Bursting the Bubble

Echidne has a post about Bush's splendid isolation, based upon the recent Newsweek article, "Bush in the Bubble", which appears a full three months after Time's own, and similarly titled, "President Bush: Living Too Much in the Bubble?":

Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he’s wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”

Oddly, in criticizing the Newsweek story, the Bush-friendly NewsBusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias provides the most concise litany of examples that the President "blocks out thoughts, policy suggestions, and ideas that he is either unwilling or intellectually incapable of absorbing."

As I've written before, his behavior is all-too typical of certain executive types and the organizations they tolerate around them.

Given the new "I take responsibility" line the President is pursuing, I wonder if someone new managed to get through to him. It's unlikely to have been any of the old crew. And, sadly, unlikely to have been his own idea.