SmithAntics

Today’s column from the indispensable Maureen Dowd is friggin’ terrifying.

Like his father, Mr. Bush prefers more elemental means of self-expression than the verbal. (Not long before the first gulf war, Bush senior's masseuse told a client that the president's neck was so tight, she assumed we were going to war.)

The younger Bush, suspicious of Clintonesque dialectical fevers and interminable analyses, did not bother to ask most of his top advisers what they thought. The less Dick Cheney talked, the more power Mr. Bush entrusted in him.

Like the silent, cool-hand cowboy he aspires to be, who would shoot a man just because he didn't like the way the varmint was looking at him, the president preferred doing gut checks, visually sizing up advisers and Saddam, rather than dwelling on pesky facts.

Snip

The president explained to Mr. Woodward that he had wanted to talk to Tommy Franks in person about the Iraq war plan. " `I'm watching his body language very carefully,' Mr. Bush recalled. He emphasized the body language, the eyes, the demeanor. It was more important than some of the substance. . . . `Is this good enough to win?' he recalled asking Franks, leaning forward in his chair and throwing his hand forward in a slicing motion at my face to illustrate the scene."

Snip

When George Tenet was telling a dubious president that the W.M.D. "evidence" would be there when he needed it, he knew how to physically underscore his point. "Tenet, a basketball fan who attended as many home games of his alma mater Georgetown as possible, leaned forward and threw his arms up again. `Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk!' "

When the president at long last informed his top diplomat that he was going to war, Colin Powell could tell from the president's body language that there was no point in arguing: "It was the assured Bush. His tight, forward-leaning, muscular body language verified his words."

Snip

Soon, these people had the problem of the body language of more than 700 dead soldiers. Some persuasive non-body language is way overdue.

Comforting thought for the day: These guys have the keys to the nukes.