Wead it and Reap

Mr. Doug Wead., a confidant of George W. Bush, recorded phone conversations with him from 1998 until he becamse President. He released some of them recently, and the NY Times has printed some excerpts. They make for fascinating, if frightening, reading.

For example, Bush admits trying pot, but won't say so publicly and mocks Gore for doing so. According to Bush, former drug users should lie about their past drug habits. It's a glimpse into the man's disregard for the value of truth, which we saw in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Bush: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Bush: "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don't do them."

He also shows a surprising interest in gay issues. Before it was even on the radar screen, Bush clearly says he is opposed to same-sex marriage, which he calls a "special right" (and isn't that an Orwellian phrase?) Yet at the same time he is quite unhappy that the conservative Christians are attacking gays and is upset that the evangelicals "hate" them.

Bush: "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that."

Bush: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

The scariest part is that Bush clearly believed his Presidential campaign to be a moral crusade for evangelical Christian values. Yet as his self-serving view of lying about past drug habits illustrates, Bush's belief in his own moral righteousnesse is just another example of the amazing capacity for doublethink that accompanies fundamentalism.