Bloodless Coup

The President Who Wants to Spread Democracy Around the World, but Can't Distinguish It from Dictatorship

So a number of blogs have posted about the president's June 24 interview with an Irish journalist. All the postings I have seen so far have rightly criticized the response from the White House to this interview, particularly given the fact that the White House had the questions in advance. That practice is completely ridiculous -- I mean must we throw journalistic standards completely out the window and insist on rules that'll allow Washington to be run (probably into the ground) by 3rd graders? And the president channeling Ross Perot (I gave up trying to count the number of times he said "let me finish" -- it was lots and lots) was just embarrassing. Apparently the man's fear of follow-up questions knows no bounds. It seems Team Bush will not be satsified until they ban all media that doesn't approach their officials on bended knee (and feel free to read as much as you like into "on bended knee").

Now all that is bad enough, and shows yet again that this administration is wildly insulated and arrogant, and has little interest in seriously communicating with the people at large. But just as bad, maybe even worse, are the substantive beliefs about the nature of the world that our would-be emperor has come to believe while he's cloistered away with his minions and hagiographers. In the interview he calls Pakistan a democracy. HUH?!?!?!?!? Referring to Afghanistan as an emerging democracy, well, that won't cause me to choke. It's looking at the world through rose-colored glasses that are 80-feet thick, but I can see him saying it. But by what bizarro-world rules of government is Pakistan a democracy? As ever, the man is completely out of touch, insulated and incurious. And apparently he now wants the world to emulate a military dictatorship. But I suppose given Gitmo, Ashcroft, Abu Ghraib and the PATRIOT Act that really shouldn't come as a surprise.