Thanks to keifel for this link, but I really want to add my voice. Please read this article by Ron Suskind. (You’ll need to log in or register with NYTimes.com)
In it he picks apart George Bush’s career, and it is frightening beyond belief!
The nation’s founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties of Europe’s state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush — both captive and creator of this moment — has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He has created the faith-based presidency.
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. When I quoted O’Neill saying that Bush was like ”a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush’s faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue — public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House. After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in a letter that the president and those around him would not be cooperating with this article in any way.
It’s an 11-page article, but it’s a fascinating read.
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