Isn't that the question sane people have been asking about this man since he assumed office?

I'm not sure that's a question that will ever be answered. I will say this, though - that the overall strategy of this administration (whether or not Bush is a knowing participant) has been brilliant. Never has an administration been so adept at controlling the content of debate as this one - they use the red herring like a rapier.

And here we go again - Mr. Kaplan going over Bush's latest round of spun smoke, refuting his points one by one. Fred, you are the part of this equation that makes me despair, because I'm fairly confident that you, at least, are rational. It's your rationality, and the rationality of people like you, that Bush and co. have been exploiting since they were out of the gate.

Wikipedia has this to say about a glamour:

Originally, a "glamour" was a spell cast over someone, particularly to change how things appeared to them.[1] The primary modern meaning of the word relates to fascination, charisma, beauty, or sexual attraction.

It's interesting to note, however, that the origin of the word is Scottish, and initially meant, well, grammar actually. I suppose in a world of uneducated people, those who were well-spoken must have seemed capable of casting a spell.

Now, we live in a world of well-spoken, intelligent people, and in the realm of political debate, the best-spoken tend to be liberal. How is a conservative to counter this? How, when one is attempting to appeal to a group who is resisting new ideas (don't panic, it's the definition of conservatism), can one fend off those irritatingly persuasive ideas?

Rush Limbaugh uses repetition, mockery and volume. Bush and company use misinformation. They use misinformation to spin a glamour, because by laying their "facts" and "arguments" out, they are defining the universe in which discussion will take place. And the response from our intellectual liberals? They follow them around, refuting point after point, while Bush and co. continue to gleefully spin their webs of distraction and distortion.

One does not counter lies by refutation alone, because you will always be a step or two behind the committed liar. One counters lies by telling the truth - not by mere refutation, but by asserting reality as you see it.

Fred, being right is damn small consolation when you're on the fast-track to disaster. What this country needs is a new discourse. What Bush can always counter with is this quagmire in Iraq, and while your eyes are on the monte-dealer, his accomplice is lifting your wallet. If for no other reason, we should get out of that country because we will do nothing good (in a substantial way) in this one, as long as we're there.

And you'all in the press - the rational members of society (well, a few of you, anyway) with a megaphone big enough to be heard? Get away from the glamour and start describing the truth. We need momentum, and a speech like tonight's is a momentum killer.

Quit talking about it. His lies aren't worth the energy. Tell the truth.

This man should be impeached, and that is the truth. The only reason this is not being discussed in a serious manner, and building momentum, is because you'all are squandering the attentional resources of the people who might make it happen by allowing yourselves to be led around by the nose by someone with no commitment to accuracy or reality (though as you note, whether by design or defect, we'll never really know). So the befuddled populace, unsure of where the ground is, or the walls might be, content themselves with mocking Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, because that's easy, and comfortable (and requires damn little effort).

Enough already. You have work to do. Get on it.

Nice mail - but I'm still convinced that the only reason impeachment is not on the table is PRECISELY because no-one can decide if Bush is delusional (or just plain stupid) or criminal. If it were really clear as to which one he was, it would be pretty easy to impeach on the grounds of either gross incompetence or pure criminality...that's where the Republicans have been clever: a dopey head is a great shield behind which the real movers and shakers can hide while the public says 'Bush couldn't be that evil and calculating, could he ? He's too simple... he couldn't be doing this badly intentionally... he couldn't be that smart that his oil guys are reaping billions... could he ? Never. Well, we elected a dummy, silly us, but its not as bad as electing a really bad person is it....we'll do better next time... can't blame the poor sap for being dumb... or us, for that matter.."

That's why he won't be impeached...

Mind you, most people COULD believe that Cheney was criminal or evil enough to be doing it all deliberately ... he'd be quite prepared to destroy the country and the economy and the US' international standing merely so that his Halliburton, oil and armaments cronies can make billions. That's why he is the most low key but the most powerful VP perhaps ever. Bush is the dumby and Cheney and co are the puppet masters, and the American public is busy watching Bush's lips move and laughing at what the dumby is saying and meanwhile no-one is gonging the act...

They've succeed, folks. Just like they succeeded with the 'de-regulation' of the energy industry before. Sure, it cost them Enron but all the others are STILL bilking the US community for BILLIONS... and all of it was done in the interests of the 'consumer'... poor old Governor Dubya couldn't have been that calculating, could he... no, never...

GeneralDisarray, that is an absolutely outstanding post.

I salute you, sir. :-)

The USA cannot seem to get past the point that to criticise and argue counter to the offical line is not treason but is democracy.

On this side of the pond we have the old saying that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" (Samual Johnson 1775) and anybody who reaches for the flag to smother dissent is rightly treated with deep suspicion.

Unfortunately things appear to be different in the USA and the Bush administration brings eveything down to patriotism, but patriotism defined by Bush. (You are either with us or against us).

Rational arguments don't count for much whilst Bush trades on the natural tendency of the American people to trust their elected leader.

It also doesn't help that the American media are too respectful of their government. If you have Fox news peddling the same rubbish as the government whilst the "liberal" press handle Bush with kid gloves, you are going to have to be very media savy to get a different view. (Thank God for the BBC, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and even in their own grubby way, the British tabloids. Paxman would have torn Bush a new arsehole years ago).

We had our own problems with a leader whose attitude was "trust me I know best" . He's no longer our leader but, just as importantly, nobody now trusts the government.

There's ample grounds to impeach. It doesn't really matter whether he is deceptive or delusional, so long as they can build a case. There is, right now, ample information available in the public sphere to build a case.

