After reading Ron Suskind's lengthy article on Bush for the Sunday NYTimes Magazine, I think I have found the source of the President's problem. He (or rather Laura) seems to have misread Matthew 10:16. In that verse Jesus warns his twelve apostles that he is sending them out like sheep among wolves and exhorts them to be "as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves." (In lay language that means "Be as nice as you can but don't be naïve because there will be people looking to make trouble for you.") I think that when Laura read that particular verse to the President she got it backwards and now George thinks that Jesus wants him to be "as wise as a dove and as innocent as a serpent." That would explain a lot of things.
Unfortunately, those around Mr. Bush seem to have followed his lead and now the whole modus operandi of the Bush administration is based upon this misinterpretation. From page 7 of the article (
link) comes this snippet:
The aide said that guys like me (Suskind) were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
See what I mean? In the Bush administration, solutions to problems are not based on "judicious study of discernible reality." (Talk about being as wise as a dove.... And let me tell you, doves aren't very bright.) I'm not sure where to start discussing this but I have a sneaking suspicion that thinking like this is what led to the Dark Ages. Let me add here that I think these people (from the Bush administration) have either incomplete or totally incorrect census data (let's not tell them about this particular mistake until after the election please). Whatever, they seem belligerently (shades of that "innocent as a snake/serpent" thingy) proud of not thinking things through. From page 8 (link):
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.
There is another element to the belligerence too. It seems that when things get complex the President, who is loathe to listen to sound advice from other humans (all that boring "judicious study of discernible reality" stuff), prays and then does what he thinks God is telling him to do. So some of the belligerence is because he thinks opposing him is the same as opposing God's will. Here's the snippet from page 10 (link) that leads me to the above inference:
A regent I spoke to later and who asked not to be identified told me: ''I'm happy he's certain of victory and that he's ready to burst forth into his second term, but it all makes me a little nervous. There are a lot of big things that he's planning to do domestically, and who knows what countries we might invade or what might happen in Iraq. But when it gets complex, he seems to turn to prayer or God rather than digging in and thinking things through. What's that line? -- the devil's in the details. If you don't go after that devil, he'll come after you.''
This snippet from the first page (link) also seems applicable:
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.''
Now if someone reading this thinks I have no respect for the power of prayer, then he/she has another think coming. But prayer and listening to good advice are not mutually exclusive. And prayer quickly followed by action based upon what you believe God is telling you to do, especially if it is unaccompanied by sound human advice, can lead to delusional thinking. (Just for the record, a thorough reading of the history of the kings of ancient Israel and Judea shows that the best kings both prayed and sought out good human advice.)
Where I come from there are a lot of people who pray and who think God leads them through difficult times. But if you were to tell them this means they must ignore reality-based advice, most of them would either a) tell you that God sometimes speaks through the advice of other people or b) just simply look at you as if you had suddenly grown an extra head.
Ignoring good advice from smart people is not something most Christians I know insist on doing, even the ones who pray a lot. We know a thing or two about snakes and doves around here and we try to avoid being as wise as a dove or as innocent as a snake. Apparently, our President needs a refresher course on the respective attributes of these two animals.