I've published snark diaries in the past, but this is ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
In an obscure 2003 book titled "Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes" by Kenneth T. Walsh, there is an incredible anecdote that sums up George W. Bush. Read it and weep:
Another innovation is Bush's interest in the board game Risk, in which players amass armies and try to conquer the world. En route home from Europe in July 2001, Bush supervised a particularly competitive game. The president encouraged each participant to take the biggest risks possible and to attack each other mercilessly. At one point, he goaded his military aide, supposedly an expert on military maneuvers and strategy, to take some chances. When he did so and found his armies annihilated, Bush teased the aide for being the first to lose. Supervising another game, the commander in chief yelled "You're a wimp! Go get 'em."
Risk is just a board game, not real life. But did Bush know the difference?
Did Bush think of our soldiers as just pawns, just game pieces?
Did he not know that they were human beings?
To date, the US has lost 4,226 soldiers in Iraq. Another 638 in Afghanistan. Yet Bush has never attended the funeral of a single dead soldier, perhaps protecting himself from the reality of what he has unleashed.
The book, which is actually quite admiring of Bush (as were most press accounts in the 2001-2005 period), also includes this:
"He [Bush] has a very basic belief that if he does his part-gets the information, makes the choices-the results are somehow with God," says chief White House speech writer Michael Gerson. "He believes there's something broader going on. He does his best and the outcome is out of his control." This gives him a sense of peace and enables him to make decisions crisply and without anguish.
I suppose that if you think God is deciding the outcome, and God is good, then why worry yourself over decision making? Feel free to ignore pre-war intelligence reports, appoint Brownie to FEMA, let the deficit skyrocket, let Wall Street run wild, who cares?
And the book has plenty more tidbits:
He is not a voracious reader of books, managing to plow through one biography or historical volume every two or three weeks...
Although Karl Rove now claims that Bush reads at least one book per week, sometimes two. Yeah right.
As we learned quite starkly during Katrina, Bush has no interest in the news. But I never knew that he wanted his staff to ignore the news as well:
He has little interest in following the news day-to-day on TV. When he wanders into an Air Force One staff cabin and notices the news on a monitor, he will often frown and snap, "Turn that off."...He scans a few newspapers every morning but prefers to have his press staff summarize, orally or in writing, whatever he needs to know beyond his daily security and intelligence briefings. His favorite TV fare is major league baseball....
And of course, the guy is a grade A asshole. Imagine working for this guy:
Bush hates sitting still. Before landing, he has a habit of pacing impatiently in his airborne office or waiting just outside the door as the plane completes its taxiing (even though this violates air safety rules that require passengers to remain seated and strapped in until the aircraft comes to a complete stop). If the mobile staircase takes longer than he anticipates to roll up to the doorway, he will start complaining. "Let's go," he will say. "What's going on?"
Update [2009-1-14 16:35:54 by existenz]:: Thanks for the recommendations! I've decided to post some more juicy highlights, to remind us all of who the true Bush really is as his days in office come to a close.
On Bush's frat-boy style movie watching habits:
On very lengthy flights, he might watch a movie, and during the months after September 11, he seemed drawn to films with military themes, such as Behind Enemy Lines and Hart's War.
Let's all remember that Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora in the months after Sep. 11th. Yet Bush was spending that time watching horrible crap like Behind Enemy Lines.
Or how about the great deliberations that went into creating the Dept. of Homeland Security, one of the most poorly-run departments over the last eight years:
As he showed on September 11, Bush apparently has no qualms about moving decisively, even if it means reversing himself. This flexibility came across en route to Berlin on May 22, 2002, during a trip to solidify European support for his war on terrorism. During the flight, Bush approved the reorganization of the federal government that was to become a hallmark of his second year in office.
Meeting in the president's airborne suite, Card briefed the president and presented him with an inche-and-a-half-thick binder containing eight policy options for the reshuffling, designed to enhance the anti-terror campaign at home. Bush accepted nearly all of the recommendations, including once for a Department of Homeland Security....
Typically, in making the choices, he followed the advice of Card and other key aides, and felt no need for exhaustive briefings and explanations of each proposal.
After all, creating a massive new bureacracy, what's the big deal?
Also strange is the enthusiastic use of Air Force One as what Andy Card called a "church":
But the depth of his Christian commitment may take many by surprise. Knowing that he hates to miss church on important occassions, Condoleezza Rice, Card, and Karen Hughes suggested to Bush that they conduct an informal religious service on the flight from San Salvador to Washington on Palm Sunday, 2002. Bush enthusiastically agreed.
What followed aboard Air Force One was possibly unprecedented in the travel history of the presidents. Rice and other senior aides spread the word on the plane shortly after takeoff that there would be a service for anyone who wanted to attend. White House Staff Secretary Harriet Miers and a young press aide named Reed Dickens helped draw up a program, which was reproduced and distributed to the three dozen officials who huddled in the conference room. As President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and six aides sat around a rectangular table, senior staffers made remarks.
Card, whose wife is a Protestant minister and who reads verses from the Bible each day, as does Bush, started the proceedings. "I opened it up with greetings and a prayer and call to worship," Card told me. The group - which included Secretary of State Powell, members of the flight crew, and lower-level aides - then sand hymns and religious songs led by Rice, an accomplished musician and singer. There were reading and prayers by different officials from the Old and New Testament, and Hughes gave what one attendee called a "wonderful little sermonette"....
Some staffers said later they felt a bit uncomfortable about the unusual service, which they considered Christian in tone, although no one who practiced a different faith was excluded. they were concerned that Bush critics might portray the service as an inappropriate blending of church and state.
"I feel guilty talking about it - I don't know why," Card said during out interview, "because the president made sure that all the staff on the plane was invited to attend, the Air Force staff as well as his staff. I reminded people of the celebration of Jesus coming into Jerusalem and that wherever people are gathered in his name there is a church, and so you didn't have to be in a church to have a church on the plane."
Yes, I'm sure the non-Christian aides didn't feel at all pressured to join this entirely Christian ceremony. And what's up with using taxpayer-funded resources to draw up religious programs on board Air Force One?
This little-noticed book is just one artifact from the Bush years, more proof that the bullying ignoramus known as George W. Bush had no business being the most powerful man on Earth. The evidence of his mediocrity was before our eyes for so long, yet it took America five traumatic years to really see it. Let's make sure this never happens again.