David Brooks' field trip to the White House

by Glenn Greenwald
from Salon.com

As George Bush has become more and more isolated, and as his presidency has collapsed around him, he has increasingly arranged White House events where like-minded admirers come and gather around him and genuflect to his greatness. As The Washington Post's Peter Baker recently reported, these events are attended exclusively by small groups of right-wing pundits, "journalists" and neoconservative theorists and activists who sit around the President and both soak in and bolster the Rightness of his choices.

NYT columnist David Brooks was fortunate enough to have been invited to the most recent such gathering -- also attended by Event Regulars Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review -- and Brooks came away so impressed that he wrote a homage to Bush -- headlined "Heroes and History" -- that would even make Ultimate Bush worshipper John Hinderaker blush:

I left the 110-minute session thinking that far from being worn down by the past few years, Bush seems empowered. His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency.

All this will be taken as evidence by many that Bush is delusional. He's living in a cocoon. He doesn't see or can't face how badly the war is going and how awfully he has performed.

But Bush is not blind to the realities in Iraq. After all, he lives through the events we're not supposed to report on: the trips to Walter Reed, the hours and hours spent weeping with or being rebuffed by the families of the dead. . . .

Many will doubt this, but Bush is a smart and compelling presence in person, and only the whispering voice of Leo Tolstoy holds one back.

We also learn that "far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored"; "he is unshakably committed to stabilizing Iraq"; "Bush remains energized by the power of the presidency"; and "he's convinced leaders have the power to change societies."

Aside from his depiction of Bush as the Strong, Determined, Principled Warrior-Leader, Brooks also includes this report:

[H]is self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources. The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: "It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist."

This has been the great unexamined issue of the Bush presidency -- the extent to which Bush's unwavering commitment to Middle East militarism is, as Bush himself has made clear, rooted in theological and religious convictions, not in pragmatic or geopolitical concerns. That Bush's foreign policy decision-making is grounded in absolute moral and theological convictions and therefore immune from re-examination or change is an argument I examine at length in A Tragic Legacy because it is one of the principal -- and most dangerous -- forces driving the Bush presidency.

(Continued here.)