Today I watched C-SPAN2 Booknotes with two political psychologist authors (Stanley Renshon “In His Father’s Shadow” and Justin Frank “Bush on the Couch”) about their books and their views. The dialog made it very clear to me that there are even people of the academic, theoretically objective -- or at the very least in charge of the concept of ‘objectivity’-- that will simply abandon ethics and bend their craft’s rigor to displace George W. Bush. Attempts to apply a constant methodology and acknowledging that not everything can be known are somehow trumped by a deep seated belief that Bush is bad.
Dr. Frank is scathing in his treatment of Bush and divisively partisan in his analysis and, additionally, admits he’s being unethical, justifying it by needing to speak his mind. It’s distinctly troubling that people who take umbrage with Bush’s action as an abuse of power feel that it’s just fine to do the exact same thing. Dr. Frank deflected criticism of his analysis by using attacks and democratic talking points in the same way that he's concluded President Bush does, convincing me further that psychologists themselves project and transfer their own issues onto their "patients." How Kleinian of him. Dr. Frank also talks about Bush's anti-intellectualism and the trend of the people to be against an academic mentality, which I took to be a sideways defense of Kerry. No wonder people think academics are smug, Dr. Frank.
I found Dr. Renshon, a political scientist, to be much more analytical and critical and ultimately more explanatory about Bush's psychology. He discussed his methology and his and Bush's rationale with a lot less overt opinions than the mawkish and coy Frank.