"This is a Bad Man"

Remember the last Presidential Debate when John Kerry used the "L" word to describe the Cheney's gay daughter Mary? Oh my God no, she's not liberal, I meant the other "L" word. Well, remember how "angry" Lynne Cheney was because John Kerry didn't call her - what, a "fruit", "queer", a "carpet muncher"? I believe he said she was normal, healthy, one of God's children and loved by her family (well, as much as evil conservadroids can love anyone). Remember how angry Lynne Cheney was that someone would "use" their daughter like that? I mean how dare he say nice things about her? Never mind the fact that his passionate defense of Mary Cheney was made directly after Bush admitted to not knowing if homosexuality was a disease. But the way Lynne Cheney remembered it, you'd of thought he had burned their house to the ground. You could see the smoke coming out her when she said of John Kerry, "This is a bad man."

Now let's compare this to Cindy Sheehan's observation about George Bush. The following are her remembrances of their first (and I guarantee, only) encounter.

Sheehan met Bush at Fort Lewis, Wash. Her son, Army Spc. Casey A. Sheehan, had been killed in Sadr City in early April 2004, just a few months earlier. She described Bush as insincere and ill-prepared. She said he kept referring to her as "Mom" because he did not remember her name. "He came in inappropriately jovial, like we should be honored that we should be there. He said, 'And who am I honoring today?'"

If the president tried to disarm an obviously prickly Sheehan, he failed. "He has no compassion," she said. "Being with him is like being with a shell. He does not have any compassion. He did not want to look at the pictures we brought of Casey." Sheehan said Bush kept changing the subject.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was with the president that day. He also visited with Sheehan and her family. McCain supports the war. In comparison to Bush, Sheehan said McCain sparkled. "He wanted to hear about Casey and he wanted our story."

I don't think you have to have survived being a POW for six years to have compassion. I don't even think you have to be compassionate to show respect for the mother's of fallen soldiers. I think you have to be truly narcissistic and contemptuous to behave the way Bush did and still does.

He hasn't changed. Bush's speech about the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi has made it clear that even beyond the fact that he needs to fire his speech writers - it is simply not in the nature of this man to feel or convey empathy for people in desperate need of it. Even Ronald Reagan, whose policies I despised, was able to empathize with people and convey a grandfatherly sense of "everything will be all right" when the moment called for such sentiment.

George Bush lacks this ability. He has always come across as the cocky, arrogant, spoiled rich kid. His words say one thing but his facade always conveys a, "ha-ha-I'm-getting-away-with-it" quality that is hard for anyone who is actually listening to get past. He is a mean, self-centered sonofabitch (sorry Barb) and that is such a part of who he is that all the spinners and strategists cannot hide it. All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men cannot put back together again what never existed in the first place. Bush (read: Rove) has been able to pull a lot of things over on a lot of people but he's never been able to fake empathy very well. For someone who was determined to be a "wartime President" it is a quality, the lack of which will be the undoing of his ham-fisted rule. We can spend millions of words and hundreds of hours trying to psychologize this shortcoming but I think Lynne Cheney summed it up perfectly when she said, "This is a bad man."