The virtues of narcissism, at least for a president

On this fine day, Christmas Eve eve (one more shopping day left!), Timothy Noah, who writes "Chatterbox" for Slate, offers a good explanation for Bush's Bushisms and his inability to answer questions by the press. What I find most interesting is that Noah finally calls out what allows Bush to not only ignore questions about how realistic is his big reforms are(read: HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR ALL THIS?) but deflect the questions because he doesn't want to "debate" himself in public (how about in private then?)

Noah writes, assuming the role of Bush:

"What 'I' get to do, as president, is make promises that I know perfectly well can never be kept, and then to make Congress break those promises for me. I don't have to change 'the principles I believe in' because I know more responsible people in the government will violate them and take the blame.

"Those 'principles,' then, are really nothing more than the narcissism of a spoiled child. Why a Congress controlled by Bush's own party is willing to put up with this infantile buck-passing is anybody's guess. But it's time for the rest of us to recognize that when Bush says he can privatize Social Security cost-free, he's just putting his vanity on display. He only believes it because he can rely on his political allies not to."

You know who's really happy about all this smugness? The Chinese government because they own the American government's debt, all the billions and trillions dollars worth of it.