Bush in a Bunker

By Scott Horton

In his December 4, 2006 interview with Fox News’s Brit Hume, Bush described a little get-together with some of his big-monied friends from Texas:

I had a bunch of our buddies from Texas up here this weekend and they're kind of—they look at you and go, man, how come you're still standing. It's not so much the presidency on the shoals because of difficult decision I made, it's more the weightiness of this thing must be impossible for anybody to bear. And I tell them it's just not the case, that I am inspired by doing this job. I believe strongly in the decisions I have made. I firmly believe that we are responding to this initial challenge of the 21st century in proper fashion.

Now, some of the participants at that gathering have furnished a quite different account of the same gathering. It appears in the Nelson Report, a well-regarded sheet produced by some of the ultimate Washington insiders. Sean-Paul Kelley reports on it in the Huffington Post:

Sometimes insider gossip seems to confirm what all us outsiders think we're seeing, so, for what it's worth . . . we're hearing that some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK . . . etc., etc.

This is called a "bunker mentality" and it's not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Last night, Bush delivered a peevish veto message with respect to the Iraq bill. He had a petulant, whiny tone that perfectly matched the description from the Nelson Report. We’re down to Bush’s final year. This is going to be ugly.