I just visited Anne Wilson’s blog. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is always an interesting read. Her thoughts are usually insightful and entertaining.

I was surprised to read her take on President Bush’s announcement (her comments are titled “President Bush goes for fairness”). Like most people nowadays, she is against all racism and is glad President Bush took a colorblind stance. So far, so good. But she surprised me by commenting that:

It took long enough, but better late than never.

This gets back to my earlier post about people not understanding how President Bush operates. The Supreme Court accepted the case on December 2, 2002 and quickly asked President Bush for a friend-of-the-court brief. So what does President Bush do? Consistent with his modus operandi (MO), he gives his critics ample time to speak and draw false hope by mistaking President Bush’s silence for indecision. Then Bush acts as the window for filing nears closure. He wasn’t late, he was patient. This MO seems very clear to me, but continues to confuse many people. I’ve been trying to figure out why. I’m starting to wonder if it is a matter of biases. Liberals are obviously biased against President Bush and it is probably wistful thinking on their part when they predict non-action from the president. But why do conservatives also make this mistake? Perhaps they are used to politicians running as conservatives and then moving to the left? Call this a betrayal bias – so anytime President Bush doesn’t immediately come down on the conservative side, these people start waiting for the hammer to fall. If my theory is correct, only the independents in the middle actually look at President Bush without being blinded by party biases.

I’ll put my new theory to a simple test. It certainly won't prove I'm correct, but could show me if I am wrong. In statistical terms, I’m going to see if my theory has face validity. This simply means reviewing articles and blogs written by conservatives, independents, and liberals. Most of the conservative and liberal sources should be confused by President Bush’s methods, while most of the independents should not be. I’ll also contact Anne Wilson and ask for her input – from her writings I would classify her as a conservative, but she may not agree.