Bush Naked

Is it me, or does our emperor have no clothes? Frank Rich puts it nicely:

PRESIDENT BUSH'S new Supreme Court nominee was a historic first after all: the first to be announced on TV dead center in prime time, smack in the cross hairs of "I Want to Be a Hilton." It was also one of the hastiest court announcements in memory, abruptly sprung a week ahead of the White House's original timetable. The agenda of this rushed showmanship - to change the subject in Washington - could not have been more naked. But the president would have had to nominate Bill Clinton to change this subject...

...But the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal that inspires real fear.

W lacks courage in the worst possible way (see today's Doonesbury comic strip). Unlike the Cowardly Lion who had it all along but didn't realize it, W thinks he is courageous, but in fact, is not. In reality, he is lost any connection to the integrity he and his party espouse and lost his valor long ago when he shirked his responsibility to serve in the military. The man is a shadow of the person elected and shames us all and the office.