Why it's worse than you think

Bush's egregious incompetence and radically undemocratic, dictatorial actions have been abbetted and to some degree concealed by the very fact that they are so egregious -- they defy our sense of what is possible in America, what is possible in an American president. The muddled quasi-syllogism in the background goes something like this:

America is a virtuous and reasonable nation.

The crimes and blunders that Bush has committed in America's name are neither virtuous nor reasonable.

Therefore, it's not possible that Bush has committed these crimes and blunders (i.e. there must be some other explanation).

I know it doesn't make sense -- but there you have it.

We reason (if that's the word) that things can't possibly be as bad as all that because it's too outlandish to be true. The president is so brazen, so utterly beyond the pale, that we just can't believe it. So we rationalize his actions, we minimize the real consequences of his policies, we downgrade his crimes from deliberate felonies to inadvertent misdemeanors. We end up making his case for him! The irony is almost intolerable.