We also don't want to see the man with his finger on the button as someone who mentally shouldn't have such power. Yet, as tragic and sad as it is, the performance on April 12th, 2004, by George Bush, our President, displayed for all who are willing to see that he is not competent mentally.
He, of course, may not truly be to blame, for most of those who have such subtle mental deficiencies are often not aware of their problem. But those around him, who live in denial of his fracturing mental processes, cannot be relieved of their responsibility. Rove and company have, for reasons unfathomable, placed in the White House a man not only not equal to the task but quite dangerous. Perhaps Rove and Cheney think they can control him, and maybe they can. But putting President Bush there, and creating this situation, is a crime against humanity.
It will not be possible to detail what can be observed in looking at this mentally deficient performance, but I can endeavor to give some hints and general statements, so that someone with the stomach for it (it was really painful to watch) can find a tape and then look themselves and see the signs.
Much can be learned even by listening to a prepared and read speech, which is the way President Bush began his news conference. There is a well understood mental health idea called "affect", which is what we experience of the emotions being expressed in tone of voice and facial gesture. There can be a disconnect between the affect and the content of the words, so that one might write in nursing notes on a mental health ward, that someone's affect was inappropriate. Someone can reveal that they are emotionally disconnected by looking to see whether the emotional affect and the thought content in the speaking are consistence.
For example, someone can smile while talking about tragic events in their lives, and this would suggest such a disconnect. In the case of President Bush, there was what I would all a "null" affect during his reading of his prepared text. He wasn't emotionally connected at all to what he read. It could have been the most boring material, and even a normal person would have had some kind of emotional response. Here was being read matters vital to the Nation and to the whole World, and President Bush was emotionally dead in the reading of this text. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I think they have him on some kind of drug cocktail. This is one obvious explanation for his lack of affect. The question then becomes: Why is he being medicated?
When we think and then speak, there is a certain kind of relationship between thinking and speaking such that the mental acts become visible in a kind of indirect way. For example, the ability to concentrate and follow a train of thought is often reflected in how the sentences formed by the speaking move from phrase to phase, each phrase representing a captured thought content. A series of broken phrases, often with no relationship (gaps in logical coherence) suggests an inability to think clearly.
During the question and answer section of the press conference, President Bush continuously showed an inability to maintain a connected train of thought. This condition increased whenever he was asked a question that in a normal person would have produced an emotional response (such as don't you think you failed or don't you think you owe the American People an apology). So we could observe his affect (moderated by drugs?) showing no emotions to an obviously emotion producing question, while the thought stream as expressed in speech became more incoherent.
Pauses often reveal that mentally a stop occurred in the thinking, as the train of thought may have been lost and then needed to be grasped once more. Word errors can occur in the sense of a failed usage, or perhaps not really fitting into the train of thought. These stops and word errors increased when emotional questions were asked.
We know that politicians often slide by directly answering questions, and that before such a performance as this, the staff has the politician engage in practice, and trains the politician to refer to so-called "talking points", that is set and planned ideas that can be given as a response to an anticipated question, or just shoved in helter skelter, where the speaker can think of nothing else to say. We are used to such types of performances, for we expect the politician to not have much interest in telling us the truth. All the same, there is a skill in this kind of speaking, which only requires a certain quality of memory and some ability to mouth previously developed trains of thought. President Bush did this some of the time, but again, when the question evoked what in a normal person would have been emotion, he floundered all over the place.
One question he was asked was one of those kind of new-agey curve balls: "If you learned anything since 9/11, what did you learn?". Here again was a set of responses lacking either any coherence, or even a sense of humor. Phrases started and stopped. There was almost no connection from one sentence to the next. I had the impression that if this had been a staff meeting, and the President hadn't been on drugs, he would have been screaming his head off in anger. The repressed emotion completely overwhelmed the ability to think and speak at the same time.
Now in a normal person, there is a certain ability to reflect on life, to look back and learn lessons. As we get older, we grow better at this (sometimes), and certainly this ability to reflect is a human quality we absolutely must have in any high official. Clearly President Bush is unfamiliar with this spiritually mature inner process. He most reminded me of what in Alcoholics Anonymous is called a "dry drunk". All the alcoholic behaviors are still there, even though there is no drinking. In President Bush's case, we have denial (I'm not at fault) and blame (the other guy did it, not me) - typical alcoholic behaviors. The anger that drunks (dry or wet) display when confronted with questions that put them on the spot, being repressed by the drug cocktail (I assume), only showed in the President's incoherence in the stream of speech.
We really have several questions: How mentally incompetent is the President? Why is he being drugged? If he isn't being drugged, then just how bad is it that he has no affect and can't express a normal emotional response? Is he a dry drunk? What is going on behind closed doors in the White House that we are going to find out about too late to do anything?
I really wish I had answers to these questions.
It gets worse by the way, and while I am on this point I should take it further.
First, the overwhelming of the ability of maintaining coherent thought when confronted by emotion is the last quality we want in a President. The repression of this by damping down the emotions (and affect) doesn't solve the problem, it only hides it. A President during a crisis needs to be able to think coherently and make decisions, in spite of high levels of emotion. For those who remember, we just have to remind ourselves of President Bush in the grade school class room, having aides come in and tell him we were under attack with planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and the President went right on reading the story to the children. Again, evidence of the either the repression of normal human emotional responses by excessive drug use, or worse - if drugs is not the cause, a complete lack of such responses evidencing a socio-pathic personality disorder.
There is a second phenomena here, which is very subtle in a way, but also needs to be noted. Certain kinds of ideas, when thought, produce emotional responses. They engender in us passion for the Ideal. The highest Ideals, such as freedom, love, justice, when inwardly thought and felt, often lead to great passion, witness our history and the passionate oratory of our Founders. There are also lesser ideas, about which we can feel an emotion.
President Bush did get worked up (enthusiastic) a couple of times. This can and was a bit faked, but even in faking it, the President had to care about faking it. What did he care about enough to fake enthusiasm?
Well, he fell into his usual sports metaphors, about winning, and staying the course. He maybe thought that being presidential was about being a good coach, and that that is what the American People needed - a good coach. Unfortunately, what this really shows is how little of the Ideal, of the true nature of our Nation and form of Government, that he appreciates or understands. Perhaps this lack of appreciation comes from his life of privilege, and his continued adolescence (he still hasn't grown up), but the fact remains that the fundamental nature of our People and our Nation, that lives in our History, has no real meaning for him. If he does have an emotional investment to something, it is in not getting caught. He'd like to slide through his Presidency the same way he has slid through life - as painlessly and as effortlessly as possible.
Isn't it wonderful. The Republicans put this kid in highest office, who doesn't really care about anything but himself (typical dry drunk behavior), and who also seems to be slowly unraveling emotionally, otherwise why the drugs (unless, of course, he's a socio-path) and why the minder (Cheney) when he goes before the 9/11 commission?
Of course, there is the question that lurks, if one believes that President Bush is receiving some kind of drug cocktail, as to whether or not included in this mildly euphoric substance is something that makes him more amenable to suggestion. Maybe this is the string that Rove and Cheney pull. Maybe they have taken their dry drunk, turned him into a addict and given him something to want more than he wants to be a boss. Imagine it being said to him, that if he just gets through this press conference, or signs that bill, or makes a certain statement to the press, that he is going to get a nice reward. Makes me sick to think this way, but I believe we need to observe very carefully this whole process, and not be surprised when later much that we now suspect turns out to be true.
Now don't get me started on Kerry, at least not today.
