The boy in the bubble

Time magazine on what may be a contributing factor to the disconnect on Katrina:

A … 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."

"Bush has never been adroit about this. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. 'The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,' the aide recalled about a session during the first term. 'Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, "All right. I understand. Good job." He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom. . .'"

"The result is a kind of echo chamber in which good news can prevail over bad — even when there is a surfeit of evidence to the contrary."

"For example, a source tells TIME that four days after Katrina struck, Bush himself briefed his father and former President Clinton in a way that left too rosy an impression of the progress made. 'It bore no resemblance to what was actually happening,' said someone familiar with the presentation."

And an example. Bush, on the Gulf Monday,was asked about Michael Brown's resignation from FEMA. The pool report:

The president stopped to talk to the pool outside a one story school being repaired, just after 2 pm CDT. He made no news at the 28th Street Elementary School.

Asked about Mike Brown resigning, he said he hadn't spoken to Chertoff or Brown, but will be on AF One.

"Maybe you know something I don't know," he said of Brown.

"There will be plenty of time to figure out what went right and what went wrong. There's time to try to blame somebody but they want to get their lives back together."