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What's on my mind

Thinking like the president

BY Jack Rothman

President Bush is convinced the war in Iraq is proceeding well despite daily reports of a growing and deadly insurgency. For the longest time he remained adamant that Saddam Hussein possessed ominous weapons of mass destruction, though thousands of American troops found nothing. He is resolute that tax cuts for the wealthiest are enriching the poor. In the recent pre election debates, he couldn't dredge up one real mistake he had made. Looking at this wall of certitude and realizing that Bush's second inauguration as president is upon us, my mind drifted back to a time when my son was 4 years old.

Dan seemed happy at preschool, but came back every afternoon with tales of Sam, the new "girl" in his class. His reports were perplexing. We were told that Sam liked to shoot toy pistols, get into pushing matches with boys and talk about sports incessantly. "Are you sure the name is Sam?" we asked. "Are you sure Sam is a girl?" Dan was sure.

It wasn't until we attended the school Christmas/Chanukah holiday program that the mystery was solved. Sam's hair grew down the back of his neck and touched his shoulders. The long tresses, together with unisex clothing (it was the mid 60s), convinced our 4-year-old with rock bottom certainty that his good friend was of the female persuasion. Like George Bush, Dan was trying to grasp a nuanced situation that was contrary to what he thought it was or wanted it to be. When it's hard to grasp and control your surroundings, your mind holds fast to things it is convinced it knows.

This has a long history. Scientists continued to believe the Earth was flat years after Copernicus_ astronomical discoveries, and doctors went on with bloodletting cures long after Pasteur proved the germ theory. Communications researchers call it "selective hearing" when audiences take in that part of a message that agrees with their outlook and screen out other parts that don_t mesh. It helps us keep our stock of familiar and soothing beliefs in order, as when public health campaigns fail because many people simply tune out discomforting data, whether about cigarette smoking or overeating.

Back to that long ago December. While putting Dan to bed that night I asked him to inquire of Sam the next day whether he was a girl or a boy. Dan consented, thereby serving incontrovertibly as the agent of his own enlightenment. The best thing, I thought, would be to get him to directly confront the object of his confusion so that he could find the uncluttered truth. The following evening, I asked Dan if he had talked to Sam. He replied affirmatively. "Well, is Sam a boy or a girl?" I pressed on. Dan replied shyly: "A boy." I was elated. My strategy had worked. But I wanted the lesson to sink in. "How do you know?" I quizzed. Dan's reply was earnest and direct: "She told me."

Both Dan and Bush were looking for certainty and a kind of personal steadfastness — when in fact they were confounding their understanding of reality. This can cause warped perception within, not to mention folly or much worse in dealing with the world without. I look with trepidation on Bush's inauguration, realizing that our powerful eminences are in no way immune from the foibles of small boys.

Rothman is professor emeritus of social welfare in the School of Public Affairs.