For many, many people, Bush was simply the anti-Clinton. Witness his constant harping on bringing morality back to the office. Listen to the people who voted for him. Most of them wanted someone who would counter what they saw as immorality in the Oval office. That was his central issue. While he is no doubt seen by many as attractively conservative (I’d say stupid and reactionary), he won (apparently) this election on the “strength” of the anti Clinton backlash. So - it’s gotta be the first time, and hopefully the last, that the decision on who was to be the leader of the free world can be traced to a blow job. What have we sunk to? I’m afraid this is it.
why do they only have him speak when Dick Cheney’s hand is up his ass making his mouth move?
More seriously, what seriously concerns me is his responses to questions that he does not appear to have been precisely briefed on. In yesterday’s photo op with Condoleezza Rice, he was asked a question about the unrest in the Middle East. After fumbling for a moment or two, his answer was something like “peace is good, war is bad.”
CC, I don’t completely disagree and I myself have been stymied but the extent to which the ultra-married Gore has paid the price for Clinton’s extra-marital BJ. But there are other things at play here. Democrats like Gore and Clinton both look good to educated professionals who want to be able to read the Wall Street Journal as though it were a fucking bible and still feel as though they have a social conscience. But this kind of Dem has sold out the traditional Democratic base again and again. (Which doesn’t mean that there’s no meaningful difference; a point where I disagree with Nader.) Because of that, and b/c the whole system is so visibly corrupt, we have a “close election” where the clear majority of eligible voters just didn’t bother to vote.
I’ve said in a post in the Hillary/Lieberman thread that I too think is Bush is way stupid. But Zut makes an important point. Our mind-numbing media–owned from top to bottom by five corporations–make us into a brain-dead populace my encouraging endless stress on trivia. Gore “exaggerated” about the Internet or made up rhetorical lie about his dog’s bill? Note it once and get on with the big picture. This kind of distortion is endemic to politics and has been since the Greeks and Romans. Bush’s inept malaproprisms–which as someone pointed out, are signs of ignorance, not slips of the tongue–deserve some reporting, but then on with the program.
Most people still never heard a decent analysis of where the two candidates stand on important positions. The debates were the biggest charade of all, with the candidates spouting pre-digested spin for undecided voters and–just as bad–with pundits happy to let them get away with it. The typical non-partisan pundit response was to express complete cynicism towards the whole debate process (justified, to be sure), but then to move on to the supposedly important job of who was more likeable based on their miniscule gaffes, their audible sighs, their successful evasions.
I say fuck off to all that. But thanks to all for the interesting posts.
How do you not get this impression, Asmodean? And when I say “most direct,” that is not complimentary. A sledgehammer is the most direct way to perform open heart surgery.
Yeah, I suppose not. Whoever is controlling him does. I suppose it wasn’t his decision to support and sign a bill limiting the death row appeals process. I suppose it is not him who signs the order of every man and woman executed in the state of Texas. No control at all.
You missed my point entirely. Military escalation is not the way to handle the conflict in the Middle East. Condoleezza Rice should know that. It’s diplomacy, darling, diplomacy. How strong do you think Bush’s diplomatic skills are? He has only left the USA three times in his entire life: twice to Mexico (big leap there), and once to Bahrain, to cement his daddy’s oil deal.
I actually don’t recall Bush’s position on free trade. I tossed it off as an example of an unsubtle solution to a difficult problem. I have no problem retracting it speficically, but it does not diminish the cogency of the argument.
I wanted to comment briefly on the following point by magdalene, which may have been, at least in part, in response to my previous post:
Yes, I’m sick of the “media conspiracy” argument too. Arguing that the “liberal media,” as a whole, slants the news to make Republicans look bad is just silly.
I don’t think the media is guilty of an anti-Bush slant. I do think they’re guilty of intellectual laziness. It’s so much easier to write (or speak) about stupid things Bush says than to actually dig up facts and examine policies. Besides, policy issues are boring. More people will read a snappy commentary on “subliminable” than a thoughtful analysis of potential European reaction to withdrawing troops from NATO.
And, once Bush’s rep as an intellectual lightweight gels, reporters look for the easy story, i.e., more gaffes, the rep is perpetuated, and their job is easier. People believe it and laugh at Bush’s stupidity rather than examining real issues, and there you have the situation I complained about in the OP.
I think it’s ironic that the reporters dogging Bush with questions about his intelligence, and how seriously he takes his job, are themselves guilty of focussing on the relatively trivial while slighting the important and complex. But maybe that’s just me.
A friend of mine going to school in Texas said that recently, a number of people fired during George W.'s tenure as governor have been coming forward to comment on GW’s, ah, apparent intellectual limitations. I suppose there’s plenty of room for sour grapes… but do these allegations have any basis in fact? Can anyone point me toward a link?
Lotta good points here (and zut, why did you even originally cast this pearl before us swine of the Pit? This woulda been a perfectly respectable GD thread). For a thoughtful and detailed examination of Dubya’s political life, I recommend the recent biography Shrub by two Texas journalists, Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose. It doesn’t harp on his malapropisms, it doesn’t jeer at him as a lightweight, it takes him seriously as a human being and a politician. Which IMO makes the book’s ultimate conclusion that “there’s not much there there” all the more devastating.
