Flattery Will Get You Everywhere, Apparently.

Sidney Blumenthal has written an appalling, amazing, frightening op/ed piece about the Bush White House and Bush's reliance on cowtowers and flatterers who allow him to continue in his delusions of grandeur. His constant self-comparisons to Abraham Lincoln during the waning years of the Civil War are the most disturbing -- at least for me -- because it confirms what I've believed since the first time I ever heard President Bush say those fateful words, "I'm a wartime president." (Since when did you ever hear a president boast with pride that he is a "wartime president?" It's not usually considered good form.)

Blumenthal's comparisons between Machiavelli's "The Prince" and the actions of Vice President Dick Cheney's carefully tended ego-stroking are eerie and accurate, in light of the Bush's recent actions, which seem to defy all logic and rationale. And his tracking of Condoleeza Rice's career, which apparently rises in direct proportion to the number of her cooing little handwritten notes of congratulations and agrandizement, confirms what we' ve have suspected all along -- though there are many woman in the world more than qualified to make brilliant Secretaries of State, Rice was never one of them. And those of us who asked, "what the hell was he thinking?" when he nominated Harriet Meier to the Supreme Court, though she had absolutely no qualifications for the position suddenly have the "lightbulb moment" when Blumenthal relates that Meier is another courtier who knows how to flatter a paper tiger Prince. This would explain why, on the day her impending nomination was announced, Meier gushed to the press, "He's the most brilliant man I have ever met."

Forget the opening of Fox Searchlight's The Hills Have Eyes. Blumenthal's piece is the most chilling work of horror you'll see this month.

~C~