The most amazing thing about this President is that he is not at all the type of President I thought he would have been the first time he was elected. In that election I was of course horrified that the Republicans had pretty clearly stolen an election and gotten their stacked Supreme Court to rubber stamp it. On the other hand the Democrat, at the time, seemed hopelessly centrist, running even to the right of Clinton, and the country had never been more peaceful and prosperous in my lifetime. So when Bush was anointed Emperor I didn't immediately pack my bags and high tail it to Rio.
I didn't totally panic because I didn't think he cared enough about anything to screw anything up very seriously. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd put up with actually working for a living if that meant that four years later he'd be a former President, never paying for another meal or greens fee for the rest of his natural life. His dad must have known this too and pulled in a lifetime of favors to get him installed at the top of the GOP ticket as a shill for Enron, Halliburton &Co., the same way Reagan was a shill for Bechtel.
The problem was that Reagan didn't have Dick Cheney whispering in his ear.
Dick Cheney took Bush Senior's carefully orchestrated straw son and turned him into the Manchurian Candidate. At first I thought Bush Junior was just stubborn, but it's gone way beyond that. I think someone should investigate the possibility of mind control. I'm serious. I've known stubborn people in my life but this President's levels of denial are way beyond pathological. He single-handedly destroyed the Republican dynasty and still he won't change course. Now he's threatening to disregard the recommendations of his handpicked commission. The disgruntled preppy turned affable but faux good ol' boy now seems like a freakish automaton, marching forward into the immovable wall that is Iraq, banging his head against it, getting dented, broken, slowly destroyed -- but simply incapable of stopping or even just turning around.
If he weren't taking all those poor soldiers with him I'd say there's just no talking to him, and let him just keep banging away till he topples over or runs out of batteries.