]Oh, sorry, I meant superficial.  Just trying to provoke bloggers to take a read of my post.]

The recent press conference hosted by the Still-President himself is a real eye-opener.  For once, Dubya has come out unleashed by his handlers.  With Karl Rove no longer there to convince him he is as his best when he keeps his mouth shut and Dick Cheney laughing all the way to the bank declaring, "I was never the President.  It was all Dubya's doing", we are provided a version of Dubya Gone Wild!  Now we get to see what George was actually thinking.  We also get to see who he is and who he believes himself to be, which are not one in the same, at all.  How this relates to Reagan is that Reagan's Alzheimer's may have been more latent in his last years then we will ever know.  Was he "The President" or was he playing one on TV?  Who wrote those last speeches anyway?  Was it the President who delivered them, or an actor?

The issue of who Dubya is can probably be better analyzed by people trained in evaluating personalities, but I read a book once and I think I see a pattern.  Let the reader confirm or reject whether this is valid.  I see a man who places the highest importance on image.  Dubya shared a few things that he characterized as mistakes.  The Daily Show had a field day with them last night.  What was consistent with these examples was that they were all about appearance.  Dubya suggested his rhetoric was sometimes a mistake, perhaps he was referring to "Bring it on!"  He thought the "Mission Accomplished" banner was a mistake.  He thought that flying over Katrina was a mistake, but he thought landing would have been criticized as well, because resources would have been taken away from the rescue effort to protect him.  At the same time, he emphatically declared he was not concerned with popularity.

This rejection of his seeking popularity is laughable as he has recently traveled the world on what the MSM is labelling the "Legacy Tour".  He has provided more interviews in the last few weeks then probably he has given in his entire eight years in office.   It appears to be an effort to create an image for people to remember of him on his way out the door because the events of his Presidency do not make him appear in all that great a light.  Is it this concern, his appearance, that is driving him  to put so much effort into showcasing himself on every network of late? 

It has always been a consideration of mine that Reagan was a front man for the Republicans.  I could never wrap my arms around his being responsible for everything that happened on his watch.  There were too many players on the scene and too much cooperation to believe he alone pulled all the strings.  But everyone identified him as the source of all the policies that were. 

With Dubya we are seeing the same thing again.  It makes me ask whether Dubya was given the role for which he was eager to act, President of the United States.  Yet here at the end, after apparently abdicating all the power of his office to Dick Cheney and others, he has come to realize that, even though his role as Leader of the Free World was a farce, he alone will be marked with the abyssmal performance of his Administration.  Those individuals of the Reagan Administration who did so well for themselves then, have done it again, and will vanish into obscurity.  History will seldom recall them, but they have amassed great wealth, and that is no fiction.  But poor boy George, he does not have the benefit of going home to forget about it, and I think it really bothers him ... FINALLY!!!