Living Inside the Bubble?

[DVaut1]

An excerpt from an article on Time - the article describes how the President's isolation may have contributed to the federal government's inadequate response to Katrina:

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"A … factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news — or tell him when he's wrong."

"Bush has never been adroit about this. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. 'The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,' the aide recalled about a session during the first term. 'Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, "All right. I understand. Good job." He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom. . .'"

"The result is a kind of echo chamber in which good news can prevail over bad — even when there is a surfeit of evidence to the contrary."

"For example, a source tells TIME that four days after Katrina struck, Bush himself briefed his father and former President Clinton in a way that left too rosy an impression of the progress made. 'It bore no resemblance to what was actually happening,' said someone familiar with the presentation."

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Two things that I found interesting in this article:

1) The Bush Admin. is (or should I say, had been?) notorious for tight discipline; strange that these kind of blind quotes are emerging (apparently from close aides) which paint the President in a negative light. Also, the inability of the White House message machine to turn the tide of criticism against the President (coupled with leaks like the ones found in this article) might point to an unraveling of message cohesiveness in the White House - again, very atypical for this White House, and worthy of consideration, IMO.

2) I think any of us who have worked in politics (or even on campaigns, or with business leaders, other authorities, etc.) know the kind of 'information' bubble that can surround candidates/elected leaders/people in power (government or otherwise), preventing them from knowing sometimes necessary information, out of fear of alerting said leaders of bad news. But I do find it troublesome, to some extent (and again, this isn't a commentary specific to the Bush administration, as he's certainly not the first politician/leader that doesn't want to hear he's wrong) - I find it troublesome that those in power after often withheld information of the most serious magnitude - and the negative consequences of such an 'information bubble' seem to have manifested themselves in New Orleans, to the detriment of many. I think the Time article has some truth to it - perhaps some of the inertia the federal government has demonstrated during the Katrina crisis might be due to (at least in some small way) this 'information bubble'. I'm not sure how correctable this is, but it's worrisome nonetheless.