Must Read List. Must. Read. List.

This last weekend was one of the finest for the NY Times as far as I'm concerned. In the editorial board's endorsement John Kerry is more than just Anybody But Bush. They gave a detailed list of reasons why the current president does not deserve to be re-elected, as well as an optimistic view of what could be accomplished by a Kerry presidency.

Ron Suskind's article, the cover story of the NYT magazine, is a fascinating, frightening look inside Bush's decision-making "process" and the possible reaction to it by the GOP as a whole. A man who had little management skill to start with, but who once was able to seek advice, has shrunken to a petty tyrant surrounded only by those who have learned not to challenge him. Without open discussion, Bush has only his faith to guide him. Unfortunately, his faith-based world is increasingly out of touch with our reality-based world--and the GOP might not put up with it much longer.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

I think Suskind is an amazing journalist with an easygoing, likeable style. His Esquire article on Karl Rove opened my eyes long before "Bush's Brain" became popular. (BTW, I have the excellent "Bush's Brain" on DVD for Ypsilantians who are interested.) Of course, he is the author of "The Price of Loyalty." Please check him out.

Apart from the Times, you should read Paul Craig Roberts on "The Brownshirting of America." He borrows, with credit, from "What's the Matter With Kansas," by Thomas Frank (also available for loan to Ypsilantians) about the inability to debate diehard Bushies. If you've ever tried it, you quickly learn it's impossible. Denunciation, not debate, is their style.