Out of control

Recall a supposition I made a while ago.

I think that Bush was originally chosen by the kingmakers of the conservative movement as an empty suit with name recognition that they could use to get their team into place in government, but once Bush was President, those same kingmakers, being conservatives, felt compelled to respect Bush's authority.

Now consider this rant from Digby at Hullabaloo about the changing of the guard in the Bush administration as we roll into year five.

This is the big story of the second term. Bush himself is now completely in charge. He did what his old man couldn't do. He has been freed of all constraints, all humility and all sense of proportion. Nobody can run him, not Cheney, not Condi, not Card. He has a sense of his power that he didn't have before. You can see it. From now on nobody can tell him nothin. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn't it?

Paranoid pop quiz time. Think about the 20^th century. Can you come up with a leader of an industrialized Western nation who rose to power as the puppet of wealthy industrialist kingmakers, but turned out to be a True Believer who those kingmakers could not control? Who plunged his nation into war? Who are you thinking of?