LA Times op-ed: Is Bush Still Too Dumb to Be President?

[DeepModem Mom]

Jonathan Chait: Is Bush Still Too Dumb to Be President?
You can't run a country on horse sense.
July 16, 2006

....Ron Suskind's new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," paints a harrowing picture of Bush's intellectual limits. Bush, writes Suskind, "is not much of a reader." He prefers verbal briefings and often makes a horse-sense judgment based on how confident his briefer seems in what he's saying. In August 2001, the CIA was in a panic about an upcoming terrorist attack and drafted a report with the title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." When a CIA staffer summed up the memo's contents in a face-to-face meeting with Bush, the president found the briefer insufficiently confident and dismissed him by saying, "All right, you've covered your ass, now," according to Suskind. That turned out to be a fairly disastrous judgment.

Bush loyalists like to dismiss Suskind's reporting, but it jibes with the picture that has emerged from other sources. L. Paul Bremer III's account of his tenure as head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority depicts Bush as uninterested in the central questions of rebuilding and occupying the country.

Video of a presidential meeting that came to light this year showed Bush being briefed on the incipient Hurricane Katrina. His subordinates come off as deeply concerned about a potential catastrophe, but Bush appears blase, declining to ask a single question. And of course there was the famous 2001 incident in which Russian President Vladimir Putin conveyed to Bush a story of being given a cross by his mother. Bush invested deep significance in the story. "I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," he told reporters. "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Bush's supporters have insisted for the last six years that liberal derision of the president's intelligence amounts to nothing more than cultural snobbery. We don't like his pickup truck and his accent, the accusation goes, so we hide our blue-state prejudices behind a mask of intellectual condescension.

But the more we learn about how Bush operates, the more we can see we were right from the beginning. It matters that the president values his gut reaction and disdains book learnin'. It's not just a question of cultural style. The president's narrow intellectual horizons have real consequences, sometimes cataclysmic ones....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait16jul16,0,4150626.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

[niyad]

1. "cultural snobbery", eh? I guess they would like us to forget that, far

from being a true texas "good ole' boy", he is the product of an obscenely wealthy new england family, and was, if not educated at, at least was registered at, three EASTERN bastions of education, andover, yale and harvard. so cultural snobbery be damned. people, upon hearing this bs, need to point out where this incurious, unlearned, uncaring man was, at least ostensibly, educated. I would think the TRUE "good ole' boys" would want nothing to do with his ivy league-based pseudo "one of the boys" image, at which he isn't very good anyway.

[unblock]

12. no, that logic works only when used against democrats

in fact, logic only EVER works when used against democrats....

[DELUSIONAL]

2. This is another book on my list

I heard Suskind interviewed by someone on Air America Radio -- we all knew that bush would be a complete disaster -- and we were correct.

Why is war breaking out all over -- because the world can see what a useless piece of **** bush is.

Each of bush's companies -- it didn't take him very long to run them into the ground -- and then he was bailed out by his daddy's friends.

At each place where he should have been stopped from advancing -- he was given a free pass to go to the next level where he showed even more incompetence.

His antics, his funny faces -- are NOT funny. His stupidity and ignorance of his own stupidity is costing a whole lot of people their lives, either quickly or a slow lingering death.

It will take the US and the world a long time to overcome the evil effects of the bush era.

[niyad]

3. sometimes I think * is an example of the peter principle, writ large. I

don't think peter ever thought about somebody promoted so many levels above his competence (almost non-existent, in *'s case)

the other part of it that I wonder about is the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" syndrome. there are days I think the buffoon is an act, carefully contrived to keep us all focused on his appalling, stupid, arrogant, totally clueless behavior, to the point where we aren't watching what is really going on.

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. That bush is an incompetent fool is well documented and widely

recognized as a fact. Why in the name of God hasn't the bastard been removed from office?

[Sherman A1]

5. I don't think he is dumb at all

I believe him to be very intelligent. I also believe that he is very, very disengaged, unconcerned, lazy and a Faux Cowboy. I would classify him as a thief, not dumb.

