The Washington Post - which seems to be trumping the NY Times all over he
place on coverage of the Executives in Washington - has an interesting one
today:
The Imperiled Presidency Inside the Bunker
A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease
Bush, Grasping for Answers and Fixated on Iraq, Remains Resolute
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101
356.html?hpid=topnews (!!)
I am particularly drawn to this 'found' moment of 'touch' with a wounded
soldier to whom he is introduced after a speech to students at a school in
Harlem:
.. King, the GOP congressman, introduced him backstage to a soldier injured
in one eye. Bush teared up and asked the young man to take off his dark
glasses so he could see the wound, King recalled. "Human instinct is when
someone has a serious injury to look the other way," King said. "He actually
asked him to take them off. He actually touched the eye a little. It was
almost as if he felt he had to confront it."
Interesting to imagine what Bush is really 'confronting' here with the
touch. A 'literal' moment rather than a 'rhetorical' one? I find the whole
interaction loaded with implication, though it might have quickly
disappeared from the President's personal consciousness. His experience of
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome will happen after he leaves Office, if then.
However, I suspect this moment is already making it's way into an opera
score yet to be written.
In this article, for further weird flavor, Kissinger is also quoted as
saying the President has not asked him to pray with him (as Nixon did when
his regime was collapsing from Watergate et al).
I am afraid we are a long way from the opera or any other form that might
cope with this one.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
|