Jerk

What none of us are saying we aren't, but then again, we're not freakin' elected officials.

Evidence that President George W Bush may be a jerk is plentiful. An incompetent former executive whose employment history has rested entirely on nepotism, he runs the White House in the manner of a CEO who is less concerned with making his business successful than he is showing everyone who's the boss. According to Canadian journalist (and former Bush speechwriter) David Frum's book The Right Man, Bush is "a man of fierce anger" who enjoyed showing off his absolute power over his underlings: "He would direct the staff like an orchestra conductor: He would press his hands palms down to direct them to sit and then, when they had taken their seats, raise his hands palms up to order them to rise again. Only then would they get the final palms-down."

Such behavior, of course, is typical for a CEO, but despite the claims of the-business-of-America-is-business Republicans since the days of Calvin Coolidge, America cannot be run like a business so long as it is a democracy. Business become weighted down under the burden of giving every employee an equal voice; and, conversely, a democracy which gives itself over to a chief executive who demands obeisance, deference, and the reception of his decisions as unquestionable gospel will not long remain a democracy.

Further evidence that the president has jerklike tendencies is found in his attitude towards the press. While a case can be made against the mainstream media, it involves their shameless abandonment of their required role as inquisitors of power and informers of the public in favor of inside-baseball favoritism. However, the president, along with many of his supporters, seems to think that the problem with the press is that they are a bunch of holier-than-thou know-it-alls who dare to question their betters. From his chuckling characterization of New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a "major league asshole" (which, unsurprisingly, he tried to blame on the press itself, offering the non-apologetic statement that "I regret that a private comment I made to the vice-presidential candidate made it into the public airwaves") to the utter contempt he showed when NBC reporter got above his station and asked a question of Jacques Chirac in French (said Bush with a chilly sneer, "The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental"), Bush's hatred of the press is far beyond that of [Richard M. Nixon], who merely resented them as a manifestation of the Eastern establishment; the impatience he displays at his infrequent press conferences is that of a boss who cannot wait to get away from his underlings so they'll stop asking him stupid questions about how the company is doing. Bush, who went so far during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq as to hold a press conference in which he refused to answer reporter's questions from the floor, preferring to read from a pre-selected list of reporters who had submitted their queries ahead of time (even Bush referred to it as "scripted"), has a habit of exiling reporters who ask him questions he is not comfortable with hearing; Dana Milbank, Mike Allen and even the venerable Helen Thomas have been thus blackballed. His behavior towards the press is less that of the earthy man-of-the-people he is often painted as than it is the sort of cult-of-personality dictator America so loathed in the person of Saddam Hussein.

Similarly, his alleged resemblance to a cowboy, fighting for decency and justice with a rough hand in an uncertain time, is belied by his bullying, petty frat-boy behavior. Time magazine reported that in early 2002, Bush stopped by Condoleezza Rice's office and told visiting senators "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out." As James Wolcott has noted, this "isn't how Zane Grey heroes talk. It's how big shots boast." Or jerks.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/bushcuss.asp

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/05/29/bush-notebook.htm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#Attributed