[BadGimp]

7. I think he is all of the above..

eom

[BadGimp]

6. re: The president's narrow intellectual horizons have real consequences,

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tin Man]

17. Yeah, I also thought that line was succinctly damning.

...and don't let them dawgs find out what ya done to their pictures!

[saltpoint]

8. I expect country & western singers to lop off the g's on their verbs.

I'm less tolerant of presidents who do the same.

How much more trouble is it for him to say "reviewing" than "reviewin' " ?

The man is a dumbass, pure and simple.

[DesertRat]

18. He obviously does it deliberately

His parents and Jeb don't speak like that. Rove must tell him that it helps him relate better to the "folks".

[saltpoint]

20. I think that's exactly right. His folks do that old New England money

thing, so they use g's.

Dubya is a perpetual pre-adolescent type, so he "heads west to be a cowboy" and off come the g's.

This presidency really sucks, doesn't it?

[tbyg52]

24. Heck, I don't care how he *talks*--

I just wish he would read a few books. Or even the reports that are prepared for him. I thought it was pretty funny (by the definition of "funny" nowadays) to hear him 'splain what's going on with Israel and Hezbollah--it was so obviously either memorized or teleprompted, and so obviously the sum total of what he knows on the subject.

[saltpoint]

28. Yes. He probably hopes the press corps will limit their inquiries

to that pig roast in Germany.

[Nikki Stone 1]

30. It's actually not a "g

Its a nasal phoneme whose point of articulation is at the back of the hard palate, the same location where the g is formed. No g is actually pronounced though.

In some Mid Atlantic locales, the g can sometimes be pronounced, but these are dialect differences and non standard.

[ALOHArose]

35. Bush family bads

To Dessert Rat:

But Bush's father DID speak inanely when he wanted to pass as
just folks/'Poppy'...I remember it well and found it SO
IRRITATING that whenever Bush 41 was in trouble, especially at
the end of his term, he started loping off the Gs.  The
manipulation was transparent, and it was clear that he adapted
this corrupt folksy style in hopes of persuading the public
that he was a regular Golly-Gee sort of guy rather than a
decadent Maineline polipatrician.  And of course, that
vernacular fraud PROVED he was a cynical and decadent louche. 

I won't go into Barbara's exponentially hideous persona. She
lopes off more than Gs

[SnohoDem]

37. Welcome to DU ALOHArose!

:hi:

[CJCRANE]

9. "I thought you were gonna ask me about the pig".

*'s performance at the press conference in Germany the other day said it all. The Middle East is on fire and all he's thinking about is a BBQ.

Just like Katrina where he's strumming a guitar and eating cake while thousands drown and starve or 9/11 where America's two tallest buildings blazed and he just sat there listening to kids read about a goat.

[Olney Blue]

13. "I'm the decider"

-another phrase that says it all.

[Tin Man]

16. "I'm the decider here... You should be askin' me about the pig!"

OK, so he didn't really say it - but he could have.

[teryang]

19. "Let them eat cake."

Let's get on with the slaughter and barbacue.

This is the profound indifference and snide cynicism of the super rich corrupt elites who run the country.

[DesertRat]

22. "Anybody need some wood?" n/t

[Rageneau]

10. Smirk is the only president I'm confident I'm smarter than.

And, of course, I'm also smarter than any of the idiots who voted for him.

[ArbustoBuster]

27. You're also smarter than Reagan was.

The man was no mental giant. A failed freakin' actor and his coterie of corrupt hangers-on.

[grannylib]

32. Chimpy the Unelected Imbecile makes RayGuns look like freakin'

Einstein.

Chimpy obviously queued up twice for oatmeal when he should've been getting some grey matter to go between his ears.

[Demeter]

11. Bush Doesn't Even Have Horse Sense!

He's afraid of horses! And while you might say that Bush is a pig, pigs are among the smartest animals, we are told by people who study the subject.

I'd say the best comparison would be that Bush is a Scorpion, or Snake, or other venomous insect. Or even the mosquito carrying malaria or yellow fever or more.

[Olney Blue]

14. Mr. Ed was smarter.

[Demeter]

15. Mr. Ed Had A Better Script Writer, Too

and co-stars!

