Bush & the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions: What do you think of this VERY LONG email I received tonight?

Bush and the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions


By John P. Briggs, MD, and J.P. Briggs II, PhD





Thursday 18 January 2007


President George W. Bush prides himself on "making tough


decisions." But many are sensing something seriously troubling, even


psychologically unbalanced, about the president as a decision-maker.


They are right.


Because of a psychological dynamic swirling around deeply hidden


feelings of inadequacy, the president has been driven to make


increasingly incompetent and risky decisions. This dynamic makes the


psychological stakes for him now unimaginably high. The words


"success" and "failure" have seized his rhetoric like metaphors for


his psyche's survival.


The president's swirling dynamic lies "hidden in plain sight" in


his personal history. From the time he was a boy until his religious


awakening in his early 40s, Bush had every reason to feel he was a


failure. His continued, almost obsessive, attempts through the years


to emulate his father, obtain his approval, and escape from his


influence are extensively recorded.


His biography is peppered with remarks and behavior that allude to


this inner struggle. In an exuberant moment during his second campaign


for Texas governor, Bush told a reporter, "It's hard to believe, but


... I don't have time to worry about being George Bush's son. Maybe


it's a result of being confident. I'm not sure how the psychoanalysts


will analyze it, but I'm not worried about it. I'm really not. I'm a


free guy."


A psychoanalyst would note that he is revealing here that he has


been worrying about being his father's son quite a lot.


Resentment naturally contaminated Bush's efforts to prove himself


to his father and receive his father's approval. The contradictory mix


showed up in his compulsion to re-fight his father's war against Iraq,


but this time winning the duel some thought his father failed to win


with Saddam. He could at once emulate his father, show his contempt


for him, and redeem him. But beneath this son-father struggle lies a


far more significant issue for Bush - a question about his own


competence, adequacy and autonomy as a human being.


We have seen this inner question surface repeatedly, and we have


largely conspired with him to deny it.


• On September 11, 2001, we saw (and suppressed) the image


of him sitting stunned for seven minutes in a crowd of school children


after learning that the second plane had hit the Twin Towers, and then


the lack of image of him when he vanished from public view for the


rest of the day. Instead, we bought the cover-up image, three days


after the attack, of the strong leader, grabbing the bullhorn in New


York City and issuing bellicose statements.





• In 2004, we saw and denied the insecurity displayed when


the president refused to face the 9/11 Commission alone and needed


Vice President Cheney to go with him.





• In 2003, we saw and suppressed the dark side of the


"Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing, in which a man who


had ducked out on his generation's war and dribbled away his service


in the Texas Air National Guard dressed up like Top Gun and pretended


that he was a combat pilot like his father.





• Asked by a reporter if he would accept responsibility for


any mistakes, Bush answered, "I hope I don't want to sound like I've


made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't - you just put


me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not quick - as quick on my feet


as I should be in coming up with one." What we heard, and yet didn't


hear, was a confession of his feelings of inadequacy and an arrogant


denial those feelings all at once.





• In early 2006, when his father moved behind the scenes to


replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the son responded,


"I'm the decider and I decide what's best" - and when he clenched his


fist at a question about his father's influence, proclaiming, "I'm the


Commander in Chief" - we glimpsed what was going on.








To cover up and defend himself against his feelings of his


inadequacy and incompetence, Bush developed a number of psychological


defenses. In his school years he played the clown. (His ability to


joke about his verbal slip-ups is an endearing adult application of


this defense to public life.) His heavy drinking was a classic way to


anesthetize feelings of inadequacy. Indeed, drinking typically makes


the alcoholic grandiose, which has led some commentators to argue that


Bush has the "dry drunk" syndrome, where the individual has stopped


drinking but retains the brittle psychology of the alcoholic. Other


defenses now play especially powerful roles to protect the president


against his internal feelings of insufficiency.


The Christian Defense


Bush has carefully let it be known that he believes the decisions


he makes in office are directed by God. His famous claim to make


decisions by "gut" ("I'm a gut player," he told Bob Woodward) equates


with his claim of the spiritual inspiration he receives through


prayer, his own and the prayers of others. Whatever else it is, this


equation of his own choices with God's will has unparalleled


advantages. It creates the perfect defense against any doubts he or


anyone else might have that he can't make the right decision. The need


to engage in analysis and explore alternatives to get there comes off


the table. Instead, he has his gut; he has his God.


