Corky Scott wrote:

Gail Sheehy wrote an article about Bush for Vanity Fair during his
first run to the presidency. In the article (among several other
things) she explored the possibility that Bush was dyslexic.

The Atlantic ran an article by James Fallows in the July/August issue. In it he
compared the debating styles of Bush and Kerry. As research, he watched hours of
videos of old debates. He was amazed at the debate between Bush and Ann Richards.

"This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated
sentences and brought them to the correct grammatical conclusions. ... More striking,
he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent
mangled new ones."

He continues later -- "I have read and listened to speculations that there must be
some organic basis for the President's peculiar mode of speech - a learning
disability, a reading problem, dyslexia or some other disorder that makes him so
uncomfortable when speaking off the cuff. The main problem with these theories is
that through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate."

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.

During the following months, one physician wrote in to the Atlantic to point out that
the only organic condition that would cause this sort of change of which he was aware
is pre-senile dementia.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.