David Frum Is Almost Shrill!
He tiptoes up to the border of shrill Bush-hatred, and then steps back. Come across the line, David!
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - Bush is still the right leader: This has been a very bad month for the Bush presidency, maybe the worst to date: Hurricane Katrina, bad news from Iraq and grumbling from within the president’s own party over spending and immigration.... [M]uch of the trouble is the president’s own fault. He chose to appoint Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He chose to spend lavishly on highways and farmers and a new prescription drug benefit at the same time as he was fighting a global war on terror. And of course it is he who remains the final decision-maker on national security....
[A]s one who... still critically supports him, I find the sudden surge of public disenchantment with Mr Bush very difficult to understand. If you were looking for a diligent manager of the office of the presidency, a close student of public policy, a careful balancer of risks and benefits – George W. Bush would never be your man. But is this news?...
In a 2003 book about Mr Bush, I offered this assessment of his personality: Mr Bush is “a good man who is not a weak man. He is impatient, quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious, and as a result ill-informed...
David: that Bush sometimes appoints people with views of which you approve to jobs (but is incapable of figuring out when they are telling him pleasing lies), and sometimes ineptly pursues policies that you would approve of if they were implemented well (and sometimes, as in the case of Iran today, pursues policies that you regard as disastrous)--these aren't reasons to support him, even to "critically support" him.
