In the new book What Happened, President Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan decides to stop covering up for his former boss, and eloquently expresses his version of life in the administration.
He utters one of the best descriptors for Bush's particular kind of flawed thinking that I've ever heard. He calls the President's particular kind of pig headedness a "detrimental resistance to reflection."
How accurate of a phrase is that, and how many people do I know who have fallen lockstep into a pattern of thinking that denies subtleties?
Never look back, only ahead. Never peel back the layers, go with your gut. This, I think, is the single biggest flaw, and a poison that has now invaded the cultural personality of conservative republicans, and much of America: an unwavering commitment to disallowing what might be gleaned from nuances and the cadence of things.
That is his legacy - It may be the death of us.
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