Being "born again" also allows the president to present himself as


having relegated to the past all those previously inadequate behaviors


of his younger days: the poor academic performance, the drinking, the


failed businesses. He's a new man, no longer incompetent but now


supremely competent as a result of his faith.


When Woodward asked Bush if he had consulted his father before


invading Iraq, he replied, "He is the wrong father to appeal to in


terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to." How


wonderfully that appeal must seem to resolve the internal conflict


about adequacy we have described above.


The Bully Defense


Bush's mother, Barbara (sarcastic, mean, disciplinarian, always


with an acid-tongued retort), is probably the model for another major


defense Bush deploys to defend himself against feelings of inadequacy.


A friend at the time described her as "sort of the leader bully."


That bullies are insecure people is well known and fairly obvious.


A bully covers insecurity with bluster and intimidation so that others


won't find an opening to see how weak he feels.


Much of the world outside the US considers Bush a bully. "You're


either with us or against us" is a bully's threat that anyone can


recognize. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes is a bully's


doctrine.


For his intimates and those closer to home, Bush appears to be


what is called an emotional bully. An emotional bully gains control


using sarcasm, teasing, mocking, name calling, threatening, ignoring,


lying, or angering the other and forcing him to back down. Bush


administration insider accounts describe this sort of behavior from


the president. He's well known for his dismissive remarks. His


penchant for giving nicknames to everyone has its dark, bully's side.


Naming people is a way to control them.


In report by Gail Sheehy in 2000, recalled recently by New York


Times columnist Maureen Dowd, we get a glimpse of how Bush's pervasive


fear of failure (his absolute refusal to consider "failure as an


option") and his bully defense go together. Sheehy interviewed friends


from his teenage years and college years. In basketball or tennis


games he would insist points be played over because he wasn't ready;


he would force opponents who had beaten him to continue playing until


he beat them. At Yale he would interrupt his fellow students' studying


for exams (helping them fail) to compete in a popular board game, "The


Game of Global Domination," at which he was the player noted for


taking the most risks, being the most aggressive.


It's likely that speculations about Vice President Cheney, Donald


Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice functioning as Bush's puppet-masters are


180 (or at least 160) degrees off. Bush is the president; he gets his


way, and they know it. Chances are they have learned to channel his


"gut" and give him policy advice that matches it. They may even


imagine they are steering him, not clear about the ways that he has


bullied them, elicited in them "The Stockholm Syndrome," in which


hostages come to identify with and even defend the very person who is


threatening them. This is the same dynamic evident in the behavior of


battered spouses and members of gangs.


Ron Suskind described the small group around the president: "A


disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness


- a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly


questioners."


Biographical reports tell us that Bush's parents taught him to


keep his inner feelings to himself. As psychiatrist Justin A. Frank


noted in Bush on the Couch, this results in a "self-protective


indifference to the pain of others." This is another aspect of his


bully defense, projecting his inner pain onto others. Bush's


remarkable drive for the power to torture terrorist suspects and his


reported glorying in Texas executions during his terms as governor


testify to his lack of compassion, despite his recent statement of


qualms about seeing Saddam Hussein drop through the trap.


The Man of Splits and Oppositions


Being in the world, for all of us, involves the challenge to


somehow integrate the opposites of our nature and to select our way


through the many opposing choices presented us in life. The bully


polarizes the natural ambivalence (the internal opposition) anyone


feels about whether he is strong or weak, safe or vulnerable. A person


who needs to feel invulnerable and completely adequate all the time,


or who always feels helpless and inadequate, has polarized these


emotions and leads a deformed life. The degree of internal


polarization in President Bush appears to be serious - and widespread.


Commentators have made lists of the president's polarities: the


proclaimed uniter who is a relentless divider, the habit of "saying


one thing and doing another," as Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords put it.


The list is long and growing. It should include the oppositions that


show up in his famous Bushisms, such as:


There is no doubt in my mind that we should allow the world worst


leaders to hold America hostage, to threaten our peace, to threaten


our friends and allies with the world's worst weapons.





They [the terrorists] never stop thinking of ways to harm our


country and our people - and neither do we.








To a psychiatrist, these are not mere malapropisms and mistakes in


speech. They suggest ambivalence oscillating violently between poles.


