[Futurework] O'Neill on Bush

[Keith Hudson]

There was an intriguing item on BBC Radio 4 this morning concerning 
ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's adverse comments on G.W. Bush. These 
arose from a TV interview in the US and perhaps an FWer might be able to 
source this more accurately and flesh it out. O'Neill is no doubt piqued by 
being sacked by Bush so peremptorily three or four months ago but, 
nevertheless, what he says about Bush conforms exactly with what I've 
picked up from seeing and hearing Bush on TV -- and, of course, what a 
number of other people whose opinions I respect say about him.

O'Neill describes Bush, when meeting with his team, as being a blind man 
leading deaf men. He says that when Bush appointed him as Treasury 
Secretary, he seemed totally detached and didn't ask him a single question.

I have no animus against Bush as a person. It is just that he is a person 
of such pathetically limited abilities that he ought not to be a leader of 
a large and powerful nation. Thank goodness he is so limited in 
intelligence and experience that he does as he is told by others. The 
problem is that his chief mentors and manipulators, Cheney and Bush Senior, 
refuse to be questioned in the normal way that one expects in a democracy, 
so one can't examine what are the real reasons for their decisions.

The way that political leaders are now increasingly chosen according to 
their performance on TV augurs badly for the future of the nation-state and 
suggests that our electoral procedures have reached the end of their 
usefulness.

KH

Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>

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