A New Reality is Coming

A senior Republican Adviser to President George W. Bush was interviewed by Ron Suskind. This excerpt from Suskind's report tells us a great deal about the people and the mindset of the out-going American President and his administration. It also may be key to understanding why Americans will break the Republican hold on government tomorrow.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Excerpt from:
Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush
By RON SUSKIND


Published: October 17, 2004

Amazingly, this report explains so much about where we are on the eve of this election.

Why are we so hungry for change?
Why was a faith based know-nothing picked for VP?

Read this article and then vote.

If you're not American, read this article and then watch the election returns tomorrow. I promise it will make viewing more interesting.

The terms of political discussion in America have changed. The framing of political issues and American foreign policy are about to be re-modeled.

America's conservatives find themselves unable to persuade the populace with the language and ideology they have become addicted to.

Barack Obama is a master of modern political campaigning.

I read this article when it was first published and have seen it quoted and misquoted repeatedly. I post it here, in hopes that it will help make this touchstone bit of reporting on the George W. Bush Presidency more readily available.