During the campaign the press delighted in pointing out George's multitudinous malapropos and scuttled syntax. I have to believe that it was part of a planned image coming as it did at the end of the Presidency in which a flawed scholar and policy wonk was repeatedly successful in getting the electorate to overlook his repeated straying from the mores to which we all give lip service. The Bush campaign judged, and accurately too, that the public was weary with a too smart President and wanted one more like themselves. The game plan worked, at least in enough States to make the thinner than a hair margin in Florida - or the Supreme Court - decisive. Even his nickname "Dubya" enhanced the image of an amiable dunce just smart enough to surround himself with advisors with some measure of talent. We were programmed to say, "Poor George" when he stumbled over a phrase or word of more than two syllables.

By the time of the inaugural the image makers were so successful and our expectations so low that any address in which he did not stumble and fall flat on his face while walking to the podium would be accepted as a feat of linguistic legerdemain. We bought the President as Amiable Dunce thoroughly. Perhaps he won't do much but at least he wouldn't do much harm. Charm and family values had replaced charm and …well you know what went with charm in the 90s.

It's a year later and the Bush Administration has built its record and we need to take a closer look at the Amiable Dunce. He is showing himself to be a malignant mental midget surrounded with syncopates devoted to protecting the Pioneers investment in the Presidency. The one exception, Secretary of State Colin Powell, is increasingly on the outside looking in. The rest of the cabinet are busy dismantling the 20th Century and trying to revisit the good old days of Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan and William Randolph Hearst while the Vice President, Halliburton's loan of brains to the Administration, keeps his undisclosed Enron notes in his undisclosed location.

Speaker Hastert, sitting at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue is proclaiming that if Congress puts an end to cash and carry government it will mean the end of the Republican Party as we know it - and presumably therefore be a victory for the terrorists. Attorney General Ashcroft is not quite ready to blow up the Spirit of Justice like the Taliban blew up Buddha, but he is quite ready to draw a drape around the Bill of Rights lest an excess of American freedom and equality diminish National Security. Over at Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson is transmogrifying the scientific term "fetus" into "unborn person" - what's next, "un-conceived persons" - after all sperm and eggs are living human tissue too. Whatever they do they justify it in the name of National Security.

Mr. Ming says, "I don't let the tail wag this Dog."