November 3, 2005 Issue

The leader of the free world is supposed to be George W. Bush. However, President Bush is not a leader. He has never been a leader.

During the 2002 presidential elections it became obvious that Bush and his chief adviser, Karl Rove, chose to be followers. They realized early on that the election hinged on the growing numbers of evangelical Christians in this country. And that is the group they followed.

They chose a group that they could not possibly lead.Evangelical Christians already have a leader in place. And George Bush is no match for Him.

The President of the United States is supposed to be, at worst, a decent manager.George Bush has put his management skills on display for some time now.He would be a poor choice to manage a little league team.Ozzie Guillen he is not.

He can't manage with a lead. In the days following 9-11 the entire free world was pulling for the United States.We had their sympathy and their support.Through hubris, lack of intelligence, dishonesty and poor management... he blew it.

The president should have some responsibility for managing his employees. His level of responsibility should be higher than mine. I have several hundred employees in the restaurant business.I know that ultimately, their mistakes are my mistakes.I have always been willing to accept that.

I don't have the resources to screen potential employees that the president does.But I do have the guts to take responsibility for their actions while they are in my employ.

The current controversy over the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, stems from Bush’s frantic attempts to sell this pitiful war to our people and our allies. It is another example of Bush’s character and his leadership abilities. Even drug dealers don’t rat each other out without expecting to pay the consequences.

Bush has led us into a war that will have no resolution.This country is involved in a war that was sold to its people based on poor intelligence, outright lies, and incredible conceit.The nutty ex-aide to Saddam Hussein who gave almost comic accounts of the early days of the U.S. invasion might want to apply for a job with the Bush administration.He would fit right in.Reality has little sway with these boobs.

The two major charges against Hussein are that he killed 140 of his adversaries two decades ago and that he invaded a foreign country.If these two acts have become an international threshold of criminality our leaders had best be careful.As crazed and ruthless as Hussein was, he never had weapons of mass destruction or plans for nuclear weapons.We have plenty of both.

The Bush administration has forced us to examine the way we value life. The New York Times recently published photographs of the 2000 soldiers who have been killed in Iraq.I didn't know any of the dead Americans.I cannot imagine the loss felt by their families and friends.These were people following orders; orders given by their commander-in -chief. They were bad orders.

I don't know any of the 30,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed during our occupation. I am sure they have equal numbers of grieving families and friends.In the court of world opinion—which this government pays no attention to—are our soldier's deaths mourned any more than the deaths of innocent Iraqis? I don't think so.

There have been heroic acts in this war. Our soldiers and their families,should be proud of these actions.But this is not a heroic war.And whilethe members of our military are following orders and doing the job to the best of their ability, they are doing so for a misguided administration.This is Bush's War, not mine.

And this war is not going to get better. It is bad today and it’s going to get worse tomorrow.

These days a president cannot hide.There are cameras stalking his every move.Photo ops, which worked many years ago when we did not have the media coverage we do today, don't ring true anymore.When CNN is coveringthe presidentas he smiles forstill photographs; he looks ridiculous.

What is particularly troubling is what is shown in those photographs. This president is in deep trouble; and getting deeper. Yet what comes through in his photos is an incredible smugness that belies his, and our, situation.

President Johnson was in a similar position during the Vietnam War.Foreign policy was not Johnson's main concern.It got in the way of domestic reforms that he cared about. President Johnson had his photograph taken often as the war effort soured and as the bodies of young Americans were shipped home in bags. Johnson was as shrewd and tough and conniving a politician as ever walked the hallways of U.S. Senate or sat in the Oval Office. But in Johnson's face you could see the anguish, incredible pain, sadness, and sense of despair over the loss of life in that small distant country.

In Lyndon Johnson’s face one could see a troubled man—but it was a man who understood the grim reality of our country’s situation.

I don't see any of that in the photographs of President Bush.

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