Informant38

Since the 2000 presidential campaign, Miller has been compiling his own collection of Bush-isms, which have revealed, he says, a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He's not a moron at all � on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chr�tien agree.


But according to Miller, he's no friend.


"I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts," Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.


"Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."


Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.


If only. Miller's rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush's various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.


"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge.


"When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said.


"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."
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An example, Miller says, surfaced early in his presidential tenure.


"I know how hard it is to put food on your family," Bush was quoted as saying.


"That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to say, `Put food on your family's table' � it's because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table," Miller says.


So, when Bush is envisioning "a foreign-handed foreign policy," or observes on some point that "it's not the way that America is all about," Miller contends it's because he can't keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him.


"When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it," he said.


This, then, is why he's so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says � not because he'll say something stupid, but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels.


"He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy. He's much like Nixon. So they're very, very careful to choreograph every move he makes. They don't want him anywhere near protestors, because he would lose his temper."