Bush's Simón Bolívar pretensions are ill-defined. Since restoring freedom in Bush's mind could simply mean toppling a tyrannical regime, it provided zero prescription for action once U.S. forces had ousted the Taliban and Saddam. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others exploited this vacuum to push their vision of how the military should be employed. In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld and Cheney adamantly opposed using American troops for nation-building, and Bush parroted this argument back to them, unaware of the contradiction with his ostensible desire to build a democratic government. "Look, I oppose using the military for nation-building. Once the job is done, our forces are not peacekeepers," he said at an NSC meeting in mid-October 2001, as the Northern Alliance closed in on Kabul. By January 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq, Cheney had recognized that establishing democracy was one of Bush's motivations. But, at the same time, the vice president's mantra in internal deliberations was that the United States needed to maintain a "light hand in the postwar phase." Bush, of course, endorsed this "light hand" approach. Partly as a result, the story of Iraq hasn't had a very happy ending--at least not outside the president's mind. Then again, to George W. Bush, that's the venue that's always mattered most.

This last bit best explains to me why he literally had no concern for the post war plan, and why he continues to deny the reality on the ground there. After all, if 'everyone' longs for freedom, then once it's been given to them establishing it should be easy. Give them the opportunity and they'll make it happen. Except, of course, it's just not that easy. To paraphrase Bill Mahr, maybe a part of the world that keeps 50% of its population in bee keeper suits doesn't want our kind of freedom.

But Bush of course cannot imagine that. After all, freedom is God's gift and as such all of us should be fully prepared to receive it. Never mind that we can't agree on just who or what 'god' is, of course.

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