Leadership is about taking responsibility. Responsibility is about knowing when one must own up to an unpleasant reality. Clearly, this truism is something that has eluded Shrub's understanding. It would seem that Our Sainted President has difficulty in both grasping and telling the truth.
[O]ne wonders why Bush didn't simply say, "Yep. My fault. Some hard-working guy at the National Security Council got a little overenthusiastic and stuck in that sentence. I didn't take it out. Won't do that again." End of story. Instead, we have the two-week spectacle of Bushies on the run and the President undermining his reputation as a straight shooter by forcing his CIA director, George Tenet, to take the fall. Clint Eastwood would never do that.
Why has the uranium story puffed up so huge? It wouldn't have been a very big deal without the deepening crisis in Iraq. But it also has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character — specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth. I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is weirder than that. The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so — and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter. He misleads not only the nation but himself. Every worst-case Saddam scenario just had to be true, as did every best-case post-Saddam scenario. Bush's talent for self-deception extends to domestic and economic policy. He probably believes that he's a compassionate conservative, even though he has allowed every antipoverty program he favors to be eviscerated by Congress. This week's outrage is the crippling of AmeriCorps, which he had pledged to increase in size. He probably believes that his tax cuts for the wealthy will help reduce the mammoth $455 billion budget deficit (which doesn't include the cost of Iraq), even though Ronald Reagan found that the exact opposite was true and had to raise taxes twice to repair the damage done by his 1981 cuts. And Bush probably believed, as the sign said, that the "mission" had been "accomplished" in Iraq when he landed on the aircraft carrier costumed as a flyboy. He may even have believed that he was a flyboy.
Believing something to be true doesn't necessarily make it so. The harsh reality is that sometimes "mistakes are made". If you are President, and the "mistakes" happen on your watch, it is incumbent upon you to accept responsibility (that's why it's called "leadership"). Perhaps in the cocoon that is the Shrub White House, delusions of rectitude invulnerability can be willingly and ably indulged. Here in the real world, though, when screw-ups happen and you're at the top of the food chain, you're on the hook. And hanging George Tenet out to dry isn't going to absolve Shrub of his responsibilities.
And they said Clinton lied....
