adjunct to the below: on why bush never made dictator. first, as i say, he didn't have the personality for it. this might have bummed out the neo-cons, who could have better employed someone oozing charisma. too bad sarah palin showed up late. second, the disastrous conduct of the war in iraq. that's the kind of thing that has doomed many a totalitarian regime: cf. soviets in afghanistan, germans in russia, and so on. and by the end, abrupt economic decline. these are things that, despite their human cost, we should be grateful for, in that the disaster could have been worse if the power had been successfully consolidated.