That Was W Then, This Is Now

Just came across this video again, which surfaced in 2004, of Bush from a 1994 gubernatorial debate with then Texas governor Ann Richards.

Is this the same person? In the 1994 debate Bush showed absolute coherence, as opposed to the slow-talking, often incoherent public speaker that we've come to know. Have we been observing a well-orchestrated public act these last few years, or have years of hard living and then cold turkey (or perhaps continued secret hard living) finally caught up with Bush... and getting worse every day? D'ya think that maybe the future of our country is at stake?

Time magazine tells us:

A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news--or tell him when he's wrong. Bush has never been adroit about this. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. "The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me," the aide recalled about a session during the first term. "Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, 'All right. I understand. Good job.' He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom."

Full story...

Let's take another look at "Bush On the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President" (2004), in which psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank uses the president’s public pronouncements and behavior, along with biographical data, to craft a comprehensive psychological profile of the president.

From an article by Dr. Frank, introducing his analysis:

If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning, and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I would grow more concerned. If he presented an inflexible worldview characterized by an oversimplified distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, allies and enemies, I would question his ability to grasp reality. And if his actions revealed an unacknowledged – even sadistic – indifference to human suffering, wrapped in pious claims of compassion, I would worry about the safety of the people whose lives he touched.

For the last three years, I have observed with increasing alarm the inconsistencies and denials of such an individual. But he is not one of my patients. He is our President.

Full article...

From Wikipedia. (Does this describe anybody that you know?):

Dry drunk is a slang term used by members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer drinking (i.e. dry), but whose thinking is still negatively affected by the thought patterns of addiction, so that they are not considered truly sober. Thus a distinction is made between being dry and being sober. The behavior patterns of dry drunks are characterized by rigidity of thinking and going to extremes of characterization of people and situations as e.g. good and evil. Subtle distinctions are difficult for the dry drunk to understand.

But still I have to ask "Who stole the strawberries?"