They suggest a desperate uncertainty about everything that the


president reflexively seeks to hide by taking absolutist, rigid


positions about "victory," "success," "mission accomplished," "stay


the course," "compassion," "tax cuts," "no child left behind," and a


host of other issues.


The Presidential Defense


Once Bush took the bullhorn at ground zero, he found perhaps the


ultimate defense for his secret fears of inadequacy. As he told Bob


Woodward, in Bush at War, "I'm the commander - see, I don't need to


explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the


interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to


explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe


anybody an explanation." As commander in chief, as a war president, he


could assemble his other psychological defenses around him. He could


split the world into good and evil and the country would follow. His


internal oppositions could be projected without much resistance from


the populace or his adversaries. He could be the gut-led, divinely


inspired "Decider," to save the country. He could project own internal


fears of being "discovered as a fraud" into a threat "out there"


waiting to happen. He could surround himself with loyalists whom he


could emotionally bully, creating a new family that would admire him


and that he could control. Meanwhile the ambiguities of political


decisions that can always be rationalized offer a safe haven. Until


history judges me (and that's a long way off, maybe never) I can't be


definitively seen as incompetent.


But as much as the presidency is a perfect defense for disguising


incompetence, it's also the perfect trap. It accelerates the positive


feedback loop that was set in motion when he "changed his heart"


around age 40 (committing himself to God) and presumably put his


failures, and his feelings of failure behind him.


In recent weeks, anyone following the news must have intuitively


sensed from watching and hearing the president that he would reject


the Iraq Study Group's report, co-authored by a person he must have


felt was the emissary of his father come to tell him that he had


failed again. He chose escalation, the one solution most knowledgeable


people agree cannot succeed, in order to keep alive the fiction that


success still lies in the future.


The dynamic is becoming obvious to almost everybody.


But how much is Bush aware of this psychological dynamic and of


the secret he's keeping? Not aware enough. That's the problem.


Psychotherapists use the term "unconscious," but it isn't quite an


accurate descriptor. We are aware of feelings, sensations and scripts


that occur when one of our unseen psychic mechanisms is triggered. So,


when an interviewer asked about the generals who demanded Rumsfeld be


removed, and the president knew his father had been working behind the


scenes to replace Rumsfeld, the question would not have triggered the


conscious thought: there goes dad again trying to make me feel


incompetent. Instead, the president may have felt a hollow sensation


or a flush of anger, an urge to form a clownish grin to cover his


watery feelings, and a script that would come out of his mouth as "I'm


the decider." Beneath that would be the inadequacy and cover-up


dynamic outlined here.


A president's psychology and his inner secrets are his or her own


business, except in one important area. That is area covered by the


question, "Does the psychology of this individual interfere with his


or her ability to make sound decisions in the best interest of the


nation?" Recent history has certainly been witness to presidents with


psychodynamics that have damaged their historical legacies. Bill


Clinton and Richard Nixon come to mind. But in neither case was the


very ability to make sound decisions compromised to the extent we


believe it is with this president.


A Failed Process


Many accounts of the president suggest that his decision-making


process is a failed one; in an important sense, it is no process at


all.


Ambivalent feelings are normal at certain stages of


decision-making, and the ability to tolerate ambivalence has been


shown to be the hallmark of creative thinkers. The inability to


tolerate uncertainty because you think that may imply incapacity


brings decision-making to an end.


Thus, instead of focusing on the process needed to arrive at a


decision, Bush marshals his defenses in order not to feel incompetent.


That doesn't leave much room for exploring the alternatives required


of competent decision-making. Not interested in discussion or detail


(where the devil often lies), he seeks something minimal, just enough


so he can let the decision come to him; it's his "gut" (read "God")


that will provide the answer. But these gut feelings are the very


feelings associated with his deep sense of inadequacy and his defenses


against those feelings. So while he brags that he makes the "tough


decisions," psychologically, he's defending himself against the very


feelings of uncertainty that are the necessary concomitant to making


tough decisions. His tough decision-making is a sham.


In the recent maneuvering toward the "new strategy" in Iraq, we


have witnessed a great pretense of normal decision-making. But the


president clearly made up his mind almost as soon as the "surge"


alternative appeared, and apparently moved to cow others, including


his new secretary of defense Robert Gates (his father's man) in the


process. "Success" is the only alternative for him. "Failure" and


disintegration of Iraq is unthinkable because it would be synonymous


with his own internal disintegration.


