Interesting and scary reading from the NYT Magazine (registration-free link) on Dubya's delusions of divine mandate and his unfitness to lead. (Long; there's 11 pages of it.)
And on that subject, spread this information far and wide: you can generate a registration-free link to any given NYT article here. (Without this, I wouldn't have been able to read this article, as NYT seems to have purged their database of all userIDs known to bugmenot.)
[....]
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'''
Go read the article. Frankly -- and this is something I've been saying for some time -- George W. Bush is sounding more to me like Nehemiah Scudder every day. This is a man who's basically empty of everything but his faith, and because everything he says and does comes from his faith, he literally does not believe it's possible for him to be mistaken or wrong. But in the eyes of those for whom faith comes first and inconvenient facts are to be dismissed when they conflict with faith, that's just fine, because so long as Bush says he's doing it for God, they don't believe he can be wrong either. He's amassed a very large sect of followers who see him as a messianic figure anointed by God, and if he wakes up one morning and decides God has told him that God hates fags or that teenage sex is a mortal sin, they'll have the stakes and the pyres erected by lunchtime.
In response to a question, he talked about diversity, saying that ''hands down,'' he has the most diverse senior staff in terms of both gender and race. He recalled a meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany. ''You know, I'm sitting there with Schröder one day with Colin and Condi. And I'm thinking: What's Schröder thinking?! He's sitting here with two blacks and one's a woman.''
Mr. President, what on earth makes you think Gerhard Schröder CARES? What this says to me is that we have a President who would never come out and say so in public, but who secretly thinks in his heart that blacks and women are inferior. Why else would he suddenly wonder if Schröder was thinking that?
But the truly dangerous thing about George W. Bush is that he believes his faith is enough -- he believes that if his faith is telling him he's doing the right thing, that's sufficient, and he doesn't have to think. Whatever it is will be right, because his faith has told him so. If you disagree with him, or merely question him and ask him for supporting evidence on something, you're questioning his faith, because he doesn't need evidence. His faith has told him so. This is why there's no room for disagreement in George Bush's cabinet, no room for debate in George Bush's Congress, and no room for dissent in George Bush's America.
...What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with God -- a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?
That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House.
''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness -- that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.
''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the thing we as humans so very much want.''
And what is that?
''Easy certainty.''
If George W. Bush is elected for a second term, I fear for the future of America, and of the world.