Jonathan Chait: Is Bush Still Too Dumb to Be President?

[ProSense]

Jonathan Chait: Is Bush Still Too Dumb to Be President?

You can't run a country on horse sense.
July 16, 2006

WAY BACK when he first appeared on the national scene, the rap against George W. Bush was that he might be too dumb to be president. As time passed, questions about Bush's mental capabilities faded away.

Snip...

On top of that, Democrats decided it was politically counterproductive to attack Bush's intelligence. Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council said in 2002, for instance, that calling Bush dumb "plays directly into Bush's strength, which is that he comes across as a regular guy." And so, for most of the last six years, the question of Bush's intelligence has remained off the table.

Snip...

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...

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.

Snip...

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.

more...

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

[PurpleChez]

1. He's too dumb to run the tilt-a-whirl.

[spooky3]

32. LOL!

[Stinky The Clown]

2. No news here. Chait nails it perfectly.

In a world leader, brains and intellectuality matters a lot more than does being a good drinking buddy.

The American electorate has a few million too many morons with the right to vote.

[Cha]

18. And the republicans

with a too easy access to diebold with no paper trail.

[HopeFor2006]

3. Too stupid to be president

:-) MM

[nebula]

4. If not for his family name,

He would be taking orders at Mickey D.

[madrchsod]

6. god no-walmart cart boy

he`s not smart enough to work at micky d`s

[nebula]

9. I think McD's would let him clean the toilets at least.

[madrchsod]

5. he`s talking about this guy?

this is our president getting dissed by the fucking ex head of the kgb ......wait a minute, his old man was the head of the cia... poor george always being shown where to sit...

[LosinIt]

10. isn't that a beer at Georgie's place setting? my, my!!

to Pootie-Poot's right it looks like a glass of white wine, but to dimson's right I see a beer. Doesn't look like any near beer I've ever seen. Do they do near beer in Russia? Or did they forget before they took the photo?

[susu369]

15. There is another photo taken later

showing Putin and wife and bu$h and Laura seated at the table. The bottle is still there on the table and the waiter has in his hands what looks to be a bottle of beer and is showing it to The Decider and Pig Slicer.

Sorry, I lost the photo link.

[susu369]

20. Found it!

[Cha]

19. And this guy..

And this guy..

[acmavm]

7. I've always been amazed that any party would/could force this corrupt

petty scheming low intellect asshole on the American public. Then I stop and realize that this king of the burned-out dry drunks is just a front man for the corporatist facists who are really running things.

They send bush** out in public and let him make a fool of himself, and that takes the focus off themselves. We go around bitching about how we've reached one of the lowest points in the history of our poor country because we have this idiot squatting in the White. Then we scratch the surface of every scandal and what pops up? Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice calling the shots, making official policy. He's a useful tool to take the heat off themselves, to redirect attention. And bush** really believes he's calling the shots. They don't care if he's got the title. They have the power and are raping the Treasury and the taxpayers.

[Nite Owl]

8. Agree with you on this

it's the 'movement', the right wing agenda that matters not him as a figurehead. I also don't believe he is all that dumb, that relieves him of his responsibility in all that has happened and that is just what he wants. He has never accepted responsibility for any of his failures and this is a way out for him. It's worked too because well, what haven't they gotten through? Social Security privitization? They haven't given up on that one, it will return, they will try and try unless we win this fall.

[Disturbed]

11. Busholini, the Silverspoon Sociopath is the Sock Puppet

of the extreme RW and the Multi-Natl Corps.

[Cosmocat]

12. Exactly my position all along ...

He is dumb as a post ... He was a front ... Things are being run around him ... He THINKS he is in charge/half knows he isn't ... They don't mind one bit that he thinks he is in charge ...

There is NO giving him credit for "being smarter than we think he is" ... As a friggen president, he is not only totally undermanned from an intelligence standpoint, this whole "his gut" thing, we have not had a president with a worse "gut" either ... This clown ... He let 9-11 happen on his post, was AWOL for Katina ... He is, quite literally, Putnin's bwitch ...

What little ideology he has is tied to his faux religion/the neoncon slant or some scam he has run in the past, for example the neverending drive to privitize EVERYTHING ...

[1democracy]

13. It's part of the scheme to drown government in a bathtub

because it is more incompetent than the private sector. Just like NE and FEMA. However,the Repugs have gone too far because none of us believe anything W says anymore and it's rubbed off on his Repub buddies and we all want a sea change in 06/08.-- (If the world survives that long). We must all remember these horrible times and say "Never again" over and over and to our children and grandchildren. These are the times when democracy was dragged through a cess pool by anti-democratic forces that wished to destroy our county. We must create scrapbooks to hand down to ur descendants with the suffering corruption and ignorance and selfishness and bigotry has caused and say "Never Again" and be willing to fight tooth and nail against the slide into the gutter of totalitarianism ever again. We must NEVER FORGET!

[rhett o rick]

14. I agree with you. But the sad thing is that millions of Americans

associate with Bozo. They don't trust an intellectual like Al Gore because he doesn't speak at their level. They were willing to go along with Bill Clinton because he could hide his intellect behind a "good ole boy" exterior. Carter was similar. Face it, a good portion of this Country would follow Pat Robertson over the edge of the World. There are just too many gullible's.

[MurrayDelph]

16. He's right: You can't run a country on horse sense

Especially when you are stuck with the wrong half of the horse!

[Cha]

17. I've never seen any

evidence that he has anything other than a few fried brain cells left in that ugly head..his handlers pump him up and turn him on us with a few chosen tapes.

