Who's in charge here?

I'm reluctant to bring up the following. Many people will dismiss it as Bush bashing. But I would argue, "far from it!" The reason I choose to talk about our president's pathology is out of concern for him as an individual, but more specifically, we as a nation (and everyone else as a world).

We are being led by an individual who is deeply disturbed. Yes, that's my opinion, but it's also the opinion of some professionals in the mental health field.

President Bush is described as affable, charismatic, a strong leader in times of trouble. A few use different descriptions like insecure, pompous, an irrational rationalizer, megalomaniac. These are all characteristics of an ill person, a sociopath in need of help.

During the red alert on Wednesday, May 11th, VP Cheney was whisked to safety in an undisclosed location and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was literally lifted out of her shoes by secret service agents who spirited her away as others were evacuating the capitol.

Meanwhile, President Bush was riding his bicycle at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

Secret Service agents chose not to inform the President of what was going on around him until after the alert was over! Perhaps it is just more of the "kid gloves" with which everyone handles Bush. Or, as suggested in Justin A. Frank's book, "Bush on the Couch," the President's compulsive need to exercise is part of his pathology. What follows are outtakes re Bush's need to sweat from Dana Milbank's Washington Post article the day after Bush bike rode through a red alert unaware:

"It was not the first time a crisis has focused uninvited attention on the Bush fitness routine. On a weekday morning in February 2001, when a gun-wielding man was shot outside the White House, it quickly emerged that Vice President Cheney was working in his office, while Bush was exercising in his residence.

"...the president, while scaling back the golf outings, has made little effort to conceal his more cardiovascular activities -- inviting reporters on occasion to go running with him and, after his knees worsened, to go mountain biking.

"Bush told Runner's World magazine in 2002 that his running times 'have become faster right after the war began.' He added: 'For me, the psychological benefit is enormous. You tend to forget everything that's going on in your mind and just concentrate on the time, distance or the sweat.'" (emphasis mine)

Did the Secret Service opt to handle the alert situation with tact and caution, so as not to disturb the President's obsessive need to perspire?

Or perhaps they felt no need to bother him, knowing the real president had been spirited to safety.