Fear is a dangerous thing. It can make a sane man do insane things and usually in haste.

He shoots before he even identifies the target.

He runs when he would have been smarter to walk or, in some cases, stand still.

He lies without regard to the evidence, the witnesses or the probability that the web he is spinning will eventually trip him up.

He slams the door shut when he should have left it opened. 

And when fear grips an entire nation, it can trump all else -- common sense and self interest included.

For that reason, it rates as one of the Bush administration’s best friends. Fear has stricken the American public like a bad, rampaging germ and left the people dehydrated, weak and gullible.

Without fear, the president never would have gotten an okay to invade Iraq, a country that had more bark than bite and whose liberation was an afterthought once weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize.

Without fear, Bush would not have had the nerve to nominate judges with records of blatant disregard, if not disdain, for ordinary folks, especially the down-and-out.

Without fear, he would not have put up the walrusian John Bolton as the next ambassador to the United Nations -- a man who would be to the world body what a tornado is to trailer parks: a hell-bent destroyer.

Without fear, he would not have ignored environmentalists’ pleas and traded pollution for profits.

Without fear, he could not stand behind Karl Rove, no matter how much he needs him, unless he stopped caring about his legacy.

Without fear, he would not repeatedly reward his friends at the expense of good government, as in the case last week when an admitted fraudster was confirmed for a top post in the U.S. Agriculture Department.  

But fear has taken care of the only impediment an arrogant, self-righteous politician ever has to worry about, given that he is not burdened by conscience or tradition or fair play.

Once we broke a sweat over 9/11, the administration realized just how powerful a political tool fear could be. They have played The Fear Card over and over again since then.

And every time the pundits and experts think they have found some scandal or malfeasance or lie that might break the fever, fear finds another entry point on the body politic and rachets up the aches and pains anew.  I give you, for example, the London bombings.

Meanwhile, as we quake in fear of The Big One, little bombs are dropping around us daily.

More than 40 million Americans with no immunity from illness or injury have no health insurance and, hence, will get no health care until it’s often too late.

Gentrification is shoving tenants out of the cities that the middle and upper classes abandoned a couple of decades ago. And now, the low-income Americans are searching for housing they can afford -- a commodity in scarcer supply since the Bush administration cut subsidies.

While the economic “recovery” is being celebrated in certain quarters, unemployment and underemployment are still stalking black and Latino communities in the double digits.

Kids are getting ready to go back to public schools around the country where the classrooms are crowded, the supplies insufficient and the atmosphere is poisoned by hopelessness because No Child Left Behind keeps punishing schools for merely trying and not yet succeeding.

Fear has cleared the path for all of those atrocities, for all of that neglect, for all of that wrongdoing. It has left the power elite get away with so much.

Now we have a better understanding of what FDR meant when, as the U.S. stepped into World War II, he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

It eats away at a country’s backbone.