Bush / FDR: “The President doesn’t think. He decides.”
I hope this article means that Tina Brown is not getting her CNBC show. We can hope:
Blair’s complex nobility makes us feel that he is on his way to being a tragic figure, which is something Bush could never be. When they appear side by side at press conferences the disparity in quality is almost painful. There is something dense and taciturn about Bush even when he’s being charming. He has the damped-down anger of the dry drunk. When he’s not scripted, his bald answers seem to be covering up ulterior motives. His true motives are private and his own and he will tell us only whatever it takes to mollify us. He is the embodiment of a crack Eleanor Roosevelt made when a friend pressed to know what FDR thought about an issue: “The President doesn’t think. He decides.”
Indeed he does. It’s the essential job of the Presidency, for good or ill.