Bush is Broken, Frightened, And Plagued By Voices

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Jason Reed / Reuters Psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, says Bush's final speech revealed a fragile man still fighting imaginary enemies to battle his inner demons.

The president’s Thursday night swan song was upstaged by a flock of geese that brought down an airliner—and was foiled by a true act of heroism that Bush couldn’t acknowledge because it wasn’t in the script. The lame duck appeared for one last time, however, peddling the same story he first tried to sell the American people just after 9/11. His demeanor was presidential, but his facial expression retained his famous smirk for one last viewing. And he remained unchanged by his experience, save for looking older.

George W. Bush gave the speech he had to give, because nobody else would say it for him. We have always needed special cues when listening to a Bush speech, the most essential being an understanding that he means the opposite of what he says. Thus, the catalog of successes that he listed, was in fact a litany of his failures; his claims of the purity of his patriotic heart, actually belied the destructiveness he inflicted on the nation and the world. As Samuel Johnson wrote, “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” In Bush’s case, the scoundrel’s greatest enemy is himself.

Bush once famously remarked that he looks in the mirror only when he needs to comb his hair.

President Bush spent a lifetime trying to manage inner chaos, and he used many methods for doing so. For years this has included not listening to reality, and ignoring critics who might otherwise make him think, but the cumulative effect of all of this willed ignorance is that he has grown less and less able to think clearly. He resorts to living by his own reality, his own distortions. The more he tries to manage, the more he has to narrow his focus; keeping bad thoughts out of his consciousness requires donning psychological blinders—blinders that on Thursday night he revealed to the American people once again.

The song remains the same, just now sotto voce. He still externalizes fear, again saying that Obama’s biggest challenge will be an enemy attack. By that standard, he can lay claim to doing a great job, reminding us that there haven’t been more attacks on our homeland since 9/11—although more Americans have died in Iraq than died on 9/11, and far more are maimed for life. I am reminded of the saying “wishing makes it so.” The threat of an enemy attack proved useful to Bush, offering a means to organize his disordered mind, and he wishes the threat would continue: he needs an enemy on which to focus, even if he never mentions who the enemy actually is. He spoke of enemies in vague ways when he was running in the New Hampshire primary in February 2000 and his final speech was no different. But this time he was scripted. The chaos was contained, though the self-deceptions persist.

It is instructive to compare Bush the speech reader with Bush the improviser, both of whom were on display this week during his final speech and press conference. In both instances Bush tried to blind himself from who he was and from what he did. In Thursday’s speech, he hid behind having the best interests of America at heart, behind having good intentions. It’s as if he personally paved the road to hell—and ignominy, failure and national shame—with those intentions. He is the pavemaster in chief.

But if he did very well as a reader on Thursday, he fared much worse as an improviser two days earlier. In what was to me a disastrous press conference on Tuesday, he exhibited several characteristics of a chronic alcoholic. He confabulated, making up the story that he entered the White House during a recession and he left with one. He repeated familiar phrases to organize his inner world—an alcoholic process called perseverating—but he could not deal with direct challenges by thinking—only by reacting.

When he said, “the phrase ‘burdens of the office’ is overstated,” he began to speak the truth about himself. "I tell people that, you know, some days happy, some days not so happy, every day has been joyous....Even in the darkest moments of Iraq, you know, there was—every day when I was reading the reports about soldiers losing their lives, no question there was a lot of emotion, but also there was times where we could be light-hearted." Bush can find joy in the darkest moments because he lacks compassion; his feelings are so threatening to him that can’t even employ a personal pronoun (“there was a lot of emotion”) to admit them. As he reminded us over the years, he always slept well these past eight years.

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January 16, 2009 | 7:09am

Alcoholism, Childhood, Bush Psychology, Final Speech, Farewell Speech, Justin Frank, News Shrink, George W. Bush, Iraq War, Torture

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rmyurick

It's sad, really--all I feel for him is pity. I think he is too small-minded to even see that there could be another way. Of course, no one wants to be like Carter, every conservative's favorite whipping boy. Bush's legacy is one of dodgy elections, creating enormous deficits by means of waging wars, at least one of which is questionable, and spin. When they try to blame this whole financial mess on Fannie & Freddy, I'm just not buying it. THere were too many other players involved, and w/o F&F they would have found another way.

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