At yesterday’s White House press briefing<\/a>, a reporter asked Tony Snow a question that I’ve been anxious to hear for quite a while: “[T]he President has been determined, he’s been resolved, and nobody questions that, but does he get it? I mean, is he fundamentally out of touch with what the reality is on the ground in Iraq?”<\/p>\n The answer was a classic. (TP has the video<\/a>)<\/p>\n “No, I think what happens is, we may be out of touch with reality because we sit around and we look at fractional pictures on the screen. This is a President who gets exhaustive briefings on a daily basis about the situation. He knows more than anybody in this room about what’s going on there. And as Commander-in-Chief, he also has solemn and important obligations to deal with the situation properly, as the Commander-in-Chief, and as somebody who is committed to a way forward that’s going to create the independent and free and democratic Iraq.<\/p>\n “So the President does get it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ideally, this might make some sense. Of course a president is going to receive more information than the public and the media. A president receives highly classified briefings to which no one else is privy. Snow is right to argue that the scope of the information a president receives is massive.<\/p>\n The problem, though, is that this<\/i> president is unique. For that matter, for a guy who “knows more than anybody in this room about what’s going on there,” he has a funny way of showing it.<\/p>\n * As recently as October, Bush insisted that we’re “absolutely<\/a>” winning in Iraq.<\/p>\n * Bush likes to characterize himself<\/a> as a modern-day Truman.<\/p>\n
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\nBush may receive extensive and informative briefings, for example, but there’s no reason to believe he’s engaged by what he hears. The president received a pretty interested briefing in August 2001 about Osama bin Laden and a potential attack on the U.S., prompting Bush to tell his briefer<\/a>, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”<\/p>\n