It's hard to listen to George W. Bush and not think about the Wizard of Oz.
What comes to mind is the weak, fallible human being who was revealed when Toto pulled the curtain.
There, in the small booth, a small, ordinary man, not an omnipotent sorcerer, frantically yanks at levers and dials. When the ''wizard" finally admits the obvious fraud, Dorothy says, ''Oh, you're a very bad man." Replies the wizard, ''Oh, no, my dear, I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard."
Of course, ''The Wizard of Oz" -- published first in 1900 as a children's story by L. Frank Baum, then made world-famous by the classic 1939 movie starring Judy Garland -- has long been debated as political allegory.
Today, some people will see presidential adviser Karl Rove as the man behind the curtain.
But I see President Bush -- a decent, but flawed man with grandiose intentions, who is looking right now like a very bad wizard-president.
Like the wizard, he huffs and puffs in an attempt to maintain bamboozlement in the Land of Oz. But once the curtain is pulled, the people of Emerald City can never look at the fellow behind it the way they did before.
The curtain has been pulled on Bush, not by a tiny, black terrier, but by the outcome of presidential decisions and policies.
