reality bites

Generally speaking, I am not a huge fan of Maureen Dowd. Although we are probably ideologically pretty similar, it seems to me that her writing often reads like a gossip column. Nonetheless, she has spent a good deal of time investigating, researching, and reporting on the Bush family dynasty.

In this recent column, she gets to what I perceive to be the character flaw that is most apt to undermine this presidency.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. . . .

It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.