As his decisions go awry, he exudes a troubling, uncanny aura of


certitude (though some find it reassuring). He seems to expect to feel


despised and alone (and probably has always felt that), as he has


always secretly expected to fail. That expectation of failure leads to


sloppy, risky, incompetent decisions, which in turn compel him to


swerve from his fears of incompetence.


At this point, the president seems to have entered a place in his


psyche where he is discounting all external criticism and


unpopularity, and fixing stubbornly on his illusion of vindication,


because he's still "The Decider," who can just keep deciding until he


gets to success. It's hard not to feel something heroic in this


position - but it's a recipe for bad, if not catastrophic, decisions.


Psychologically, President Bush has received support for so long


because many have thought of him as "one of us." Most of us feel


inadequate in some way, and watching him we can feel his inadequacies


and sense his uncertainties, so we admire him for "pulling it off."


His model tells us, "If you act like you're confident and competent,


then you are." We are the culture that values the power of positive


thinking and seeks assertiveness training. We believe that the right


attitude can sometimes be more important than brains or hard work.


He's bullied us, too. We don't dare to really confront the scale of


his incompetent behavior, because then we would have to face what it


means to have such an incompetent and psychologically disabled


decision-maker as our president. It raises everyone's uncertainty. And


that is, in fact, happening now.


----------


John P. Briggs, MD, is retired from over 40 years of private


practice in psychotherapy in Westchester County, New York. He was on


the faculty in psychiatry at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center


in New York City for 23 years and was a long-time member of the


American Academy of Psychoanalysis. He trained at the William Alanson


White Institute in New York. J.P. Briggs II, PhD, is a Distinguished


CSU professor at Western Connecticut State University and is the


senior editor of the intellectual journal The Connecticut Review. He


is author and co-author of books on creativity and chaos, including


Fire in the Crucible (St. Martin's Press); Fractals, the Patterns of


Chaos (Simon and Schuster); and Seven Life Lessons of Chaos


(HarperCollins), among others. He is currently at work with


Philadelphia psychologist John Amoroso on a book about the power of


ambivalence in the creative process.

Bush %26amp; the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions: What do you think of this VERY LONG email I received tonight?
That's just a bunch of crap. Strung together by some old hippie that probably voted for Dukakis as well.





I'm sure I could pay someone to write an analysis that shows consistency and strength in Bush's decision making abilities if I chose to.





I'm not saying Bush is perfect, and is a great speaker, or that I have always agreed with every decision. It's just that everything I read above is used to prove some failing or deficiency in Bush. Remember that what some people see as negative, such as being arrogant, others will interpret as self-confidence. When some say he isn't listening to other opinions, others will say he is decisive. One thing's for sure, he doesn't want to take a poll and base his decision on only the popular way to go.
Reply:GO BKC99XX! You are right on! This "analysis" could be altered in any way the writer wanted. If Bush were popular, the writer would have supported him. Report It

Reply:I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this entire examination as propaganda. I think that Bush has buttons to be pushed and some people are very good at working with him while pulling his strings. I think that those that understand how the president works can exert great influence on his decisions but only because Bush's insecurities cause him to seek out the influence. If you asked Bush, depending on his psychological temperament at the time, he would honestly say 'I am the decider.'
Reply:What's up with everyone trying to be all political these days? I mean, I know Green Day's last album was popular and all, but quite frankly, it sucked, and the political awakening isn't anything more than a bunch of people talking about things they only THINK they know about.





For Bush, against Bush, whatever you are... why's it brought up so often? Yeah, he's the president. Yeah, he made some mistakes. When was the last time we had a president that didn't make it? There's never going to be a "good" president. Opinions differ too greatly.





What's my take? He's the president. I'm not for or against. We'll have a new one soon enough. A lot of people won't like him (or her) either. Because, let's face it. Some important decisions are going to have to be made, and pretty much every single person living hates when they can't have it their way. It's too bad we don't let Burger King take charge of the US. Then we can all have it our way.
Reply:Yes, I can't say as I blame you for your discord about puppeteers. However, when they are the Illuminati, whoever is in office may not be able to say NO. JFK said no, and he was assassinated.

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