July 11, 2007
Is he stupid?
To say I am disappointed in Pres. Bush’s leadership is an understatement. From his failure to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to rally the nation to war; to his boneheaded proposal to put port security in the hands of an Arab-owned company; his nomination of unqualified crony Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court; to the immigration debacle and his attacks on conservatives, he’s missed no opportunity to prove his critics correct on any number of points.
But the one thing I’ve never thought is that the man is dumb.
John Derbyshire, having had a chance to cool off, agrees – and has an explanation.
Some impertinent readers, to this effect: "Derb—-You say in your May Diary, of GWB, that 'The man's an idiot.' Then in your June Diary you tell us that 'W is an intelligent man.' Well, which is it?"
[Me] Pah!—everybody's a critic. I plead being mad as hell with W at the end of May, more calmly reflective a month later.
For future reference, here's that I think about the man's mind. He's well above average in intelligence. You don't get a degree from Yale—not even with a C average—unless you're fairly smart. Psychologist Linda Gottfredson, working from W's published test scores, estimated his IQ at 125, which would put him around the 95th percentile (meaning that W is smarter than 19 out of 20 Americans). Charles Murray pegged him a tad lower, but still up in the 90-somethingth percentile.
On the other hand, my rather strong impression is that while the president CAN think, he DOESN'T, much. The Iraq blunderings, the poverty of his off-the-cuff oratory, the endless repetition of tired, empty cliches long discredited, the Harriet Miers fiasco, the stupid squandering of his small remaining political capital on that major-stupid immigration bill... not much thinking there that I can see.
This isn't so surprising—that a person CAN think but WON'T. You see it a lot, actually, though usually among people with undemanding jobs. A sort of mental sloth often sets in as you get older—the intellectual equivalent of middle-age spread.
I feel it myself rather strongly—a great reluctance to think. If I wasn't chained to a computer trying to support my family, I doubt I'd have a thought from one week's end to the next. For a chap like W, who has never in his life had to wonder whether he's going to be able to meet this month's car payment, mental sloth must be an even stronger temptation.
And of course, instinct will get you a long way. A seat-of-the-pants Chief Executive can out-perform a high-IQ one—we all know that. Trouble is, your instincts have to be RIGHT, and W's mostly aren't.
I think if Bush had not run for reelection, he’d have left office known as the man who stepped up in the aftermath of 9-11 and kept the nation safe in the years following; now, his legacy is in question, not because he’s stupid, but because he’s stubborn – and perhaps foolish.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 11, 2007 08:00 PM
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Comments
It’s an interesting defense of the president’s missteps to say that he has a deep intellectual well that he just refuses to dip into. To me, this is a cop out for those of us who supported and voted for him while scoffing at those who widely challenged his aptitude in a variety of subjects.
Putting aside the tactical brilliance and uncommon valor of our troops in the field, Bush’s strategic leadership in the Iraq campaign and the Middle East as a whole must be viewed as an unmitigated disaster. Immediately after 9/11, Bush and his advisors pushed hard to make the case for Iraq. They pushed quickly and aggressively and molded a case for war based on uncorroborated and challenged evidence in my view. U.N. weapons inspectors like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were discounted, impugned and maligned. Ritter, the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 is a former Marine officer and served as a ballistic missile advisor to General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. Ritter contended before the invasion, as he does now, that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to advance the neo-con case for war with the ultimate goal of reshaping the political landscape of the Middle East. The response to Ritter and Blix was delivered by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations. Powell’s now infamous speech has been proven to be largely false.
If the buck stops with the president, isn’t it fair for critics to question whether he has the intellectual horse power to ask the tough questions? If he is stubborn, impulsive and unwilling to work with what he has under the hood, could it then be said that he lacks emotional intelligence? Nevertheless, we are splitting hairs when the ultimate issue is whether this man has the capacity to formulate effective answers for difficult problems.
Bush’s neo-con world view is a pie in the sky, Alice in Wonderland trip into idiocy in my opinion. Even the liberal icon FDR had the common sense to know that outside of the United States, the world just is what it is and that when American interests are not at stake, the leadership and political circumstances of another nation may not be any of our damn business. Of the dictator Samoza in Nicaragua, FDR once remarked, “Samoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” What happened to the Republican critics who once criticized Bill Clinton for using American military power to reshape the Bosnian landscape when no compelling American national security interest was at stake?
By removing Hussein, Bush has given extremists a new Afghanistan in the heart of Arabia. Only Bush would have the audacity to label the influx of 20,000 new U.S. troops a “surge” when there is widespread bloodshed across a territory the size of California.
Bush was warned repeatedly by James Baker and realists in his father’s administration that the removal of the dictator Hussein would open up Pandora’s box. Drawn by the British in 1921, modern Iraq has always been a dysfunctional assembly of the unwilling. With his naive belief that Sunnis and Shiites would cast aside a 1000-year blood feud and embrace our forces as liberators, Bush invaded with an army far smaller than that necessary to secure the peace. As predicted by the realists outside of the neo-con circle of power, we now have a bone fide civil war in Iraq and a proxy campaign waged by Iran, Syria, and Saudi religious fanatics. Turning a blind eye to history, Bush apparently saw no parallels to Yugoslavia where Croats, Serbs and Muslims shed each other’s blood for over a decade when General Tito died.
Bush took his eye off Bin Laden in Afghanistan to divert this nation into the Iraq quagmire. Bin Laden lives, the Afghan insurgency is regrouping and Iraq is now less stable than ever. In fact, suicide bombing and roadside IED techniques perfected in the Iraq theater are now used against our troops in Afghanistan. At the cost of nearly 1 trillion dollars, 3000+ American lives and the credibility of the U.S. in the eyes of much of the world, Bush has managed to completely destabilize the Middle East.
How intelligent can Bush be when his missteps in Iraq have allowed our Iranian antagonist to openly develop a nuclear weapons program that we are now powerless to stop? While we are bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, the Iranians have trumpeted their desire to destroy Israel. The Iranians have now triangulated Israel on multiple fronts with Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria.
Bush is not the Regan Republican he campaigned as. Bush’s Medicare Prescription Drug Plan is one of the most irresponsible pieces of legislation in the last 50 years per the General Accounting Office. I don’t believe that anything like it would have surfaced under Clinton’s watch.
Is Bush lying to us or should we perceive him to be stupid when he stands on the Mexican border and proclaims that his efforts to secure it are working?
Is Bush lying to us or is he stupid when he declares that his immigration plan is not amnesty and that 20 to 100 million illegal immigrants are just what this country needs for its economic future?
As a Republican, I am done with Bush and eagerly await new leadership.
Posted by: Bill H. at July 15, 2007 10:48 AM
Thanks for posting my Sunday morning rant. I'll have to do away with that extra shot of espresso at Starbucks next time. It's really hard to imagine a more difficult situation than that we are posed with in Iraq. Although I don't like how we got into the mess, I'm really not sure whether a pullout or a stay and fight solution is best. I just don't see any good options on the table.
Posted by: Bill H. at July 16, 2007 12:07 PM