Because he is a pathological liar.

I don’t think it is at all pathological. It’s very rational and strategic. “He” [rather, his administration] lies in advance and hope the lie comes true. It’s the ‘big lie.’ Masculine and potent, one lies big to get others to comply with your will. (Unlike the weaseley lie told, e.g., by an adulterer to keep out of trouble…a lie that harms few–but it doesn’t indicate power and thus draws the wolves.)

In this kind of lie, if you are thinking about the future at all, you are hoping exposure turns out favorably enough to make your lies insignificant or acceptable. E.g., you think it might be likely there are some WMD so you cook the evidence and then assume you can ‘make up for it’ later.

These kind of lies are effective (esp. given the short attention span of the media/public) and I actually think they are sometimes even expected–but not to this degree. They overused lying.

The Bush administration is really making me doubt whether the argument in The Prince could ever work…or else maybe they aren’t Machiavellian enough?

Well, as Bush himself says, he doesn’t “do nuance.” These are the lies of officials who think they don’t have to care, and they don’t. The blatantness causes my neuronal junctions to flare out. Where does their certaintude come from? Why are they so convinced they don’t have to care? Who do they believe is protecting them, and who is protecting them?

The Bush administration is really making me doubt whether the argument in The Prince could ever work…or else maybe they aren’t Machiavellian enough?

Bingo!

Hence the “Mayberry Machiavellis” sobriquet, a sneering rejoinder to the clumsy attempts by this administration to be master manipulators.

I think Miel and Miss Authoritiva have nailed it down. I also think that Bush never made it into the higher stages of moral development (www.nd.edu/~rbarger/kohlberg.html), and he’s somewhere in between the stage of “right behavior means acting in one’s own best interests” and “do what will gain the approval of others.” I think that expecting full moral development from a rich kid who spent the years he should have been growing up in an alcohol and drug-fueled haze and getting bailed out of scrapes by his family, is unrealistic — but I guess some voters don’t think that having a President who has developed to the moral stage of “has a genuine interest in the welfare of others” is all that important.

Could it be…SATAN?!

Yes, Bill S., I think you have named it. It’s probably the only thing shrubya has ever been right about – we are indeed fighting evil. Is he correct about WHO is the evil one? Sadly, no.