Immutable Maureen

It's been quite a while since I've commented on a Maureen Dowd column.

Actually, it's been a while since I've read one of her columns, mainly because I've grown bored with the grande dame of the kook fringe Left.

The title of her Wednesday column, "The Immutable President," did catch my attention. I wondered what her latest bizarre analysis of the President would include, so I decided to read it.

I didn't get very far before I was gagging. Even her first sentence is a joke.

It's too bad President Bush spurns evolution - both in his view of the universe and his view of himself.

Scientists see more and more evidence that human evolution not only exists but is ongoing, as people adapt to changing circumstances with shifts in everything from skin color to the protein structure of sperm.

But with W., it's more a matter of survival of the stubbornist.

How stupid!

Bush isn't anti-evolution, in his view of the universe or himself.

He did undergo a life-altering change at forty. Doesn't that count?

To claim that Bush is "immutable" is just lame.

Maybe Dowd had trouble churning out this week's column, so she had to make stuff up. Wait. That can't be it. She always makes stuff up.

...In a press conference at the White House with his rogue puppet, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Bush explained that 'our strategy is to remain on the offense, including in Baghdad.' Then why, after three and a half years, does our offense look so much like a defense?

"Rogue puppet"?

Maliki isn't Bush's puppet.

If he's a puppet, then he's run amok, like Chucky.

I think it would be odd for a puppet to claim that American troops were committing acts of violence on innocent Iraqi civilians and it was a "daily phenomenon."

On June 1, 2006, he said the troops "do not respect the Iraqi people" and that Americans "crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion."

That's doesn't appear to be a puppet dance to me.

Much has been made of Maliki's refusal to condemn Hezbollah. Horrified Dems (I prefer sleazy political opportunists) are holding press conferences and issuing press releases and organizing boycotts to condemn Maliki's lack of condemnation.

Tony Snow points out that Maliki is NOT the President's puppet.

"Let me try to explain democracy to people on Capitol Hill. It involves such rights as free speech and freedom of opinion. And the president is not a puppeteer in this case," said spokesperson Tony Snow.

"He's not pulling the strings of Prime Minister Maliki.

"Prime Minister Maliki is the duly elected leader of a sovereign state, and as a result, he has his rights to his opinions," Snow told reporters.

Some opposition Democrats said that Maliki's invitation to address a joint session of the US congress, a rare privilege, should be rescinded unless the prime minister echoed US criticisms of the Shi'ite militia group.

"Some Democrats on Capitol Hill seem to be determined to try to tell him what he needs to say," scolded Snow.

"If they want to sit it out, I think it's their loss."

I think this is why I don't read Dowd's columns.

They're so messed up.

Nearly every sentence can be ripped apart. In the interest of time and my sanity, I'll skip down to the final paragraphs.

The president sees Lebanon as a test of macho mettle rather than the latest chapter in a fratricidal free-for-all that's been going on for centuries. "I view this as the forces of instability probing weakness," he said. "I think they're testing resolve."

Taking out Hezbollah, something that Lebanon agreed to do under UN Security Council resolution 1559, isn't a test of "macho mettle."

Dowd is clueless.

It seems that she examines things with a lens that completely distorts reality. She relies on weird Dr. Phil psychobabble, making strange gender-related generalizations.

The more things get complicated, the more W. feels vindicated in his own simplified vision. The more people try to tell him that it's not easy, that this is a region of shifting alliances and interests, the less he seems inclined to develop an adroit policy to win people over to our side instead of trying to annihilate them.

If anyone has a simplified vision, it's Dowd. She's been spewing the same trash about Bush for years. "Bush is dumb" -- that's a very simple vision.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that she has no vision at all when it comes to Bush. She's blind.

Bill Clinton, the Mutable Man par excellence, evolved four times a day; he had a tactical and even recreational attitude toward personal change. But W. prides himself on his changelessness and regards his immutability as the surest sign of his virtue. Facing a map on fire, he sees any inkling of change as the slippery slope to failure.

That's what's so frustrating about watching him deal - or not deal - with Iraq and Lebanon. There's almost nothing to watch.

It's not even like watching paint dry, since that, too, is a passage from one state to another. It's like watching dry paint.

Dowd's Clinton idolatry creeps me out. It really does.

A "recreational attitude toward personal change"?

I don't want to think about Clinton and his "recreational" anything.

Back to Dowd and Bush--

She charges Bush with either refusing to change or being incapable of it. That's nuts.

What Dowd doesn't understand is that 9/11 demanded change. We were in denial before. Now, we're not. At least some of us aren't.

Dowd doesn't get it. She doesn't understand Bush because she doesn't understand the enemy -- Islamofascists. What she cites as immutability, I see as resolve and determination.

The real problem with Dowd's analysis is that she casts Bush as the enemy.

So what else is new?


Immutable Maureen.