Pulling off the mask to reveal the gargoyle within

This week's bombshell Newsweek piece finally takes at least some of the kid gloves off of the press' timid treatment of George W. Bush. For nearly five years, he's been described as friendly, affable, dogged, loyal, a "strong leader." What they haven't said is that the affability is a mask, his doggedness is the kind of stubbornness that keeps him driving at 100 mph towards a brick wall because he's absolutely certain the wall will move before he hits it, because he is George W. Bush and bad shit Just Doesn't Happen to him. They also haven't said until now that his loyalty is completely blind, and leads him to put political hacks in jobs where people's lives are at stake because they are a friend's college buddy. And they haven't said that his "strong leadership" can be a liability when it consists of inflammatory talk ("Bring 'em on") and refusal to admit mistakes.

But now, at least for the moment (I have no faith that it's permanent), the press is pulling aside the curtain and revealing Oz the Great and Terrible to not be a wizened little snake oil salesman, but a sociopathic gargoyle. Amusingly, since most of his most ardent followers are the kind of Christian who believe that Satan walks in disguise among us, the George W. Bush that's being revealed is manifesting in much that way.

Dan Froomkin in WaPo:

Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.

But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.

An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.

And it's about damn time.