dendeblogger's excellent comments to the previous post reminded me of a three articles I've recently read that relate to what he was saying. It is worrisome for me not that Bush doesn't articulate the administration's view, but that no one in the administration finds it necessary to present the view in any depth.

Bush the Fool: Shame on You
by Mark Crispin Miller

Sure, it's funny, even the toadies of the TV news were chuckling over it. But let's not laugh so long and hard that we don't notice what that moment really tells us. That gaffe did NOT reveal that Bush is simply stupid. In fact, it tells us something much more worrisome.
Inarticulate, and proud of it
By James Carroll, 8/27/2002

''I'M A PATIENT man,'' President Bush said the other day. He was dressed in cowboy clothes. ''And when I say I'm a patient man,'' he added, somewhat impatiently, ''I mean I'm a patient man.'' The president was responding to reporters' attempts to make sense of the administration's scorching but confusing rhetoric about Iraq. His declaration of patience amended his declarations of war, seeking to douse expectations of imminent attack while promising that hostile action will come eventually.

Joshua Micah Marshall
Talking Points Memo
Everybody's favorite Orwell text is his 1946 essay 'Politics and the English Language.' I wouldn't be foolish enough to try to summarize it. But one key point of the essay is that vagueness, euphemism and abstraction abet muddled thinking, evasions of responsibility, and lies. Put it another way: There is a tight connection between clear thinking and clear language. And clear thinking and clear speech are the beginning of, or at least the handmaidens of, honest thinking and honest speech.