Over recent years, and especially in recent days, there has been a lot of speculation about the sanity of President George W. Bush. This goes hand in hand with speculation about his intellect.
Both traits, personality disorders and intelligence, can be objectively measured but the President will not sit for such examinations so we can only infer about both based on historic acts and observable facts.
On the question of sanity, I agree with the "diagnoses from afar" (one on the rec list today, long-standing) that Georgie has some serious personality disorders but is not insane or psychotic. This would go along with his chronicled, absurd and extensive misbehavior as a youth, and is mirrored in a family full of young and adult dilletantes like the Presidential daughters and Neil Bush. Something is just flat-out wrong with this family.
On the question of intelligence, George W. Bush is not smart. He is stupid. I would bet the farm that he can't solve those logic problems that pop up in places as banal as Reader's Digest or on airline magazines ("What's next in the pattern?" "How do you tell which one is telling the truth?" "How do you get the wolf, cabbage and sheep across the river?" and such) though he may have tried to "draw the pirate" on the matchbook at some point in his life.
If academic prowess is the best measure of "stupid" or "smart" he has been an academic disaster. Got into Yale only by legacy enrollment, now discontinued at Yale. Rejected by U Texas law school. An acknowledged flake at Harvard but emerged because at Harvard, learning is in teams so no one can fail. He scored the bare minimum in testing to qualify for flight training at Texas Air National Guard (see Molly Ivins' "Shrub"). This is also reflected in his limited vocabulary and stumbling speech. He simply cannot think on his feet, nor is he clever in any "Clintonesque" way that would allow him to obscure his transgressions through word=play.
A second measure might be business prowess, especially for a supposed MBA. He was a miserable failure in business. This is well documented. Nothing further to say.
How about prowess in governance? That, after all, is the end-product of being elected. The governor of Texas has the least-demanding duties of any governor. He is chief politician but takes no real role in governing. That's handled by the Lt. Gov and elected commissioners. Perfect. That's also why he's the "brush clearing president." He has not been a "president" in the sense that he "presides" over much at all. He is, however, the country's chief politician--also reflected in how he has run the country as a constant political campaign. This is his comfort zone. But it doesn't work, not with something as complex as governance of the United States.
But he is cunning. Of this I have no doubt. He began to build his personal momentum with a well-documented (again) land ripoff for the new Ballpark at Arlington. That's cunning, and it's the application of raw power, not smart. If he was smart, a conservative magazine like The American Spectator would not have sniffed out and exposed the land scam early in Bush's governorship. But no one in Texas cared because the raw application of power is something that, in my experience (a personal, non quantifiable opinion), many Texans admire. That's what brought about another Texas-sized and Texas-based tragedy, Enron--raw application of power. Dubya also epitomizes the Bush familial arrogance at its worst--an arrogance bred of the Ivy-league, upper-crust Washington establishment transplanted "deep in the heart of Texas." A worse combination could not be found.
His personal performance is at its best when he and his inflated ego are the focus. This is where both his interests and capabilities reside. He takes and executes instructions perfectly when they are designed to gain him power. And he hails from a family that defines American power and wealth. He was the perfect figurehead ruler.
That's how he won three elections in his lifetime. But as for surrounding himself with "smart" people, he chose evil smart people. He was too stupid to see through their bullshit and too arrogant to care. Though he probably truly thinks his presidency is going well, he's not delusional. He is, however, stupid and arrogant to an immense degree. Combine this with an unhealthy personality, instill this monumental disaster of a humann in the most powerful job on earth, and that's why we are in the mess we are in now.
Simple, actually: our President is stupid, arrogant and disordered. What is more complex to understand is, how he fooled so many people for so long. That's a mystery for the ages, though the man who belongs to the ages, Abraham Lincoln, had men like Bush figured out. We are now at the "You can't fool all of the people all of the time" stage. The only question lingering in a super-majority of the population is whether to let Bush run out his term or send him to Crawford early.
I think we will be forced into "early" by Bush himself. He is that flawed.