[seafan]

21. Oh, this is so rich.

Another clip

Yet it is now increasingly clear that Bush's status as non-rocket scientist is a serious problem. The problem is not his habit — savored by late-night comedians — of stumbling over multisyllabic words. It is his shocking lack of intellectual curiosity.

snip

It's true that presidents can succeed without being intellectuals themselves. The trouble is that Bush isn't just a nonintellectual, he viscerally disdains intellectuals. "What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt so intellectually superior and so righteous," he told a Texas Monthly reporter in 1994.

When I (author of this article) went to college at Michigan, I occasionally played pickup basketball with varsity football players. They obviously felt athletically superior to me. I didn't resent them for it — because they were.

Come on, all you media people! You. Can. Do. It.

Telling the truth becomes easier and easier, we promise!!

[BrklynLiberal]

23. Dimson is just an empty vessel being used buy the Neocons to carry out

their agenda. He has not had an original idea since he thought of putting firecrackers into frogs and watching them explode.
The knowledge that this "uncurious George" is even the titular head of our country nauseates me to an extent I cannot put into words.

[grahamhgreen]

25. The guy is a genius! Look at how much $$$ he's stolen from your

son's and daughter's pockets!

[progressoid]

26. It's sad that we are even having this discussion after 6 years of

his incompetence.

Makes one wonder, "Is America as dumb as it's President?"

[Tatiana]

39. BINGO! n/t

[young_at_heart]

29. His "dumbness" is irrelevant to the Big Boys

He's done what they wanted and that's all that matters to them.

[Tab]

31. I think Bush is pretty bright

Not smart, but bright. He can get concepts when he wants to. I just don't think he much wants to. Some stuff he's executed brilliantly, it's just not stuff that benefits this country.

For him to have spent all those years at Yale and be like he is now, he had to have had his dad pulling strings and I'm going to guess he was just partying his way through college.

He is totally incurious, and that really scares me. The fact that he's proud of that really really scares me.

Clinton was totally smart, and an Oxford scholar, and stayed up late way into the night doing research himself on all sorts of things. Bill Bradley was also an Oxford scholar - equally bright. Al Gore, despite his public charismatic failings, is still a smart guy, and I would trust him to do the right thing with this country.

Even Bush's father, George Sr., I would take over Jr. Although I may not care for his politics, he was a smart guy, former Ambassador to the U.N., and DCI (Director, Central Intelligence). He may have also steered stuff in the direction of his corporate buddies, but at least he generally tried to do things in such a way that if not succeeding like Clinton, at least didn't send America plunging into the toilet. We know that privately Poppy has been unsupportive of a lot of Jr.'s posturing and decisions, not the least of which were ridiculing our allies (France and Germany), denigrating "old Europe", and, of course, going into Iraq. Poppy at least understood that you don't burn up all your political capital, because you'll be needing it someday.

Bush may be bright, but I wish he was at least half as smart as his father, or Clinton, or Gore. His incuriousity scares me.

[truth2power]

38. Someone said..

(I read this somewhere, but can't remember where) that he's bright in a feral sort of way.

I think that comes closest to describing him.

[Carla in Ca]

33. a snip of a quote from

Jams Wolcott today:

but it looks a trifle cavalier to see him shooting by on his bicycle in St. Petersburg waving at the camera as he passes (followed by a heavy security contingent) interspersed between the news footage of Beirut going up in flames and Israelis in northern cities mourning their lost loved ones. No doubt exercise helps clear his brain, but if it were any clearer, it'd be a patch of blue sky. He needs to unclear his brain, and let a little reality intrude, and wipe that barbecue grin off his face.

[Demeter]

34. Does The Phrase "Too Stupid To Live" Resonate?

Are we there yet?

[Dervill Crow]

36. He's not dumb, he's an ignorant uncivilized egocentric sociopath.

Sorry if that is redundant.

We rescued a Great Pyrenees dog who had been raised in a kennel who displayed a lot of the same characteristics, except she wasn't mean. She just lived in her own world.