If Bush is so satisfied...

This, taken whole from Laura Rozen:

Not a few of the people who write my website have a more incisive take on the political situation than I do. One of those I find most thought provoking is Karen Mickleson, a political psychologist. Here Mickleson responds to a question at the end of a recent post of mine, in which I asked, "if Bush is so satisfied with his record in Iraq, why does he seem compelled to lie about conditions there?" Mickleson writes:

First, I quote a bit of painful truth from Bob Herbert from the NYT 9/24/04:

The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq..... If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according to Karl Rove, you'll find that words lose even the remotest connection to reality. They become nothing more than tools designed to achieve political ends. So it's not easy to decipher what the president believes about Iraq....This is scary....the world needs more from the president of the United States than the fool's gold of his empty utterances.

When Bush lies, he is not . . . addressing people who read news or who think or who look for sense in the world. He is speaking to those who want relief from thinking, from hard decisions, from complex judgments; he's speaking to those who want a likable authority to take care of the hard stuff. He's speaking to the "my president, right or wrong" folks. He's speaking to those whose need for reassurance trumps the need for truth.

In fact, when Bush lies, he's not speaking at all. He's repeating the "empty utterances" of Rove's carefully crafted message.

I pray Kerry's handlers help him understand that the debate will have little to do with content, and everything to do with crafting the impression of an alternate "dad" whose aggression and firmness can fulfill fantasies of retaliation and imaginary protective safety.

Mickleson hits the nail on the head when she says, when Bush lies, he is speaking to those who want relief from thinking, who want essentially not to think.