I think it was yesterday I made the point that the shrub seems particularly adept at taking credit for success and blaming someone else for failure. What I didn't point out is that not only does that not make him very different from most people, but that there might be a good psychological, if not evolutionarily beneficial, reason for this practice.
Which would be what, you might ask? Well, since failure, especially in very important matters, tends to be psychologically debilitating and may even lead to an inability to take further action, either of a similar nature to what already failed or even any other, being able to get rid of the sense of failure by blaming someone else, makes it possible for the individual to go on and so something else--i.e. to progress.
The problem with applying this theory to the shrub and recognizing its potential benefits arises from the fact that the shrub does NOT act. Indeed, he does nothing and, if his comments to the Unity conference are to be believed, he's not even aware that he does nothing. For him belief is the beginning and end of his responsibility. He "believed" that there are WMD in Iraq, so the American military should fetch them. He "believes" that minorities should be well represented among professional journalists, but that's where his perception stops.
There are a lot of people, and the shrub I think is one of them, who make a big thing out of this being a country of laws, not men. What most of us interpret that to mean is that social decisions are incorporated in laws and those laws are then applied, regardless of the social condition of the individual concerned.
However, that's not what shrub and his cronies have in mind. To their way of thinking, if a little person runs afoul of the law and "breaks" it, he's to be punished. But, when a big or important individual or group disagree with a law, the law needs to be changed.
And that's the platform on which the shrub is running. What he really believes the President ought to be is the top law-giver (a couple of people running for governor in my state think that too), when in fact the position he holds is that of top law upholder and carry-outer.
I'm using that simplistic language intentionally because it seems that's what it's going to take to make the difference between a legislator and executive understood.
The only way the Shrub can compare himself to Kerry is by pretending that making laws is his job. It's not and Kerry knows it. In fact, I would bet that one of the reasons Kerry is angling to become the executive is because he's sick and tired of having the legislative programs he shepherded through the Congress ignored by the executive branch. Certainly his prime mentor, Teddy Kennedy, who obviously can't aspire to the Presidency himself anymore, must be sick and tired of having his policies ignored.
There are some political pundits who would have us believe that the executive has become too powerful. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the executive wants to both make the laws and carry them out and since there's usually not enough time for both, the executive functions get delegated way down the line where they get bolixed up. And if that's not what happens, then there's a horde of lobbyists who are trying to get out of the executive what they didn't get in the law and so they try the rationale that "this is what the law would be, if we had enough time to get it down" so "why not do it our way anyhow."
I actually think that Kerry is making a good start on saying what he's going to DO as president. At least the quote from his speech to the minority journalist indicated action and the clip they showed yesterday of his visit with seniors was about doing things to bring competition into the arena of prescribed medications.
If you want a specific example of the problem, take a gander on the story of the imminent release of Hamdi, the American who was taken prisoner and whom the shrub's administration tried to deprive of his civil rights by reclassifying his status as an enemy combatant. What happened there is that the executive tried to change the law until, finally, the courts had to step in to tell them that they can't do that. What a waste of resources--of the executive and the judicial branch!
Also, in the area of the DEA exercising control over prescribed pain medications, they've now had to step back and return to the medical community the right to dispense medicines as they see fit.
That the executive is taking on himself the right to make de facto law about research on stem cells and the advice people can get about reproductive matter is just plain outrageous.