Is he?

The questions about Bush's mental acumen are back today, as Joe Scarborough does yet another segment on "Is Bush an 'Idiot'?", this time on the backlash. He's got a great parade of mostly familiar clips where El Presidente stumbles verbally into the microphone, and then has a GOP strategist defending Bush with such intended debate stoppers as saying that the electorate doesn't want to talk about Bush in such terms.

Uh, I've been talking about him in such terms for SIX LONG YEARS.

As with his blog entry, Joe says Conservatives in D.C. are privately questioning Bush's mental deficit, going back to Katrina and Harriet Miers. He also brings up the decline in Bush's performance over his Presidency:

But the George Bush of 2006 seems to be a far cry from the man I spoke with in 2001, or the back-slapping governor who charmed the hell out of me when I visited him in the Texas governor's mansion in 1999.

These days the President seems distracted, disjointed and dumbed-down in press conferences. His jokes fall flat and are often inappropriate.

Like maybe his highly Presidential fart jokes?

Okay, so I've found Bush to be intellectually incurious from day one. Welcome to the party Joe. But this degradation of his speaking capabilities, which was actually an issue around the 2004 election when he fell apart in the first debate and seemed unengaged with reality in the rare (Tim Russert) interview. Asperger's Syndrome, maybe? Drinking again?

The real fire-stoking idiocy event was Bush's press conference today, one of the very few he's had with reporters. Among the quotables:

You know, I'’ve heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived [in Iraq] and -- you know, the stir-up-the-hornet'’s-nest theory. It just doesn'’t hold water, as far as I'’m concerned.

The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were...

QUESTION: What did Iraqi have to do with that?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing.

He goes on to try and conflate again, saying 9/11 taught us to react to threats before they materialize, which again seems like an insane man's construct. He does the whole straw man saying that the opposition to his staying in Iraq wants to withdraw immediately -- another lie out of his lips.

There's a different wrinkle with this press conference, though, where Bush laid blame elsewhere besides his own screw-ups, as he seems to have done his entire life:

"War is not a time of joy," he said. "These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that. You know, nobody likes to see innocent people die.

Y'think?

Martin Marprelate on DailyKos thinks this is Bush's 'malaise moment' referring to when then President Jimmy Carter pronounced that the U.S. citizenry were in a malaise.

Rule #1 of strong governance: Don't blame the electorate, silly!

Writes Martin:

Make no mistake about it, this is Bush's attempt to fob off blame for his failure as the fault of American citizens' collective loss of nerve, not flawed policies he built upon a house of cards composed of lies and neo-con fantasies.

'Straining the psyche' will go down in history as a moment - like Carter's 'crisis of confidence' malaise speech or Ford's WIN buttons - that crystalized the fact that this man has no clue what he is doing or what he is up against. And that means that the rest of us are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Yep, that's just like idiot Presidente Bush to avoid all responsibility at all times. To leave it to others to clean up his train wreck. Because the worst part of the whole press conference:

Bush Tells Press U.S. Won't Leave Iraq While He Is President

Suck on that, American psyche. Suck on that.