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Kucinich Raises Important Question About Bush's Mental Health
by Bill Hare | Nov 3 2007 - 8:15am |
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/10801Dennis Kucinich has raised a legitimate question about George W. Bush that has been all too tragically swept under the rug for too long – the state of the White House resident’s mental health.
One of the most percipient books written during the 2004 presidential cycle was “Bush on the Couch” by eminent Georgetown University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank. Dr. Frank issued a stern warning that, given numerous danger signs evident from Bush’s behavior during his first term in office, a second term would constitute a ticking time bomb.
The message Dr. Frank delivered was that Bush needed immediate treatment and, in the manner of individuals with mental problems, his difficulties would only worsen with time. He noted the grave consequences that could ensue for someone in Bush’s position to continue serving in office considering the evidence of such danger signals.
An Associated Press article of October 31 quoted Kucinich from an interview with the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer stating, “I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his (Bush’s) mental health.” He stated further that Bush “does not seem to understand that his words have real impact.”
Kucinich placed uppermost in his concern the potential that someone plagued by mental instability could use the powerful position of the presidency to launch a war that might not otherwise occur. He stated the danger of a chief executive “who’s wanton in his expression of violence.”
The Ohio congressman voiced particular concern about Bush’s comment at a news conference earlier this month voicing the specter of a nuclear Iran precipitating World War III. Bush then said, “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Kucinich noted, “There’s a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there’s something wrong with him, then there’s something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very serious question.”
It is indeed a serious question, one that is underscored by reviewing Bush’s life, conduct, and public utterances. Here was someone who in his youth engaged in the hobby of blowing up frogs with firecrackers for his personal amusement. Years later, as the first “shock and awe” bombardment hit Baghdad, he was seen and heard on White House video cameras thrusting his right fist into the air and declaring, “Feels good!”
After taking a hawkish verbal stance on the Vietnam War, which he still stubbornly insists America could have won by staying the course, Bush was engineered into a coveted Texas Air National Guard slot through the effort of his father working with then Texas political dealmaker Ben Barnes.
When it was time for him to fly solo over the city of Houston, Bush disappeared, turning up later in Alabama. Without his solid political connections based on his influential father he could well have been tried for going AWOL, or in Army parlance off limits without leave.
By Bush’s own admission he drank heavily until the age of 40. There were also accounts of drug consumption, particularly on wild excursions from his Texas home to Mexico.
The question has since arisen that Bush has not, as he has assured, quit drinking altogether. How reliable is Bush’s word given his public record for veracity? Also, even if he is telling the truth, how much cumulative damage did his mind as well as body sustain from that level of intoxication as well as perhaps drugs during such a lengthy period of his life?
Bush’s continuing insistence that the Vietnam War was eminently winnable despite the solid historical verdict to the contrary squares with his passion for cognitive dissonance, or disassociating himself from reality.
When it was pointed out to him that his own father, George H. W. Bush, declined to enter Baghdad and pursue Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War due to the projected consequences of a protracted civil war resulting, he blithely told interviewer Bob Woodward that he follows his “other father,” meaning God.
Bush’s public speeches and press conference appearances project someone wearing blinders to isolate himself from the cold, harsh reality of a rule of White House neoconservative mismanagement. His adamant posture is frequently showcased by pompous declarations of grand successes in Iraq despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Bush pushes fantasy buttons to the ultimate to create his own world of reality. Take, for instance, his insistence when faced with declarations from historians that, given his record for massive blunders both foreign and domestic, Bush is destined to become the worst president in U.S. history.
He has declared that after reading numerous books on the nation’s first president, George Washington, a specious claim in itself, that history may not render a verdict on him for two centuries since historians have not yet made up their mind about the courageous general who led his fledgling nation in the Revolutionary War.
In reality the verdict of history concerning Washington has been positive and consistent ever since such records have been compiled. The only major debate concerning Washington on the part of numerous historians is whether he ranks a notch higher or lower than the revered Abraham Lincoln. Again, Bush has constructed a self-serving truth of his own to shield himself from brutal reality.
Bush’s instability is also evident in his alarming insistence that Americans are necessarily either with or against him. There is no middle ground and he perpetually uses 9/11 and its aftermath to buttress his assertion. Such a statement smacks of alarming megalomania evocative of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin declaring themselves to be the sole legitimate voices for Germany and Russia respectively.
With Bush we have on the one hand the aforementioned air of bravado and unquestioned self-righteousness extending to megalomania. It is contrasted with another dangerous trait that has been evidenced by Dr. Frank and others, that of what has been called “the deer in the headlights” syndrome.
There have been occasions when the penetrating eye of a television camera has shown Bush with an expression of a frightened youngster seeking to escape from an impenetrable fortress. This happened, tellingly enough, on one occasion just after the U.S. Supreme Court one vote majority declared him to be America’s chief executive in waiting.
The instability of Bush needs to be explored alongside a pattern of conduct that sees him surround himself only with those he is confident see things his way. This pattern of isolation appears to be an inevitable result of a tormented individual leading a cause, neoconservatism, that he does not understand.
Beneath the air of bluff and bravado Bush is a frightened man who knows his own inadequacies, ultimately frightened of the penetration of reality, a harsh reality that holds grave consequences for him and the legacy he cannot ultimately escape.
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