Bush: “Dead Certain”

Robert Draper's new book about George W. Bush, Dead Certain, is set to be released next week. Draper's family is friendly with the Bushes (his grandfather, Leon Jaworski, was buddies with George H.W. Bush). So I guess you shouldn't expect any surprises. One thing for sure -- the title says it all. Jim Rutenberg of the Post has it:

Mr. Bush said he believed that Mr. Hussein did not take his threats of war seriously, suggesting that the United Nations emboldened him by failing to follow up on an initial resolution demanding that Iraq disarm. He had sought a second measure containing an ultimatum that failure to comply would result in war.

“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

That's a bizarre view of what happened. The second resolution failed because the our allies were not convinced that Saddam had WMD; so, in short, Bush's diplomacy failed...to convince our allies to back us. Bush was "dead certain" and could not -- still can't -- understand why they wouldn't.

So, how does Bush feel about, you know, how it all turned out?

“I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper, by way of saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”
[...]
In response to Mr. Draper’s observance that Mr. Bush had nobody’s “shoulder to cry on,” the president said: “Of course I do, I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on, and I cry a lot.” In what Mr. Draper interpreted as a reference to war casualties, Mr. Bush added, “I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count as president.”

More self-pity.

Mr. Bush conveyed a level of sanguinity with his unpopularity. Mr. Draper recalled that in their last meeting, in May, Mr. Bush pointed outside to his dog, Barney, and said, “That guy who said if you want a friend in Washington get a dog, knew what he was talking about.”

"That guy" was Harry S. Truman. Hey -- I thought Bush was just like him? How come he can't mention his name?

He otherwise addressed his unpopularity as a tactical issue. For instance, in May he said that this fall it would be up to General Petraeus to convince the public that the Iraq strategy is working.

“I’ve been here too long,” Mr. Bush said, according to Mr. Draper. “Every time I start painting a rosy picture, it gets criticized and then it doesn’t make it on the news.”

There he goes again with the self-pity.

But he said he saw his unpopularity as a natural result of his decision to pursue a strategy in which he believed. “I made a decision to lead,” he said, “One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?”

Um, no.

Seriously folks, Bush thinks he's unpopular simply because he "made a decision to lead?" Wow -- no discussion about right and wrong? He lead us all right -- off the cliff.

But he was dead certain the whole way down.