It comes as no surprise to learn that George Bush talks only to those who agree with him. He has so fully assumed the mantle of the infallible, impeccable ruler that he may soon ask the cardinals to elect him pope when the incumbent of the throne of Peter passes on to his reward. Servant of the servants of God. Pontifex Maximus. He who is to be obeyed.
In the Roman republic, the Pontifex Maximus was the chief priest of the Roman religion, but he also had political authority. With the coming of the empire, Julius Caesar and his successors appropriated the title, along with its connotation of dual sovereignty, and popes later did the same. Bush chooses his models with surprising appropriateness for a person who claims not to study history, though Caligula may be a better parallel than Julius.
Ron Suskind's brilliant article in today's New York Times Magazine anatomizes the Bush administration by analyzing Bush's psyche. Suskind, who earlier this year wrote the book The Price of Loyalty, has excellent contacts among those who were once in Bush's secretive, closed circle, like Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Faith-based Office Director John D'Iulio. And what Suskind has discovered is deeply disturbing. Bush thinks that God speaks through him, so in his Manichean universe everything is absolute, either good or evil, and anyone who questions his thinking or his actions (like O'Neill) is by definition evil.
Suskind quotes ex-Reagan official Bruce Bartlett:
Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.… This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them.…
This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts. He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith.
Bush's simplistic rigidity is not limited to religious ideas. His understanding of Adam Smith is as superficial as his understanding of the Bible, but once he has made up his mind he is as intolerant of dissent in fiscal policy or foreign policy as in abortion policy or gay-marriage policy. He will not listen to a different opinion, or to an analysis of potential drawbacks, or to facts. Suskind writes:
That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: "In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!"
It's faith Bush relies on, but faith in the most superficial sense: belief unsupported by facts. That may not be problematic in a purely religious context, but when applied to the decisions a president must make every day, it is disastrous, as we can clearly see in Iraq, in the environment, in the deficit, in the disappearing jobs. Suskind quotes one Republican operative dismissing Bush's opponents as "the reality-based community." Did anyone see the Enlightenment pass this way?
Juan Cole compares Bush, in his fact-free certainty, to Mao Zedong. Matt Yglesias compares him to Vladimir Putin. Brad DeLong to a weak Ottoman sultan. And Michael Bérubé to a Messianic madman in a Dark City-like science-fiction thriller.
All resonant parallels. But it's the religion we have to come back to, that old-time American religion. Mark Schmitt nails the source:
[Bush's] solution for the crisis he's created is a turn to an ever more absolutist religious certainty. Religious faith is not a constant anchor in his life, as it was for Jimmy Carter and to a lesser degree Clinton and I think also, based on his fascinating answer the other night, Kerry. Rather, it is a quick fix for an untenable situation, with one piece of religion -- Calvinist certainty -- pulled out of the whole and used to deal with a secular problem.
What do you get when you cross John Calvin with Caligula? George Bush, Pontifex Maximus, stalwart pontiff of the unreality-based community.
