Stupid is as Stupid Does
Is George W. Bush really an idiot? It's debateable, of course. There's all those great Bushisms, but then I recently read that his IQ is above average.
Jon Stewart has said he doesn't think Bush is dumb at all. The president went to Yale and Harvard B-school, though he rode his family's name right through the admissions process. However, it's pretty hard to shake the idea that W. isn't the sharpest tool in the shed (whether he's a tool of any kind, I'll leave that up to you).
Bush's intellectual capacity was the biggest strike against him in 2000, in my book. I didn't really have anything resembling political ideology at the time, but I didn't want an idiot running the country. The idea that you'd vote for president based on "he's is a regular guy, someone I'd like to have a beer with," makes me cringe.
Back in 2000, there was the argument that Bush would bolster his mental shortcomings and inexperience with a cadre of intelligent, professional advisors. You would be voting for a committee headed up by a guy who loved Jesus and didn't cheat on his wife, and that was what was important.
Well, Matthew Yglesias writes today that the brains-thing is important. These are, of course, dangerous times. Moral clarity is only as good as the positive results it steers one towards. Fighting global terrorism, Islamicism [which is an ideology, not a religion], and facing state-based foreign policy issues requires an ability to understand very complicated ideas; declaring someone evil and then carpet bombing really hasn't gotten us too far (quite the contrary, I'd argue). Then there's domestic policy…
Check out that article if you're so inclined. Calling the president an idiot may be shrill, but there really is a case to be made for electing a leader who can hold more than one thought in his head at a time.
August 18th, 2004 at 10:15 am
Bush is no tthe idiot. We are the idiot (collectively) for allowing him to become president.
Thank goodness for second chances.
August 22nd, 2004 at 5:02 pm
George Bush isn’t an idiot any more than any of us here are. There are certain things he knows very well, the problem is his reluctance to learn about anything that he doesn’t find interesting at all, which is anything not ideologically conservative. The problem isn’t necessarily his intelligence (or lack of), but his narrow view of the world and how it should be. I think I could run this country a lot better than George Bush is doing, but I’d feel more comfortable with someone a lot smarter than me doing the job, someone like Noam Chomsky for instance!!!