Have you noticed how everytime Bush meets with some leader in this country

or theirs, he always wants to pat them on their backs and seems like he he always wants to be the last one out of the room. To me it seems as though he always wants to pretend he's in charge of everything, I know this may seem petty but I get so angry everytime I see this. When he was in Argentina he and four or five world leaders were leaving the conference he made big deal out of being the last one to leave, it started looking like they were doing the tango. The pat on the back always irritates me, I remember the first time he was on camera with Alan Greenspan, you could feel the uncomfortableness of Greenspan.

as if he is critiquing their speech. I saw him do it at the Nancy Reagan speech last week, and in the Argentina speech, except in the latter he looked out in the audience and said "good job"-I wondered who the heck he was talking to

job he's messed up everything he touches, then someone always tries to bale him out like his media buddies.

It shows what a jackass he is. Always acts like he's running the show. He's a condescending loser who's been told his whole life that he's better than everyone else.

barely socialized.

Our pResident.

sigh

library

http://hoffmania.blogspot.com/2004/11/1000-words-worth.html



Sidney Blumenthal provides the backstory of this picture in the Guardian:

LINK - John Kerry arrived to defiant cheering from the crowd. Then, when the presidents were announced, Bush tried to push his way past Clinton at the library door to be first in line, against the already accepted protocol for the event, as though the walk to the platform was a contest for alpha male.
Here are a few more classy moves from the crackhead-in-chief from Blumenthal's story.

Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W Bush library and legacy. "You're not such a scary guy," joked his guide. "Yes, I am," Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: "I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ..."
_______

Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where secret service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: "Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could take this place out."
_______

At the private luncheon afterwards, in a heated tent pitched behind the library, Shimon Peres delivered a heartfelt toast to Clinton's perseverance in pursuing the Middle East peace process. Upon entering the tent, Bush, according to an eyewitness, told an aide: "One gulp and we're out of here." He had informed the Clintons he would stay through the lunch, but by the time Peres arose with wine glass in hand the president was gone.

He wants to portray himself as the boss in charge. Now they are trying to say he set up ethics classes which that dumb bastard has needed for his whole entire term continuously.

mind when I saw this thread. I think the reason he wants to be the last to leave the room now is to give potential assassins the maximum opportunity to shoot the wrong guy.

he wants to stand where he can stab them in the back.

if they're bald and/or black.

and I 'preciate that.

from other countries....I never believe him when I see him back-slapping and glad handing these leaders...Remember how he made such a big deal about his relationship with Putin of Russia and Fox of Mexico....He and Putin are barely talking now and he doesn't talk to Fox at all...That's why I get angry when I hear any of the right wingnuts in my country (Canada) say our Prime Minister should be trying to have a better relationship with him....He doensn't really get along with anyone for very long!

Good call, butterfly77. He's not a natural "hugger" -- you can tell because whenever someone comes up and touches HIM, he acts all irritated and freezes up. There was a very revealing pic from early in his first term (2001 maybe?), when he had gone to the Annapolis graduation and one of the sailors (a young black man) impulsively hugged him. The anger and distaste on Bush's face was clear -- he tensed up and looked like he wanted to shove the sailor off the platform!

Try this sometime with a real "hugger" -- if you step up and put one or both arms around them, they will automatically reciprocate, and smile happily at you, or lean closer and relax. Totally different reactions from Bush.

After I saw that photo, I started looking very closely for other ones. And there are plenty. There are numerous pics where Bush, when meeting children or old people, is smiling with his mouth and putting his arms around them -- but his eyes are roaming around in a calculating way, searching for the next potential photo-op ("Are you getting this shot of me? Huh? Huh?)

So I've concluded that Bush touches people because he's posing for pictures and reinforcing his "regular guy" image -- and (especially in the case of powerful people) he can make them appear silly and submissive. (The insulting nicknames are another example of this.) Rubbing the head of a black reporter who has been promoted to cover a presidential campaign -- or putting a Texas legislator in a headlock (Bush did this to Elliot Naishtat, in view of other people) -- or playing the "opposite shoulder tap" game on unsuspecting GOP dignitaries when he was a young man. Bush seems to get a childish thrill out of this, because he knows that in a public situation, the people he's fooling with won't do anything so impolite as to haul off and smack him. And as he got more and more powerful, they probably were scared to! Naishtat said that you can't very well retaliate, when it's the Governor doing this to you -- and his bodyguards are standing there laughing.

Bush's delight at being so disrepectful shows in his eyes -- after he's pulled off a successful snub (mission accomplished?), he radiates happiness and smug satisfaction. He was just glowing after he'd met with Greenspan -- who seemed dismayed and subdued, as you noticed.

I have also paid attention to his interactions and have observed similar things. I'd never heard about the headlock or the Clinton Library incidents.

My conclusions are that these behaviors we've noticed are those of an emotionally abusive bully. They are designed to make others feel uncomfortable, defensive, manipulated, minimized, embarassed, ashamed and powerless.

The mid-back touching is to assert power and control. The reason it makes us instantly uncomfortable when we see it, even though it is seemingly a simple gesture, is because we know what it is really intended to convey--we feel uncomfortable because we know it is an exercise in public humiliation and one-upmanship.

You hit on something extremely important--An abusive bully uses the presence of witnesses to his advantage to assert social control over his target(s). The abusive bully manipulates the natural, polite restraint of others in a public forum and their learned reluctant to cause a scene. They also fear an escalation of aggression if they confront the abuser. This keeps his targets from overtly reacting to these uncalled-for behaviors and demanding that they stop.

An emotionally abusive person (an abusive bully) may cleverly disguses his abusive behavior under the guise that they're "just joking" or that they "meant well" or that their target is "oversensitive" or that their target "needs to learn to lighten up" or "needs to be taught a lesson" that the bully presumes they should teach.

The perpetual nicknaming he does is another common dememaning and controlling behavior of emotionally abusive bullies. They presume the right to name others and call them something other than what they want to be called.

The social control an abusive bully asserts over others by causing unnecessary social stress creates an unspoken agreement among a group to suppress knowledge of what is occurring and pretend that nothing is wrong.

If the target speaks out, the target risks being humiliated, attacked, or denied by the witnesses, because everybody needs to deny that the abuse occurred.