TheStar.com - Bush anything but moronic, according to author

TheStar.com - Bush anything but moronic, according to author "Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."

Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.

If only. Miller's rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush's various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.

"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge.

"When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said.

"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."