"Stay the course","Bring it on"(loose lips?) "I'm the decider"(or did he actually come out with that one?), "Stay the course", .."blah blah blah Democrats".."Stay the course"

[ClassWarrior]

21. Why do Progressives keep promoting this dangerous notion??!

Bush Is Not Incompetent

by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/incompetent

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

22. Bush** is NOT incompetent.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/incompetent

Your choice. Saving our nation or childish name-calling.

NGU.

[alvarezadams]

34. Lakoff has fallen into a trap

It isn't Bush to begin with. Bush is indeed a nincompoop, a failure, et al. Yet he is the chosen puppet of a movement that is particularly adept at manipulation.

He is right inasmuch as we shouldn't be attacking Dubya. If we conclusively show that he's been a failure and an arse his conservative stringpullers can say "you're right. Now vote for so-and-so in order to do things right". We SHOULD be pointing out the failures of the ideology behind the image of Dubya so that in 2008 we can say "see how screwed up those guys are? Vote for us to repair the damage".

[ProSense]

23. It's not a dangerous concept.

Lakoff:

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

That section in bold attest to some level of incompetence. Conservatism may be a flawed ideology, but it isn't synonymous with incompetence. Bush is a conservative incompetent. Similar article on conservatism:

It's The Conservatism, Stupid

Paul Waldman
July 12, 2006

Ask a conservative what the biggest problem in America is today, and you’ll get answers like overtaxation, a sexualized culture, lack of respect for authority, insufficient church-going or big government running amok. But if you then asked the conservative what the real source of the problem was—the beating heart pumping blood to each and all of these socio-politico-cultural wounds—you’d get the same answer: liberalism.

Snip...

And conservatives learn these messages when still young. What does a “campus liberal” do? Well, it depends what his or her issue is: fighting sweatshop labor, or environmental degradation, or the Iraq war, or any of a dozen other problems about which liberals are concerned. What, on the other hand, does a “campus conservative” do? Fight liberals and liberalism.

You can hear it in the media as well. As any fan of Limbaugh, Hannity or O’Reilly hears every day, whatever the issue is, the problem is liberals. Conservatives write books saying liberals are The Party of Death , who are Trashing Democracy, Waging War Against Christianity , ,Screwing Up America, Corrupting Our Future—and on top of it all, our whole ideology is A Mental Disorder. Liberals, on the other hand, write books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president. (I plead guilty.)

Snip...

1. Conservatism has failed. The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration as a failure...

2. Conservatism is the ideology of the past—a past we don’t want to return to. Liberals need to embrace the culture war, because we’re winning...

3. Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too. We’re afraid, they shout. We’re so afraid of terrorists, we have to become more like the things we hate...

more...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/12/its_the_conservatism_stupid.php

[ClassWarrior]

24. It IS dangerous because it lowers the public's expectations...

...of him**/the administration**.

And that distinction is key. For while Bush** himself may be incompetent, we're never really talking about him personally. We're talking about the administration** - which ISN'T incompetent. It's cleverly and diabolically criminal.

So we turn Dubya** into harmless ol' Howdy Doody at our own risk.

NGU.

[ProSense]

25. Wrong take, IMO!

Bush has used every deceptive practice in the book in his power grab. Correlating this with intelligence is dangerous.

IMO, over playing Bush as smart leaves people, who needs to be made aware of his deception, searching for clues of genius in his actions. It makes it harder to demonstrate that his tactics are deceptive because critics are always left in the position of unraveling spin!


The person depicted in the OP article, using real examples (not progressives), is how most people see Bush. Look at every poll, national and international, and the reaction by many in the world community. Simply continuing to push Bush as smart defies reality!

[ClassWarrior]

26. Yes, you're right. Bush** bungled his way into taking over the...

...most powerful nation on the planet.

:sarcasm:

I never said he's "a genius." I said that his administration is NOT INCOMPETENT. They are, in fact, quite cunning. And to fall into their trap of letting HIM dumb THEM down is foolish and short-sighted.

NGU.

[ProSense]

27. Theft, deception and thuggery is not intelligence, not even cunning! n/t

[ClassWarrior]

28. No they're not. What's your point?

Brain surgery isn't intelligence either. Neither is car mechanics. Neither is playing an instrument. But one's degree of success at the former is usually quite dependent on the level of the latter.

NGU.

[ProSense]

29. OK, the SCOTUS selection of Bush has nothing to do with cunning!

Bush hasn't demonstrated that he can perform brain surgery, fix a car, play and instrutment, reconstruct a country, deliberate peace, etc. He has proven that he can lie, has friends who will cheat for him and knows how to start a war!

[ClassWarrior]

30. Anyway, that obscures the main point that...

...we should shift the debate from Bush**'s personal intelligence to the criminality of his administration and the tragic failures of the RW philosophy.

NGU.

[ProSense]

31. This does have merit.

Take Bush out of the equation and the Republicans are still champions of conservatism.

I don't see the problem with pointing out both the failures of conservatism and Bush's incompetence because I do believe that doing so makes it easier to demonstrate that his power grab was fueled by deceptive and illegal practices.


editing grammar.

[ClassWarrior]

33. LOL. And Bush** is the thick one?

NGU.

[ProSense]

35. What's the latest thing the Republican are doing to distance Bush?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2718747&mesg_id=2718747

And it's being echoed by many on the right. It's another spin that will reel in people who don't pay attention.

Bush and his administration (and their enablers) must be held accountable, but to insist that holding Bush up as a conservative is all that's needed is naive. They will simply say he isn't a conservative, while others push his cunning, the GOP will keep doing what they do.

I've heard this too: Republicans can win (steal) elections, but they don't know how to govern. Whether or not it's because they don't care (not an easy sell to the public) or are incompetent (an easier sell backed up by examples of failure), is all the same. Incompetent is a sound bite the public can understand.