On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:59:29 GMT, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote:

Two theories quoted in the article were that 1) this is a facade that Bush has
adopted and 2) that the run for the presidency has simply overwhelmed him. Between
those two, I would tend to believe the first. The problem I have with the second
theory is that Bush's confidence should have been restored after years in the White
House.

Not sure. People who have dyslexia learn to deal with it. It never
goes away, but they learn how to work around it (A wonderful way to
deal with it would be to avoid reading and have people verbally brief
you, this is in fact one method of teaching dyslexics in classrooms).
Problem is, for dyslexics it's hard work to decypher each word and
sentence and say what you want to say correctly, and in a flowing
coherent fashion. People who aren't dyslexic simply cannot understand
how hard this is for them. EVERY sentence could trip you up so you
have to be on guard all the time, which is tiring in and of itself.
Bush was younger when he debated with Richards, and perhaps more
resitant to fatigue. That's just a guess.

Naturally, when you get tired, errors in speech happen. That happens
with people who are not dyslexic let alone dyslexics, or at least
that's how things work with me... ;-)

Bush said and has repeated frequently that being the president is hard
work. I believe him. I once saw closeup pictures of Kennedy,
comparing his youthful appearance at his inauguration and three years
later. He had aged dramatically. The crush of the responsibility of
leading the nation was and is intense.

Confidence should have no effect on a dyslexic. It's like saying that
confidence will help a person who has bad eyesight see better. It
won't. Fatigue, on the other hand, would have a profound effect on a
dyslexic.

I should also mention again that Bush's brother was diagnosed as being
dyslexic and dyslexia does run in families.

Corky Scott

PS, I should also mention that there are widely varying degrees of
dyslexia. Some see whole words backwards, some have trouble
differentiating between certain letters like b, d, p, q and h. To a
dyslexic, they can all look the same. Others have no problem reading,
but cannot remember what they just read, no short term memory. Still
others displace words and say: "I will there go" instead of "I will go
there". Very commonly, similar words will be mistaken, like cole slaw
for callous, or nuculer for nuclear. During one speech, Bush
repeatedly said nuculer, when he obviously meant to say nuclear. Or
at least I hope so because "nuculer" isn't a word. It doesn't make
him stupid, or slow, but it's an indicator of a language problem.

I mean honestly, why would anyone develop a facade of a language
problem? Did THAT get him elected? I sure hope not.