President George W. Bush is in the midst of confronting his greatest obstacle. It is not the war in Iraq. It is not USAgate. And it is not the challenge of congressional oversight.
The obstacle George now faces is epistemological and metaphysical. It is about the nature of knowledge and about how we as human beings define reality.
As most of us remember, it was in the fall of 2004 that an anonymous aid to the President explained to Ron Suskind the philosophy under which Bushco operates:
The aide said that guys like me 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."
It has never been more clear that this man was telling the truth. When we look at the range of crises the White House is currently facing, one theme emerges: a conflict between two competing views of reality.
Let us look at the controversy swirling around our prevaricating attorney general. As we all know, members of Congress (particularly those of the Republican persuasion) seem to be able ignore a veritable panoply of corruption, scandal, and vice. But lie directly to them and look out. And that is what truly threatens Alberto: he lied to the faces of Republican Senators. Under normal circumstances (in which members of the executive and legislative branches of government agree on the basic nature of knowledge and reality), the attorney general would have already resigned in disgrace. But within the inner circle of C-Plus Augustus, it is simply not possible to be on the wrong side of truth. Evidence, you say? Damning e-mails? Conflicting testimony? These crude forms of empirical evidence are irrelevant to the Decider and his minions. When Alberto is confronted with his own obvious mendacity, his response is thus: those of us in the reality-based community (including, in this instance, GOP law-makers) are simply not qualified to make basic judgments about truth and knowledge. Alberto says he did not lie. And that is all we really need to know.
It is no different with our occupation of Iraq. In fact, according to the White House, there is no occupation of Iraq. We are there at the invitation of Iraqis. And how is the recent surge of our visiting forces proceeding? Swimmingly. We must ignore all evidence to the contrary. Do not listen to the illusory reporting of journalists on the streets of Baghdad. Bushco initiate John McCain says that Americans can now walk safely through the streets of the Iraqi capital. The Great and Powerful Decider agrees. And thus it is.
But here is the problem for George W. Bush and his enablers. Those of us who still possess the faculty of reason understand something that philosophers first hashed out ages ago. We understand that when it comes to the material world, where objective reality is defined by such things as real attorneys losing real jobs and real bombs exploding and killing real human beings, individuals cannot define reality with speech and ideas. It appears that George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales have truly lost track of this basic tenet of epistemology. Which explains why Bush appears so agitated that it is necessary for the Speaker of the House to advise him to take a deep breath and calm down.
It is not just George W. Bush's policies that are threatened by the power congressional Democrats now wield. It is his very grip on reality. It is more than his world view that is at stake. It is, in fact, his ability to function in what we all know is the real world.
Most alarmingly, it is very possibly his own sanity that the President of the United States now finds threatened. And that is a reality we all must begin to face.