Believe me, I know it's funny to say that George W. Bush is stupid (I do it
all time). And I know why it's funny. He just seems to be stupider than shit.
And watching anyone who is stupider than shit is kinda funny. Not only that,
but he's either stupid or about as evil as Hitler. I mean, how could someone
fake being that stupid? To fake being stupid takes a level of sinister that
few are prepared to assign to anyone, least of all someone as stupid seeming as George
Bush.
Al Gore was pinned an exaggerator by his opponents, Bill Clinton as white trash,
Hillary Clinton as a ruthless, lying, power hungry bitch, Howard Dean as crazy-mad
and John Kerry as as flip-flopper. For all this the left has pinned Bush as
stupid. We know from experience that stupid doesn't stick, but that exaggerate,
trash, ruthless, lying, power hungry bitch, crazy-mad and flip-flopping do.
Sure, the right has millions of dollars and thousands of paid publicists help
them with name calling. But I think that the failure of "stupid" goes
beyond resources.
For one thing, calling someone who is President stupid doesn't stick with a
lot of ordinary people. For most people, getting to be President requires that
you are smart. For another, most people are stupid. So how could they tell if
someone like the President is or isn't stupid? By everyone can decide if a person
exaggerates, if they are white trash, are bitchy (aka - in the minds of assholes
- any successful, smart woman who is going places), crazy-mad or is a flip flopper.
Not only that, but we expect our politicians to be all of these things - but
one. The one being white trash - the one label that didn't stick. So it makes
sense for politicians to have these faults, whereas it doesn't make sense for
a politician to be stupid.
So while calling Bush stupid is funny as hell (especially with nice and taunting
graphics), this kind of name calling doesn't go much further than playground
name calling and other kinds of pissing contests. (In other words, it's piss
poor as an effective messaging strategy.) But just because it's not effective
doesn't mean that Bush either is or isn't stupid.
I don't think that Bush is stupid. In fact, I think he's smart. And by smart,
I don't mean genius. He's clearly not a genius. He lacks curiosity and nuance
that are prerequisites to giftedness. But being smart doesn't require that you
are as smart as Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean or John
Kerry are (all of whom I'd consider as geniuses). You don't have to be a genius
to not be stupid. And that's the kind of smart I'm talking about when it comes
to calling Bush smart.
I think that Bush fakes his stupidity. I think it's an act. And while I don't
think Bush is as sinister as Hitler, I think he comes close enough to be in
the "evil-monster" category.
Here are a few sources leading me to the conclusion that Bush is smarter than
he acts:
But it was the hour [of a taped debate of Bush in the 1990s] in which Bush
faced Ann Richards that I had to watch several times. The Bush on this tape
was almost unrecognizable—and not just because he looked different from
the figure we are accustomed to in the White House. He was younger, thinner,
with much darker hair and a more eager yet less swaggering carriage than he
has now. But the real difference was the way he sounded.
This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated
sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled
a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant
"sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking,
he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent
mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half
is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway
through the debate, before beginning to list his principles. source
When talking about schools he said, "I think the mission in education ought
to be excellence in literature, math, science, and social science"—an
ordinary enough thought, but one delivered with an offhand fluency I do not
remember his ever showing at a presidential press conference.
source
When I heard the Doug Wead secret tapes of Bush during the early stages of
his first election I was surprised by how Bush sounded. He sounded like a man
who could speak. This quote (sorry, unsourced - I looked and looked for a transcript
or recording and found nothing) doesn't tell much in print. But when I heard
it, it told me that Bush could speak when he thought what he was saying was
not for public consumption. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana question.
You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried,"
Bush says on the tape. “But you got to understand, I want to be president.
I want to lead. Do you want your little kid say, 'Hey, Daddy, President Bush
tried marijuana, I think I will?”
Finally, when watching OutFoxed, I noticed a scene with Bush talking to a Fox
reporter - when "off camera." The two are chit chatting, and the point
is that Bush is too friendly with Fox reporters (such as the one in the scene,
whose wife worked for Bush as a campaign aide). OutFoxed doesn't make a point
about Bush being articulate, but I do. That part of the DVD surprised me enough
to watch it over and over a few times. Bush was articulate, comfortable, conversational,
clear, focused and intelligent sounding. His twang was almost gone. He looked
like - well - a President.
I don't know Bush - and I most likely never will. I've never spent time with
him in private, and I don't have access to lots of tapes of him when he's not
out in public. How I know Bush is almost entirely how he wants me to know him.
I know only the public Bush - the same Bush that all but a handful of Americans
know. So I can only point to the few examples of the private Bush I've been
able to get a peek at. And in each of these times, I've been surprised by the
Bush behind the curtain. I doubt Bush is a genius. But just as much, I doubt
he's an idiot.
Moreover, I think that the best explanation for why there are such different
Bushes, between the public Bush and the one at the Richards debate, on the OutFoxed
scene and the Wead tapes, is because he's faking it when he's in public. He's
acting "ordinary." Perhaps the best explanation is not that he's stupid
(or diseased), but that he's a bad actor. All politicians are actors - and perhaps
Bush is just as shitty an actor as he is a president.
Finally, I leave with the words of Al Gore, who says this of Bush:
There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that there
is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to
reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information that might
produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles
with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the President as
not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to have a normal
curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced
that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on
religious faith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of
those groups. I think he is plenty smart.
And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that
it is an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it
is for me and for many of you, most of the President’s frequent departures
from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and
economic ideology than with the Bible. But it is crucially important to be
precise in describing what it is he believes in so strongly and insulates
from any logical challenge or even debate.
It is ideology – and not his religious faith – that is the source
of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has caused for this country
stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility
of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy
and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love
of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency. source
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