Bush's Potemkin World [View All]

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“Bush's Potemkin World” By Tom Engelhardt
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/02/potemkin.html

Once in an interview on 'Fresh Air' with Terry Gross, the Rev. Jim Wallis recounted a conversation with President Bush in which Bush asked him to explain the thoughts of poor people.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4460055 (at 21:20 of the interview)

"I've never been around poor people, I don't know how they think. I've never lived in a poor community." "...I don't get it, How do I get it?"
Bush then asked Rev. Wallis to explain the lives and thinking of poor people.

That conversation produced neither change of policy nor profound new understanding.

The same might be said of this past week’s “listening tour” in which the President admitted in an offhanded way that he didn’t understand Europe. He was here to listen, he said. The result? Emptied cities, life in the bubble, no contact with a world he admittedly misunderstands: a larger Potemkin Villiage.

“So yes, last week European leaders stepped inside the presidential bubble, smiled, supped, shook hands, and said the right things to signal amity-restored; but they also understood that the very presence of the President in Europe and his visible unpopularity outside that bubble were indications of just how humbled the American "hyperpower" had been. And then they went their own ways. “