The "Unacceptable" President

The WaPo has a story about GWB's increased use of the word "unacceptable" as he becomes more frustrated and has less influence on the world around him. It's almost as if BushCo's ability to "create reality" isn't quite so successful as once imagined and the collision of "the bubble" with hard reality is proving to be irritating to the "Bubble Boy".

President Bush finds the world around him increasingly "unacceptable."

In speeches, statements and news conferences this year, the president has repeatedly declared a range of problems "unacceptable," including rising health costs, immigrants who live outside the law, North Korea's claimed nuclear test, genocide in Sudan and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Bush's decision to lay down blunt new markers about the things he deems intolerable comes at an odd time, a phase of his presidency in which all manner of circumstances are not bending to his will: national security setbacks in North Korea and Iraq, a Congress that has shrugged its shoulders at his top domestic initiatives, a favorability rating mired below 40 percent.

But a survey of transcripts from Bush's public remarks over the past seven years shows the president's worsening political predicament has actually stoked, rather than diminished, his desire to proclaim what he cannot abide. Some presidential scholars and psychologists describe the trend as a signpost of Bush's rising frustration with his declining influence.

[...]

Moisés Naím, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, said there is a relationship between "how strident and extreme" the language of many leaders is and how limited their options are. For Bush, Naím said, "this comes at a time when the world is convinced he is weaker than ever."

Many foreigners think the United States is losing Iraq and are no longer in awe of U.S. military might, Naím said, and at home, Bush is so weak that Republican candidates are wary of appearing with him. "The world has noticed," Naím said. "What is happening is that a lot that was deemed unacceptable [by Bush] now has become normal and tolerable."

UPDATE:

Washington D.C. (Whiskey Bar News Service) -- The White House today angrily denounced a Washington Post story pointing to a sharp increase in President Bush's use of the word "unacceptable" to describe things and events he doesn't like.

The story, which was based on an analysis of presidential speeches and transcripts over the past six years, suggested Bush's use of the word is "a signpost of Bush's rising frustration with his declining influence."

A White House spokesman said the story was "unacceptable."