Oedipus Wrecks: the psychology behind the throne

Psychoanalysts have had a field day in recent years. They’ve made a cottage industry of long-distance exploration of George W.’s mind, trying to figure out why the president does the things he does. Some say it’s a sort of Oedipal thing — a case of the son resenting Daddy. Competing with him, trying to prove he’s a better king than Daddy was.
No one knows what drives this president to reject all opinions but his own, to summarily dismiss the ISG Report when his father’s men comprised half of the group evaluating what went wrong in Iraq and how to correct it. But reject them he did, along with every suggestion made by long-time policy people in his own party.
He’s like an overgrown kid playing follow-the-leader. He only allows his very best friends to play with him and he changes the rules of the game whenever he likes. It’s his game, he’s the “Commander Guy” and he’ll only play with other kids who tell him he’s always right. It makes for a very limited childhood and reinforces behaving badly. A “You can’t tell me what to do — I’m the boss of you!” philosophy.
Dubyah won’t listen to military brass who disagree with him — Eric Shinseki, Colin Powell. He jettisons them, installs others who’ll keep their mouths shut and play.
But he’s blindly loyal to playmates he likes best. No matter what they do. Rumsfeld was a disaster, even Republicans said so, but W. held on until he lost control of Congress in November and had no choice but to make a change. Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq War who testified before Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would make war a cheap venture for the U.S., was shuffled by the prez to the World Bank. So the guy who was totally wrong about the finances, the cost of the war, was given a job managing money for the world’s poorest people. Like they didn’t have it tough enough already. Now Wolfie’s in trouble for setting up his girlfriend in a cushy government job. Bush sees no fault in such abuse of influence. Wolfowitz should keep his job.
Alberto Gonzales corrupts the DOJ and lies to Congress about what he did, what he knew. He gets caught lying, swears he didn’t lie — he only “misspoke.” In his most recent testimony on Capitol Hill Gonzales said some variant of “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” over 70 times. Conservative legislators were incensed over an Attorney General’s best defense being “I don’t know, I don’t recall. But whatever it was I didn’t know a thing about and whatever I forgot went on, even though I still don’t know and can’t remember — uh — I know that everything I don’t know and can’t remember was handled properly...”
They call for his resignation. Bush’s response? That Gonzales’s testimony only strengthened his confidence in the Attorney General.
Oedipus Wrecks: One colossal adolescent blunder after another. Conservative or liberal, come 2008 we need a grown-up in the Oval Office.

Linda Hansen has been a published working writer and poet for over twenty years. She has a love/hate relationship with politics.