The selection of George W. Bush as Time Magazine person of the year is not surprising; editors select the person they believe had the greatest impact on world affairs. Impacting world affairs is not synonymous with making the world a better place, previous selections include Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Nikita Khrushchev and Ayatollah Khomeini.

What Bush devotees see as accomplishments others see as a plunge into a surreal world dominated by theocratic loyalties and denial of fact over fantasy fulfillment. The truth of the matter is that about the only accomplishment in Bush’s historical treasure box thus far is election to a second term, even this is being questioned in several states and may linger to haunt an administration already taking on the aura of a lame duck before the inauguration.

On the eve of a second Bush administration it is reasonable to ask; Who is this man, what is happening to the United States under his leadership and why?
A superficial examination of the Bush administration is simple; the U.S. was attacked by elements of Al Queda headed by a Saudi named Osama Ben Ladin. The U.S. responded by bombing his bases and allies in Afghanistan.

Bush and his cabinet then targeted Saddam Hussain claiming he had weapons of mass destruction and an alliance with bin Laden. There were no WMD’s and it now appears the administration and its intelligence branch knew these claims were false.

What was expected to be a lightning attack followed by jubilation of a downtrodden populace has turned into a fiasco. The war still rages as more and more Iraqis and U.S. service personnel die. There has never been an accurate count of Iraqi causalities and what numbers do exist are closely guarded by the U.S. military command.

The U.S. dollar, while not in free fall, is tumbling on world markets as the deficit rises to previously unheard of levels. More U.S. jobs have been lost under Bush’s administration than any other presidency.

The fight against terrorism has spawned more attacks and virtually gutted portions of the U.S. constitution by virtue of the “Patriot Act.” Under this act the U.S. can, and does, detain people indefinitely, without charge or access to legal council. The U.S. is also operating prisons in foreign countries and is suspected of running or approving secret prisons in as yet undisclosed locations.

So why, in the face of so many wrong decisions does Bush continue on a journey from misadventure to disaster? According to one psychotherapist the answer lies within Bush himself.

Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch,” says, “This man has fundamental character flaws in his ability to lead the nation and specifically an inability to think clearly. He’s a person living his own fantasy: that everything is going to be okay.

He likes to break things, such as coalitions his father built, like he did with Baghdad by bombing out a five thousand year old source of civilization, like the Geneva Convention and the long history of respecting prisoners of war.”

Dr. Frank adds, ”This is the first time we have been led by an untreated alcoholic. Just quitting only means you have stopped drinking. Bush has not gotten rid of the alcoholic way of thinking. He is saying, I’ve quit drinking, I’m born again.”

According to Dr. Frank, Bush has captured the fear within the swing vote of America, “They want to proceed down a path where gay marriages are bad, family values are good, that fear means we should stay with the person we have, they don’t think about deficit spending or the environment, they don’t think about their own economic well being or the fact that more terrorists have been created by Bush policy or that he lied about WMD’s. There are a lot of people in this country who put their spiritual fantasies and spiritual ideals ahead of their economic needs.”

 Commenting on a statement by Peter Weiss, Center for Constitutional Rights vice president, that the judicial system was having a nervous breakdown Frank said, “People on the right, while not having a nervous breakdown are defending against their fear of having a nervous breakdown. They emphasize, certainty, clarity and calm, the last ditch effort to defend against chaos is to have massive tyranny over themselves and others, where everything is certain and clear. When Bush says I don’t care what the facts are I know the right thing, that’s an attempt to have certainty to triumph over anxiety. The problem with Bush and his followers is that people confuse belief with facts.”

 Asked what he felt Bush is afraid of Dr. Frank said, “Maybe what goes around comes around, that the people he has harmed are coming back to get him, this is a guy who has a long history of cruelty, people with a history like that are afraid of being attacked, he becomes so frightened he almost becomes inarticulate. We have a fear based president.”

 New York University Journalism professor and author of two books on Bush,  , “The Bush Dyslexicon” and ”The Cruel and Unusual; the Bush Chaney new world order, Mark Crispin Miller,  shares Franks views, ”The America system can no longer be accurately termed a democratic republic. The primary reason is that the media has become all but dysfunctional, well paid people now mingle with those they are supposed to cover.”

 As for Bush the person Miller says, “I think he has lost touch with reality. I see a guy trying to make the people around him even more loyal, the new cabinet being even more “like minded” than the first one, it is absolutely right to invoke Caligula and Stalin, you’re seeing the paranoid mindset of the power mad. You’ve got a paranoid logic that you’re either with us or against us.”

 Miller says the Bush base believes him to be “speaking with God,” “This movement represents an absolute distortion of Christianity, it’s all about the amassing of wealth and the pursuit of endless war, this a theocratic movement.”

 He also agrees with Michael Scheuer, the former CIA officer who studied bin Ladin and author of “Imperial Hubris,” who said both Bush and bin Laden are like minded evangelicals, “they’re cut from the same cloth, God is on our side, God loves us, God hates them. Iraq is swarming with missionaries, this is only covered in the evangelical press; torture is condoned by an element within the military that is fervently Christian.”

 Dr. Frank, agrees with Miller regarding press coverage of Bush, “we don’t get any of the information that people in Europe have because of our controlled media. I know much more about what’s going on by reading Al Jazeera  or the Guardian or other news papers than I do from following the American media.”
 Where will the next four Bush years lead the U.S.?  Miller says, “The media is in the tank with Bush, the democrats utter not a peep. We are in danger of losing the republic, take a look at the patriot act, these people do not believe in democracy, they don’t believe in disagreement, they don’t believe in anything but their own self righteousness, watch the evangelical movement.”

 Dr. Frank says of Bush, ““It’s not going to change, its going to get worse. It’s going to be an attack on history, an attack on children, an attack on the future. People who are not able to take responsibility for their own destruction project it on the next generation. There’s no line they won’t cross.
 

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