THE PRESS STARTS REPORTING

TIME and NEWSWEEK start revealing the Bubble Boy:

How Bush Blew It
By Evan Thomas
Newsweek
Sept. 19, 2005 issue
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him.


Living Too Much in the Bubble?
A bungled initial response to Katrina exposed the perils of a rigid,
insular White House. Inside Bush's plan to show he isn't isolated
By MIKE ALLEN / WASHINGTON

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1103526,00.html

A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he's wrong. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, has never been mistaken for James Baker, the man who made a minor career out of setting Bush's father right. And Bush has filled a number of lesser spots around the government with political hacks and patronage candidates—most embarrassingly Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema), who was yanked from on-site supervision of Katrina on Friday.