Modulator

Wishful Thinker

g w bush is a wishful thinker. Mark Kleiman tells us about w the wishful thinker:

That's what the President's fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies have in common: a gay willingness to believe that things will turn out for the best in the teeth of logic, and that they are currently turning out for the best in the teeth of the evidence.

Wishful thinking isn't seen as a horrible moral defect, like cowardice of meanness or dishonesty. It's just a human foible, perfectly consistent with being a decent and likeable person. (No, you don't think Mr. Bush is either decent or likeable, but you aren't the audience for this message.)

And yet everyone knows that wishful thinking is the road to disaster; everyone with children has warned them of its dangers. In a military commander, in particular, wishful thinking is horribly dangerous, as it was when Mr. Bush ignored the National Intelligence Estimate that largely predicted the current disaster in Iraq.

This pretty accurately describes the guy O'reilly interviewed and I suspect the one that will show up at the joint soundbite presentation Thursday night.

Posted by Steve on September 28, 2004