But we won't, for two reasons. First, it takes momentum to accomplish something as dramatic as an impeachment, and this regime is truly gifted at stymieing momentum by controlling the attention of not only the population, but the legislature and the press. And they do it just like Bush did it last night - by putting so much blatant misinformation out into the air that political opponents become befuddled trying to figure out where to start first, abdicating their priorities in favor of some misguided triage in determining where to start correcting.

But the other reason is that there is an entire country full of Fred Kaplans who are too proud to acknowledge the degree to which they've been ensnared, and so are now adding their own substance to the smoke by not refusing to participate in the very kind of dialog he perpetuated with this piece last night. Frankly, I think the Democrats have become complicit, motivated by their desire to allow the Republicans to look bad. Notwithstanding the degree to which they're apparently ok with allowing tragic destruction to continue because it suits them, they're also overestimating the public's desire to look past this, just like they were motivated to look past the fiction of the Iraq 9/11 fiction, because nobody wants to admit they've been that stupid, or that ignorant.

No, at some point there will be a great public reconciliation, and people will say, "Grave mistakes were made" and bandy other little catchphrases like "terrible error in judgment" and "misguided attempt to", all of which will effectively let the administration off. They'll be seen as either delusional or stupid, because it makes us feel better than admitting they were neither.

Because no-one will want to admit that much of what has been accomplished has been by design (no, I'm not a 9/11 conspiracy fan, just a firm believer that these folks were great opportunists in the least defensible, most nefarious sense).

The thing that makes me sickest? That those son of a bitches have all but guaranteed an eventual Republican comeback, because progressive social philosophies are only really attractive in times of peace. Only when we're feeling threatened does the prospect of a politically and culturally regressive leader who calls himself "the decider" become attractive. National health reform, developing a rational energy policy, consumer protection (the list goes on) makes no sense when we're in a pitched battle. Well, they've done their best to ensure that whomever assumes the mantle of leadership will be facing pitched battles for the foreseeable future.

These people are neither delusional nor unintelligent, and I no longer believe that what they've accomplished could've resulted from an unconscious collusion. What's happened in this country has happened by design.

If we had any integrity or sense at all, or could get past our own desire to avoid the shameful feeling of stupidity accompanying the admission we've been duped (worse for certain elements of the Republican party, actually), we'd ride them out of town on a rail, and burn them in effigy for years to come, as we celebrated the moment when the country was finally restored to its senses.

distantvoice wrote: "...the public says 'Bush couldn't be that evil and calculating, could he ? He's too simple... he couldn't be doing this badly intentionally... he couldn't be that smart that his oil guys are reaping billions... could he ? Never. Well, we elected a dummy, silly us, but its not as bad as electing a really bad person is it....we'll do better next time... can't blame the poor sap for being dumb... or us, for that matter.."

You nailed it. If Cheney were president he'd be up for impeachment yesterday. But gosh, golly Bush really didn't mean to do harm, he's just kind of dope whose intentions are good.

Oops! I should have looked at this thread before posting mine. Sorry.

the idea that criticism isn't treason because everyone over here is too concerned with being able to avoid saying "I was wrong", as though inability to make that concession were not the far graver shame. Bush isn't trading on anyone's loyalty, he's relying on everyone's pride. This is a far safer route.

Yeah, thank God for the BBC. I listen to it on NPR, which ironically enough, is still funded by our government. You know how this has been undermined? The law of the land is that any nonprofit can purchase the radio band on which a public radio station is being broadcast - all they have to do is raise the money. Across the country, small public radio stations are being slowly bumped off the air by Christian talk radio stations.

There's a whole mess of problems like this (don't get me started) it'll take any rational leadership decades to sort out. Good thing we're all too distracted by a foreign catastrophe like Iraq, isn't it?

I think maybe I'll move to Canada. They seem pretty rational up there, and Canadian public radio is pretty good. So is public radio in the US, of course, but it's pretty clear to me it has no long-term future.

Deregulation of the energy industry, rules on media ownership, campaign finance rules, healthcare, military spending, balance of executive power, civil rights...

So long as we keep looking at that shiny thing in their hand over there, they are free to act with relative impunity over here.

Last time I looked, we don't have a parliamentary government. We elect a quasi-monarch for four years, and the fact that he has forfeited the confidence of Congress and the public has never been grounds to remove him.

Bush has been grossly incompetent, and he has bamboozled a public that was delighted to be bamboozled, but failure and political fraud have never been considered high crimes and misdemeanors. Even when the Radical Republicans tried to get rid of Andrew Johnson, they had to conjure up some kind of statutory violation. What are your grounds?

You could look here or here, if you're interested in how other people are making the case.

I have been particularly impressed by the relatively recent disclosures by CIA officers about WMD intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Remember, however, that an impeachment is not a final conclusion, but the beginning of a process that includes an investigation and presentation of evidence. Clinton was impeached for obstruction of justice. Surely the persistent deceptions of this president, used to justify acts that would otherwise violate domestic and international law, warrant initiation of impeachment proceedings. Impeachment is a corrective actions whose outcome depends on the evidence brought into the proceeding. What do you suppose we would learn were Rove and Cheney questioned under oath?

Why would you think there is not adequate grounds to initiate this process?

The Democrats, bless their craven little hearts, won't do it because they think the political costs are too high

woohoo for justice.

Obstruction of justice is a statutory crime. Violation of international law is a political question, not a legal one; the Supreme Court held in Goldwater v. Carter that the President has the authority to denounce or disregard treaties if he sees fit.