Self-Portrait in a Fun House Mirror

The psychopathology of George W.
Bush should disturb and everyday trouble you;
    Believe him a leader a while,
    Credit the office and his guile,
But believe it now and still and...gu'bble^* you. [* gullible]

The Baker-Hamilton Iraq study group found that the lead Iraqi Army units

lack leadership...lack equipment...[and] lack logistics and support...Soldiers are given leave liberally and face no penalties for absence without leave...They lack the ability to sustain their operations, the capability to transport supplies and troops, and the capacity to provide their own indirect fire support, close-air support, technical intelligence, and medical evacuation.

"Other than that," writes Bob Herbert in today's New York Times, "they're fine."

What is needed now are leaders with the courage to insist, perhaps at the risk of their reputations and careers, that it is wrong to continue sending fresh bodies after those already lost, to continue asking young, healthy American troops to head into the combat zone, perhaps for their third or fourth tour, to fight in a way the public no longer supports. ["The Time Is Now"]

Why, then, can't George W. Bush so insist?

In lieu of our having a Sigmund Freud to answer that by writing up a psychoanalytic report on Bush, I'll hazard a few guesses myself as to Bush's psychology.

First, remember, he's obviously a "true believer." He even seems to relish being "faith-based" rather than "reality-based." He has a strong drive to continue believing in things purely on faith that they are so, despite any contrary "fact-based" evidence—like the people Leon Festinger wrote about in the fifties, who, after the failure of their leader's prediction that the world was coming to an end, redoubled their belief that it would...but not just yet. Bush's own true belief is manifested preeminently in his persistent predictions of our future victory in Iraq. That is, when something you really, really believe seems not to be so, believe it all the harder. ("Absolutely, we're winning," Bush recently said about Iraq.)

Second, Bush seems to have a compulsion to lie to himself (which, of course, comes in very handy in lying to everyone else). For example, according to Paul Krugman in today's New York Times (reporting what he'd read in U.S. News & World Report),

President Bush has told aides that he won't respond in detail to the Iraq Study Group's report because he doesn't want to "outsource" the role of commander in chief.

That's pretty ironic. You see, outsourcing of the government's responsibilities—not to panels of supposed wise men, but to private companies with the right connections—has been one of the hallmarks of his administration. And privatization through outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts. ["Outsourcer in Chief"]

This example is about as good as it gets for illustrating either Bush's gargantuan ability to fool himself or the level of his conscious duplicity. But the latter alternative isn't credible because, if he were that conscious and intelligent, he'd have to realize that his deceit is no longer working and should be abandoned. It is more reasonable to conclude that he just doesn't know how far out in la-la land he is.

Third, his self-image seems to be grandiose on a historic scale, ranking right up there with the Roman emperor Caligula, who nominated a horse for the Senate. Bush has pronounced himself "the Decider." Walter Kerr said of someone, "He had delusions of adequacy." Bush's delusions go way past adequacy. How many times has he said "I understand" this, that, and the other thing? He has called himself "the War President," "the Commander in Chief," "the Education President." He hailed himself the glorious "Mission Accomplisher," landing on an aircraft carrier in a scenario worthy of a Leni Riefenstahl extravaganza. And who else could give a trusted adviser the nickname "Turd Blossom"? Bush even seems to fancy himself some sort of reincarnation of Harry S. Truman, believing that history will ultimately prove him right about Iraq. And wasn't Truman the president who had the sign on his desk, "The buck stops here"? As already mentioned, Bush is "the Decider." And, oh yes, he talks to God.

The self-image thing may be the kicker. I suspect that Bush's personality, for all his look of affable self-assurance in public, is quite fragile. After all, he's the perennial C student, the failed baseball club owner and oilman, the son less expected by his parents (than Jeb, "the smart one") to amount to anything. To paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about Clement Attlee, Bush is an immodest little person, with much to be modest about. At his core he may be perilously vulnerable, his self-portrait a desperate device constructed of exaggeration upon exaggeration to fortify and protect him—an instance of the classic Freudian "mechanism of ego defense," the reaction formation: adopting an untrue, opposite belief to avoid the anxiety of seeing the true one.

The result is that Bush uses his true belief and his self-deceit as indispensable tools for maintaining his fictional self-portrait.

If he starts to crack, we may be in for a spectacle not seen since the year 41 in Rome (or at least since Masterpiece Theater produced a dramatization of Robert Graves's classic novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which featured John Hurt's inspired performance as the title character's nephew.