Paul Kiel April 2, 2007, 2:37 PM

Matthew Dowd, principled dissenter? Or grieving, over-protective parent driven mad by heartbreak?

Yesterday, Matthew Dowd, a former top strategist for Bush, publicly broke wtih the administration in The New York Times. His reasons were clear from the piece: Bush, he said, had become more “secluded and bubbled in.” And he cited a series of President’s Bush’s blunders (Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the war in Iraq) to explain his loss of confidence in Bush’s leadership.

But Jim Rutenberg, the author of the piece, also wrote that Dowd’s was an “intensely personal story of a political operative who at times, by his account, suppressed his doubts about his professional role but then confronted them as he dealt with loss and sorrow in his own life.” Ruternberg noted that “in the last several years, as he has gradually broken his ties with the Bush camp, one of Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for deployment to Iraq as an Army intelligence specialist fluent in Arabic.”

The White House, in reacting to Dowd’s criticism, has chosen to focus on the personal nature of Dowd’s break.

On Face The Nation yesterday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said that Dowd was “going through personal turmoil” and that having a son in Iraq “can only impact a parent’s mind as they think through these issues.”

White House spokesperson Dana Perino amplified that talking point today, emphasizing Dowd’s “personal hardship” and that “war brings out a lot of emotions in people.” As you can see on the video, when challenged by reporters on this (“It’s really about him and not about you, about the president and the White House and the things that he’s seen go wrong?”) Perino went into a death spiral of talking points, almost losing her way in the middle of a meandering sentence.

Late Update (4/3): And President Bush piled on during his press conference today.

George Bush