What to Do With an Unreachable President?

There is no point in being a psychoanalyst when you have a patient who is unreachable. There is no point in being a Senator when you have a president who is unreachable. So, how do we reach President Bush? How can we stop him? Who can stop him? Protests are all well and good, but have no effect on this man. We need to do something new and different, like blocking his access to MONEY. Setting limits is the name of the game.

"It is true that we have no assurance that the president would follow any statute that we enact," Senator Specter said to the press on Thursday, April 27. What are the implications of such a statement? To me it means that Specter understands that Bush has no respect for the law or lawmakers, and no understanding of the Senate. It is clear that he was never disciplined as a child, that he got away with everything, from wetting his bed until he was 11 to setting fires until he was 14 (two things told to me in private after the book came out and that I never before mentioned in public), to shooting at his siblings with a bee bee gun, to drinking himself into oblivion, to being arrested for DWI, and on and on. He was always rescued by his father, by friends of his father, by his money, by his personal charm (when sober). Now he expects the next president to rescue him from Iraq.

We have a drunk as president, a drunk with a history of being able to do whatever he wants to -- with the possible exception of privatizing Social Security (though he is poised to bankrupt it in stead by draining the Treasury). The only way to stop him is with an intervention, just as it is done with alcoholics.

Bush kids around like a fraternity boy with the press corps about Tony Snow while he is simultaneously destroying the future of our nation. The Senate, a deliberative body, has done more drooling than deliberating of late. And it's time to stop. Congressman Conyers is taking action, as he knows full well that our nation that is at stake -- the lives of our fighting men and women, our civil liberties, and our children's future.

The most important lesson I learned in my psychiatric training was that there is no substitute for "setting limits" -- limits on delinquent patients are the pre-requisite for any kind of contact or communication. Without limits, destructive and anti-social behavior thrives. The time is well past for such limits on Bush, and terrible damage has already been done. But with more than two years left to continue on his destructive course, there is still SOME time. People like Senator Byrd now are talking about impeachment. But Bush is too fast for us -- he will nuke Iran before any hearings on his high crimes and misdemeanors can take place.

The April march, as it were, is all good and well. But protests don't mean what they did in the 1960s. They just don't. It is past time for action, and the action that is necessary IS to take away Bush's Senate credit card. Specter is right. You can get Bush to say anything, but you can never get him to do what he is supposed to do if he doesn't want to. It's really that simple. He needs his access to money taken away. Only then will any discourse with this White House be even remotely possible. The House and Senate, even the media, must push through the shock and awe visited upon them by this delinquent and destructive president.

We are in a new world, as no President has ever so willingly and willfully disregarded the Constitution. Never has anybody taken such advantage of God-fearing Christians in order to prosecute a war. Never before has anybody unilaterally disregarded so many treaties -- first global warming and now the Salt Treaty.  Bush is cooking up a nuclear test on June 2 in Nevada and nobody in the House or Senate is saying anything. The Democrats are fighting about windmills in Cape Cod while the "down-winders" in Nevada are bracing for new bouts of cancer.