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Obviously, I don't personally know the man, but whenever I saw Dan Barlett on television the predominant image in my mind was that of an empty-eyed and soulless apparatchik, not a speaker of truth: the president is always right; his policies are always the correct course of action.
The one significant time Bartlett prevailed on Bush to characterize the administration in a less than honorable light was in the aftermath of Katrina. But where was Bartlett during the early stages of that disaster when his "truth telling" might have done some good? A Newsweek article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek/page/0/) from the time tells us.
"Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him." And, "[w]hen Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority."
