IT IS THE DADDY PARTY:

Daddy Darkest: George W. Bush thinks of Americans as little kids. No wonder we’ve grown so dysfunctional. (Charles P. Pierce, 09.09.04, American Prospect)

t’s not easy for me to tell you that, at a meeting of the Maine and Massachusetts delegations during the Republican National Convention last week, my old friend Andy Card said the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard from a representative of an elected government -- even a dubiously elected government like the current one.

Card is now the White House chief-of-staff, and it was he who had to interrupt the ensemble reading of The Pet Goat in order to tell George W. Bush that someone had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center, thus starting the clock on the now-famous Seven-Minute Glaze. Card was talking to the two delegations about that moment, clinging to the GOP talking points like a nun to her beads. The president “didn’t introduce fear into any of those young children or through the national media, to the American people,” explained Card. Then, he attempted to explain how the president feels about the 200 million-odd souls who are, after all, his employers:

“It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child. I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children.”

Let us leave aside any discussion prompted by Card’s remarks that might uncomfortably contain the word “Fatherland.” Let us take him at his word -- namely, that the president of the United States looks at the world’s longest-standing free democratic republic and sees . . .

A middle-schooler.

Man, these folks scare easy--no wonder they want to hide under the bed from something really terrifying, like Islamicism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 9, 2004 5:18 PM