I was going to write a nice long rant about how much it annoys me when people just dismiss George W Bush as stupid, stupid, stupid
But it just depresses me too much. So I’ll point you here to see why George W Bush is actually smarter than the average bear.
Democrats (and that would include me if I was American), underestimate the man at your peril. You keep thinking this man is stupid you will lose the next election. And when you call the Republican candidate for election in 2008 stupid too – guess what? You’ll lose again.
And the world will not thank you.
Hat tip to Buckethead of the Ministry of Minor Perfidy for the article.
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Question: Do you think he’s smart? What evidence do you have for this that cannot be attributed to someone else (speechwriter, advisor, etc.)? Also, isn’t there more than smart and stupid in the world? There’s “intellectually dumb” and “street smart” for instance.
That there are lots of different kinds of smarts was the point of the opinionjournal.com article. George W Bush is no intellectual dynamo, but he is people smart. He is the only President ever (I think) to have an MBA – he is a chief executive type leader, rather than an intellectual type leader.
Bush has hundreds of smart people around him that need to do the thinking and analysing for him. They need to be given direction and co-ordinated. That is the real job of the President. It was Clinton’s job too. The world is far too complex for any one person to know fully, so any President has to be a jack of all trades and master of none.
So, yeah. The answer is: I think George W Bush is a smart guy.
I agree and disagree. I think he is people-smart to certain types of Americans, but he does not come off as a smart guy overall, and this is appealing to those same Americans (who can relate to a Joe Schmoe). But he can rub the rest of us the wrong way (perhaps they’re not Joe Schmoes), e.g. the phenomenon of “Bush-hating”, and a sub-class of those people do not find non-intellectual dynamos appealing.
I disagree that people-smarts alone are adequate for giving direction and coordination to a mass of underlings; it also requires vision and strategic thinking, which I believe he has only a simple grasp of. I subscribe to the theory that Cheney provides the vision and Rove provides the strategic thinking. It is unclear to me just how much this president is leading, and how much he is being led. Parsing his elementary language in unscripted settings does not help the matter.
Not having a massive intellect can be a plus and a minus. Micromanagement and lack of self-confidence are potential minuses, the ability to reason and a higher probability of making the right decision on policy grounds, a potential plus.
Certainly any president has a tough job. My ideal president would be a pragmatist who lacks ambition, and who would find inspiration for his/her vision in the original values of this country (rather than in his/her own experience for example). Someone who looks backwards to look forwards. Ideally, a jack of all trades, and master of one: the Office of POTUS.
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