the arrogant little man

This is an excerpt from the Washington Post on Thursday, August 18, 2005:

When the War Won't Stay at Bay
With Bush and the public insulated from Iraq, Cindy Sheehan has moral authority.
By Peter Beinartp. A21

”…But if Sheehan's vigil says something important about Iraq, it also says something important about President Bush. Sheehan, after all, has only one demand: She wants to confront the president face to face. The demand is so provocative because one of George W. Bush's defining qualities is his aversion to exactly this sort of challenge. Former administration officials portray a president carefully shielded from unpleasant or dissonant information. According to former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman, "There is a palace guard, and they want to run interference for him." Former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill described Bush as "caught in an echo chamber of his own making, cut off from everyone other than a circle around him that's tiny and getting smaller and in concert on everything."
And while this cocoon may be partly the work of zealous aides, there's reason to believe it is exactly what Bush wants. In 2004 the president told a Washington Times reporter that he doesn't watch news on TV or even read the newspaper except to scan the front page. "I like to have a clear outlook," he explained. "It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterization, which simply isn't true."
Bush clearly dislikes being challenged by reporters. In his first term, he held fewer individual news conferences than any president in almost a century. And he dislikes being challenged by his political competitors -- as the country learned during last year's first presidential debate, when Bush repeatedly scowled during John Kerry's answers. In fact, Bush aides were so scrupulous in shielding him from criticism during the campaign that they routinely expelled people wearing Kerry paraphernalia from ostensibly public rallies.
On Iraq, officials bearing bad news have been similarly expelled. When Gen. Eric Shinseki suggested the occupation might require several hundred thousand troops, the Pentagon hastily announced his replacement, rendering him a lame duck. National Economic Council director Lawrence Lindsey lost his job soon after telling the Wall Street Journal that the war could cost up to $200 billion. Had the Bush administration heeded these warnings -- rather than punishing the people delivering them -- America would be far better off today.…”
Bush is pretty incredible.
Imagine, being the leader (not if I could have helped it) of a country and being able to just blatantly ignore any bad news. Live under a rock, so to speak.
The reason he is so arrogant is that he will not let reporters challenge him, he will not let the feelings and concerns of his constituents bother him.
Whether or not we accept the fact that Bush is the president (which I must accept but will not herald), he must accept the fact that each and every American is one of his constituents. This is a democracy, in theory, a government ran with the intent to recognize the needs of constituents.
Bush refuses to consider the American people in his each and every decision. But even bolder than that, he refuses to hear their pain, frustration, needs, wants, feelings, hopes, wishes, dreams…well, he will listen if they meet his needs.
Bush refuses to meet with Sheehan because of his inability to hear the truth, because of his incapability of putting a name or face on the damage he has done, because of his arrogance and because he is not a president of the people, he is a president of himself.