It's Howdy-Doody Time

The most striking aspect of the Bush administration is that, given a choice, they make the choice a five-year-old boy would make.

Which should it be, boring diplomacy, or playing war? Let's play war!

Should we stay at home and eat fresh nutritional food, or go to MacDonalds? I wanna go to MacDonalds!

Should we use our space program to launch satellites and study Earth, in the hopes of preventing global catastrophe, or go to Mars? Let's go to Mars!

Faced with the demands of others in the U.N., should we negotiate a compromise, or take our marbles and go home? Take our marbles and go home!

When every warning is blinking red, and your intelligence chiefs have their hair on fire, will you work tirelessly to prevent an attack on America, or go ride your bicycle? I'm going to ride my bicycle!

Amazingly, this plays well with Bush voters. In 2004 a correspondent to the local paper said he liked Bush because Bush reminded him of his "cowboy heroes", and went on to make it clear he wasn't referring to real cowboys, but to the cowboys he'd seen in the movies and on tv. A 50-year-old man who still hasn't figured out that his "cowboy heroes" were actors, riding through the backlots of LA film sets.

Like I said, the mentality of a five-year-old boy.