Cult Leader

Maybe this is in Paul Krugman's book The Great Unraveling, but I hadn't read it before:

I actually went to check and looked at a budget from the Clinton years. It’s a rather dry-looking thing with charts and tables. The [2005] Bush budget is very much short on charts and tables–it’s better not to think about what would be in them. But it has these themes, uplifting themes of various kinds and each of them is illustrated with multiple glossy color photos of Bush doing presidential-type things. Obviously you see him standing in front of a giant American flag talking about homeland security, but you also see him hiking along a mountain trail, comforting the elderly, helping children learn how to read. It really does look like something from a Communist country. You know, I joked when I wrote about it that they forgot the photo of him swimming the Yangtze River. It’s very un-American, but it fits in with Operation Flight Suit—that kind of stagecraft, that glorification of the individual leader.

Don't you see this as the kind of thing Qaddafi would do in his budget? Or Saddam Huseein? It's a little thing, but a really really scary one. The good leaders aren't usually the ones dressed up in military gear (Qaddafi, Saddam, Castro, Arafat), by the way.

Do what you can to help Get Out the Vote, will ya?