George W. Bush thumbs his nose at the American public more outrageously every day. Why? Is he trying to provoke us into impeaching him?
We've had the outing of Valerie Plame, the lying to cover it up, and as the cherry on top of the sundae, Scooter Libby's jail sentence commutation after being convicted for his part in the scandal.
We have hundreds of signing statements whereby the President of the United States follows behind the laws enacted by the duly elected U.S. Congress saying, "But we don't have to do that because I said so."
We have multiple Bush administration minions appearing before Congress saying "I don't know, I can't recall" or "The President says I don't have to answer that question."
I wonder what Bush's reason is for escalating his provocation of the American public?
I am a child and family therapist. I have worked in inpatient settings where we were responsible for not only administering therapeutic interventions but also daily care and behavior management.
We generally used a hierarchy of interventions with kids or teens when their behavior became problematic. Sometimes ignoring poor behavior is effective in extinguishing it. If that wasn't sufficient we might try an educational approach: "This behavior is not appropriate and here's why."
Some kids would continue to escalate their poor behaviors through all of our initial interventions. We would finally have to ask ourselves "How hard are we going to make this child work for the stronger intervention that s/he needs?" recognizing that the escalation was deliberately calculated to provoke a stronger response.
The kids who needed to provoke stronger responses sometimes had never been called on their bad behaviors. Others preferred extremely punitive responses because that's what was familiar to them. Still others had been able to provoke adults into inappropriately punitive responses and then win a "Gotcha" at the adults' abuse.
Bush certainly seems like he is trying to provoke us into impeaching him. What is Bush trying to accomplish with his escalating poor behaviors? Is there an advantage for him or the Republicans if he is impeached? What is the payoff for him?
And how far are we going to make him go with his poor behavior before we intervene in some meaningful way?