Bubble Boy

As Fred Kaplan writes in Slate,

George W. Bush doesn't like speaking at the United Nations. You can see it in his eyes—the flicker of perplexity, bordering on distress, when he recites a line that draws surefire cheers on the campaign trail but only blank, distant stares from the assembly of world leaders.

They showed a clip from the UN speech on last night's Daily Show. Shrub spoke one of his applause lines, and then paused for a painfully long time for the expected cheers as the camera panned the faces of the assembled world leaders. Who sat in stony silence.

There are a whole lot of people out there noticing Shrub's Bubble Boy existence. Sidney Blumenthal in Salon:

The news is grim, but the president is "optimistic." The intelligence is sobering, but he tosses aside "pessimistic predictions." His opponent says he has "no credibility," but the president replies that it is his rival who is "twisting in the wind." The secretary general of the United Nations speaks of the "rule of law," but Bush talks before a mute General Assembly of "a new definition of security." Between the rhetoric and the reality lies the campaign.

Leutisha Stills, the self-described proud Christian Liberal:

GeeDubya hopes and probably prays that no one subjects him to such close scrutiny and compares his walk with his talk because we all know he can't answer questions or respond to any inquiries unless they he's given a script, just like Ronald Reagan. I'm still amazed at how America willingly allows GeeDubya to sequester himself from the Truth to the extent that he lives in a make-believe bubble where he does not have to face the devastation caused by his actions, and where he cannot be touched by them.

Jacob Weisberg on Maureen Dowd:

''Bushworld'' is a case in point. In a collection of columns written mostly over the past four years, Maureen Dowd sometimes seems torn between feelings of affection for the Bush clan and the view that they are woefully inadequate to the task of governing. A sometimes coy commentator, Dowd lets her views trickle out in caustic observations and witticisms. ''All presidents are in a bubble,'' she writes in a sharp introduction, ''but the boy king was so insulated he was in a thermos.'' In her Kennebunkport burlesque of ''Dynasty,'' the ''dauphin'' is protected from reality by his ''regents,'' foremost among them Vice President Dick Cheney, typically referred to as Bush's ''baby sitter'' or ''chaperone.''

Because all presidents are in a bubble, a president has to have the intellectual curiosity to burst out, to know enough to be able to form his own opinions, independent of what he is being told by his advisers.

We can clearly see what the lack of that curiosity has brought us.