Bush & conservative columnists: "Stubbornly hopeful" or "OUT OF TOUCH"?

[gauguin57]

Steve Young, on Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-young/a-nanosecond-thats-laste_b_29852.html
calls our attention to this LA Times column, about a White House meeting with conservative columnists. This conservative columnist came out a bit shaken by what he'd heard!

Bush IS out of touch with reality! I'll bet he's talking to Abe Lincoln's portrait!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot20sep20,0,7630894.column?coll=la-opinion-center

Max Boot: The Stubbornly Hopeful President

In an Oval Office meeting, Bush shows admirable steadfastness -- and worrying obstinacy on troop levels in Iraq.

September 20, 2006

... If I were George W. Bush, I would have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. But if he is plagued by despair or doubt, he gave no sign of it in an Oval Office meeting last week with seven conservative columnists. ... He expressed faith that "over time, the inevitable truth will win" — the truth being that "freedom is universal." He professed no alarm about bad news from Iraq, saying that recent trends (such as a spike in killings) were just a "nanosecond" in historical terms.

... His steadfastness in the face of adversity is admirable. So is his contempt for the conventional wisdom of the day. But there is a certain fatalism that can come from focusing so much on the long term. (Bush spoke repeatedly of how the world would look 50 years from now.) There is a danger that you will not make the necessary short-term adjustments to achieve results here and now.

In the case of Iraq, in particular, even those of us who support the war effort question whether Bush has done enough to win. A strong case can be made that there have never been enough troops to enforce even a modicum of law and order. The U.S. contingent has surged recently to more than 140,000, and more troops have been moved to Baghdad, but only at the cost of denuding other areas of Iraq.

A Marine intelligence report leaked to the Washington Post last week suggested that at least another division is needed in restive Anbar province. ... I asked Bush about the Marine report. He dismissed it as just a "data point." ... I left the meeting unconvinced by Bush's arguments on troop numbers but impressed by his resiliency and imperturbability.

[Orrex]

1. How about "Stubbornly Out Of Touch" instead? (nt)

[Jacobin]

2. He's a faith based idiot

He thinks gawd is gonna pull his ass out of the hole he's dug.

He's wrong.

If there is a gawd, He's laughing his ass off at Commander Codpiece

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. How about "Incredibly Stupid"???...nt

[gratuitous]

4. Steadfastness in the face of adversity

Or a stubborn refusal to face reality. I notice that Boot (and a lot of other conservative writers who apparently got their marching orders during their private meeting with Bush) are all talking about the 50 year plan Bush is working on. Have any of them bothered to notice that 50 years from now George W. Bush won't be president, and that the idea that what Bush is doing today will control those future events is just ludicrous?

Bush is not the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike (insert your own joke here, please use one or more prominent conservative women by name), and we're not about to be defeated by global terrorism. He's a wasteful, incompetent, careless dilletante who will retreat back into his family money as soon as his train wreck of a presidency is over, and the only lasting effect his blight on our nation's history will leave will be the paying down of the massive debt he's run up with his horrible policies in all spheres, economic, social, foreign affairs, and governmental.

[niyad]

5. how about "dangerously delusional" or "completely insane"??

[yellowcanine]

6. According to the Snowman, 2500 dead U.S. troops is "just a number" also.

[JHB]

7. How about "a walking fog machine"?

When asked for a specific goal, he just points "through there", through cloud and haze. And when asked about specifics, he just lays it on thicker.

[MaineYooper]

8. As my button says: "like a rock, only dumber" nt

[Jack Rabbit]

9. Far be it for me to agree with Max Boot

Perhaps in a left handed (or is it right winged?) way he agrees with us: staying the course is nuts.

I would let out a loud howl that could be heard from here to Baghdad if Bush did it, but putting more troops in Iraq is a better option than what he is doing now.

Of course, the best option and the only palatable one is to leave Iraq to the Iraqis, just as we shold have left Vietnam to the Vietnamese a lot sooner than we did.

[kiki]

10. Pitiful, in a way...

You can almost hear the creaking sound as he desperately tries to crowbar the evidence presented by his own eyes and ears into his established worldview.