A humiliated child shall lead them?

Fascinating interview last week between Tina Brown, on CNBC's Topic A, and Bernard-Henri Levy, French intellectual/philosopher/writer, most recently author of "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville" (Atlantic Monthly, May 2005).

Levy commented with enthusiastic approval on our election processes, saying that contrary to what some Europeans might believe, the atmosphere was not at all "carnivalesque," but rather involved "strong, intense debate," proof of the "vitality of American democracy."

Inevitably, of course, he was asked his opinion of George W. Bush; what follows is a transcript:

Q. What is your opinion of him?

A. A punished child. A man — a strange man — surely not the devil, absolutely not. This is ridiculous. The way the French people saw him, as the embodiment of the Devil, is absurd.

But there is something so — so strange, like — The French writer Bernan Nosse (phonetic sp.) wrote a book about "les enfants humiliees" — humiliated children; George Bush is something like an humiliated child.

Maybe when he was in Yale, maybe he was not the most brilliant of his generation; maybe he was not the most promising young man; maybe — I don't know, there is some humiliation in the back of this mind and in the bottom of this character. This is what struck me. In the eyes, in the face. Not at all the imperious and arrogant man, I suppose.

Q. So you think the swagger is misleading?

A. Yes, I think so. A sort of, you know, you brag a lot where you have something missing. This was my impression.