Getting into Bush's mind

Today we have Al Gore, the man who should have been president, offering his opinion on Bush's inflexibility and strength of conviction. Unlike the Ron Suskind article from this weekend, Al Gore places his finger on ideology rather than faith. I think he is plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible.

Speech transcript: http://moveonpac.org/gore5/

I tend to agree with him in some respects. The policies the Bush Administration has followed are exactly in line with the neocon agenda especially as published here: http://www.newamericancentury.org/

The Project for a New American Century (
http://www.newamericancentury.org/) is a thinktank whose founders are now mostly heading various branches of government, especially the Department of Defense. I'm talking about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, etc. It is their policies which have been enacted by the Administration.

While they claim to make their decisions and have their outlook on the world based on a deep faith, it is an ideology that drives them.

Gore claims the agenda is totally out of alignment with the majority of Americans, and points to two pillars supporting this administration's efforts. One is "the economic royalists, those corporate leaders and high net worth families with vast fortunes at their disposal" who have established a vast series of institutions, think tanks, media ownership, and more, all bent on achieving a particular agenda that suits their narrow purpose. Namely, they want to live tax-free and without regulatory obstacles to their businesses. The second pillar are social conservatives who want to undo all the social progress of the last century such as removing womens right to vote, reinstituting the segragation of african-americans, and more.

Clearly those two aims are ideological rather than religious, which is Gore's point, I'm sure.

This speech by Gore is part of a series he's given critiquing the Bush administration. Like the others I've read, this is a firebrand speech. I highly recommend it. He makes a strong case for the Bush administration ignoring evidence, ignoring reason, and being extremely bad leaders as a result.