...he's having tantrums.
The key quote in this piece from the NY Daily News says:
"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."
"Not a pleasant sight" doesn't mean Olympian wrath or anything like that. It means makes-you-squirm embarrassing. I've read up on Little George's biography. That's how I know that "Little George" is a real family moniker, meant to contrast with his father -- "Big George," about whom many negative things might be said, but he is at least a grown man, saw real combat, dealt with things responsibly according to his lights, corrupt as they were in their own way. But Little George was the bratty rich kid who threw his tennis racket across the raked clay of the club court, stomping around cursing whenever he fumbled a shot (which was often), to the shame of all his elders.
Now the petulant temper has returned. He doesn't understand why, but some injustice has been done to him. Things aren't going right. Powerful, genuinely tough men who made their manipulative way into his administration by flattering him are now glancing aside, stone in their eyes, when he tries to look at them directly. Little George is realizing that he's been had. Cheney and Rumsfeld, and even Rove -- they didn't know what they were doing after all. But that part was their job wasn't it? Wasn't that the deal? Little George is now feeling betrayed. So underlings he used to humiliate subtly, by anointing them with foolish nick-names -- they are now filling the role of the tennis racket that let him down so often, way back then, back when the world was young and Little George could never measure up somehow...