Without a doubt, the wrong leader

Former Bush treasury secretary Paul O’Neill on George W. Bush:

“a blind man in a room full of deaf people”

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush:

“I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” “This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts, he truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.”

Democratic senator Joe Biden:

“I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad, and I was telling the president of my many concerns. Mr. President, how can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?” Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ’‘My instincts,’’ he said. ’‘My instincts.’’ Biden said “Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”

Source: NY Times – Without a doubt