Confidence Trick

From the powerful article everyone is quoting:

George W. Bush, clearly, is one of history’s great confidence men. That is not meant in the huckster’s sense, though many critics claim that on the war in Iraq, the economy and a few other matters he has engaged in some manner of bait-and-switch. No, I mean it in the sense that he’s a believer in the power of confidence. At a time when constituents are uneasy and enemies are probing for weaknesses, he clearly feels that unflinching confidence has an almost mystical power. It can all but create reality.

Reminds me of something Sam wrote a while ago.

All research indicates that ‘confidence’ is one of the ugliest and most addictive habits on the market today. The much-hyped benefits do not pan out, and chronic use horribly transforms the user. In its presence and in its lack, ‘confidence’ produces the most obnoxious, empty, false, boring, petulant, pathetic and downright wrong people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

This is downright dangerous for the president of the united states.