So Far, Bush is Only Play-Acting as President (August 2001)

[YDogg]

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/morrow/article/0,9565,169869,00.html

Just thought this was an interesting look back.

- - - - -

"It's early yet. But not that early.

"George W. Bush's term is one-eighth gone, and there remains a curious lifelessness at the heart of his administration, a quality of grumpy somnambulism. Or something.

"What movie is screening itself in the Bushies' heads, what visions project themselves there? None that I can make out. There's no plot, no clarity. The script needs work. Bush is indulging in WASP Zen, that reticence that is the sound of one hand clapping, a self-confident smirk meant to signal a resolute and maybe cunning refusal to be ingratiating to the rest of the world, about Kyoto or anything else.

"That approach might be the beginning of something admirable or original — if the man at the center, who gives the administration its name, were really at the center. But we don't see him there, we don't feel him, we don't hear him. He has an agenda, but it is not sufficiently articulated, not persuasively proclaimed."

- more at link -

[jwirr]

1. God, help us if he ever start doing the real thing.

[crickets]

2. August 2001

The date is telling. There was no there there because George had yet to read The Pet Goat.