Y’know, honest to God, I originally intended my OP to be a peevish rant, and I had expected to get a lot of “Bush is dummy! Bush is dummy!” “No him not! No him not!” responses, rather than the serious discussion that actually broke out. In retrospect, perhaps GD would have been better (any chance of moving it? Lynn? Alpha? John? Or would movement in that direction break a precedent?)
On the other hand, I suppose if I’d originally posted in GD, I’d be wondering right now why I didn’t do it in the Pit.
I hate to take a perfectly good question and go off on my own tangent, but this one beckons me - the question of media bias. On This American Life a number of months ago, one of the correspondents traced down the beginning of an alleged Gore invention. Turned out, with actual audio transcripts, he had been misquoted - seriously misquoted and the entire content and thrust of his remarks were distorted. (Kids at the school he had been visiting were furious that the press had twisted the event so much - to their credit) The story was picked up by several big time media, maybe the Boston Globe (here, I’m making up stuff), maybe the Washington Post - I don’t particularly remember. The point the program’s host made was this: we ALL, journalists included, have “story lines,” of life’s events in our heads. Sometimes, these are commonly held perceptions. And when events occur that somehow, even remotely, match this story line, the events get reported in that context. Thus, when reporters heard this claim about Gore, they placed it in the context of their already determined story line, and went with it - promulgating the fiction that he AGAIN made up something. It wasn’t intentional bias, per se. I don’t know what to call it - maybe a built in, almost unavoidable tendency toward believing those particular claims. Some basic, universal psychological tendency at work here, except we trust the press to be aware of their own biases and keep them out of their work. And, much as I hate to admit it, even Dubya could CONCEIVABLY say something intelligent, but if he garbles the syntax, he’ll be accused of being stupid because that’s our story line. And, at the same time, I happen to believe that one. But…ok - get my point? whew - I love this place. xo C.
Ah, that reminds me of something from snopes:
It’s similar to a psychic making thirty predictions, but when she stumbles onto something about the yellow dog named Harold you actually had as a kid, you forget that she got your mother’s name wrong.
Personally, as a person of above-average intelligence, I can tell when someone just isn’t all there, in the same way that as a gay person I can tell if someone is gay whether they say so or not. Not with 100% accuracy, of course, but better than the average Rosie O’Donnell viewer. And quite frankly George W. does not ring my smart-o-meter. But I didn’t vote for him because his stance on the issues sucks, not because he’s stupid. And he is stupid.
My favorite quote of his:
Maybe he didn’t know what the meaning of “was” was. 
To bring this back down to the Pit - I don’t give a shit if he had no control over the executions in Texas. Do you know what he said publicly about them? Not one goddamn word. If I was opposed to executing someone whose lawyer slept through the trial, you’d be damn sure to hear about it, especially if I was governor of the state.
Wait, I actually found something he said about them:
Now we sure as hell know that isn’t true, so he’s either lying or hasn’t bothered to check. Dumb I don’t mind so much. Willfully ignorant I can’t stand.
{snicker}
Yeah, move it to GD. Then Freedom2 will notice it and start posting (No him not! No him not!), and Gaudere’ll move it back to the Pit.
Interspersed occasionally by Stoidela chanting “Yes him is! Yes him is!”
No, I think I’ll leave this one in the Pit for right now. I don’t see anything wrong with having actual (gasp!) discussion in the Pit, though likely a little coarser and more given to swearing and personal insults than GD.
Though, given the recent election threads I’ve seen, maybe not.
[highjack]
Lordamercy! Try having any kind of political discussion in GD without these 2 characters sniping at each other! Do not try any form of humor either. Milo and Ex-Tank will jump in and bombs start falling everywhere.
[/highjack]
Should a candidates intelligence (or lack thereof) not be mentioned? If a journalist asks a candidate about a specific issue and his answer is, well, stupid (I’m thinking of his evolution answer in the NY Times and Davis’s quote above on the death penalty as examples) should journalists just forget he said it?
This GD thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=49467 asks specifically why blacks didn’t vote for him. Because he is a dummy was not taken as a serious answer. Why the hell not? It is just as legitimate a reason as his stance on abortion and gun control.
Yeah, but Stoidela is correct.
Freedom2 and Milo and Ex-Tank and Corrado…they’re all nuts.
No they not!
John, you’re a poopypants.
Lyyyyyyyyyynnnn! Gadarene called me a poopypants!
Alphagene!!! John tattled on me…
John, I’m gonna draw a line right down the middle of the SDMB. This half’s my side, and that half’s your side. Stay off my side.
Uh, zut, never mind… 
the thread…but so far, I just gotta say… I LOVE YOU GUYS!!
You are such a relief to me after what I’ve been mostly dealing with in recent weeks…
Zut, while I do think Dubya is a dummy, I completely agree with the rest of your OP.
Maeglin: YES! YES! His lack of curiosity is amazing and depressing! Who IS this guy, anyway? Is there ANYTHING going on between his ears, even something to entertain him?? Doesn’t look like it to me.
Again…I’m just getting choked up here reading this. You’ve all made me so happy!