Sullivan on Reagan’s Bind

Brad DeLong points us to this post from Andrew Sullivan in which, DeLong says, Sullivan expresses a "Claude Rains moment" of clarity. Here's what Sullivan writes:

BUSH IS OUT OF IT: On the budget, this president is frighteningly unaware of the reality of his own legacy and policies. That's the only conclusion you can draw from his answers on Tim Russert. Either that, or he really is lying.

That, in a nutshell, is what we've been calling "Reagan's Bind."

Sullivan has been among President Bush's staunchest defenders online. Time and again, when Bush has said something that wasn't true, Sullivan has been among those who have argued that this doesn't prove he was lying — he may simply be misinformed, intelligence/economics isn't an exact science, etc.

But it seems that yesterday, watching the president "unfiltered" on Meet the Press, Sullivan had the same frightening realization that I did: this guy has no idea what's going on.

This later post from Sullivan expands on the discomfort he felt watching the interview: "I wasn't so much outraged by his complete detachment from reality as unnerved."

And Bush's response to criticism about the disturbing gaps in his military service record seems to have done what Michael Moore and The Boston Globe and, well, all the reporting rounded up here by Dave Niewert couldn't do — convince Sullivan that this criticism might be true:

It occurs me to that, on this question, he might have nothing more to say. The criticism might well be right. Gulp.

DeLong thinks this amounts to "a full 100 percent Road to Damascus moment" for Sullivan. It will be interesting to see, in the coming days, if this is true (and if there is really an Ananias to take the scales from Sully's eyes). Sullivan's point-by-point response to the MTP interview indicates that DeLong may be right. The following, at least, indicates some clear vision:

We have a few options here: The president doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's lying, or he trusts people telling him lies. But it is undeniable that this president is not on top of the most damaging part of his legacy–the catastrophe he is inflicting on our future fiscal health. …

… if this is the level of coherence, grasp of reality, and honesty that is really at work in his understanding of domestic fiscal policy, then we are in even worse trouble than we thought. We have a captain on the fiscal Titanic who thinks he's in the Caribbean.