Is George W. Bush actually stupid?

Great Debates
61

Bush is probably “stupid” in precisely the same way that Clinton was “a weasel”, Carter was “a wuss”, Ford was a “bungler”, and Nixon was “a crook.”

That is, it’s the caricature that has come to be applied to him by those who’d rather grasp for a quick derogatory label to reduce him to than look at the entire picture. That line of thinking probably seems appropriate for politcal cartoonists or the writers of “Saturday Night Live”, but I’d hope the rest of us are capable of getting past the cliches and forming deeper impressions of our elected officials.

To be fair, there’s probably at least a kernel of “truth” behind most of these perceptions; after all these labels aren’t handed out randomly from the
“Big Book of Insulting Labels” or something-- they come to be formed from the words and actions of the leaders themselves. And I don’t think our current president, left to his own devices and separated from the powerful minds surrounding him, is likely to blow anybody away with his keen intellect.

Then again, this “dummy” from Texas holds a Harvard MBA and flies around on Air Force One making decisions that affect the entire world. We geniuses in here sit around and peck insults at each other on keyboards. :slight_smile:

62

Hey! with my high IQ I dont peck…I float across the keyboard in a symphony of light taps! :slight_smile:
To the OP: I dont think GW is stupid, there are just to many ruthless people in politics that would tear him up if that were true. I think he just is not a good public speaker…and perhaps a bit singleminded. Once thing I do find odd is, where the hell did GW get that accent?? If I remember correctly he didnt grow up in Texas…hell he only lived there for a handfull of years. His brother is in Flordia and doesnt have an accent like that!!

63

And yet you were willing to estimate his IQ at around 90 – based solely on his speaking ability and the fact that “his handlers won’t allow him to debate or do much ex tempore discussions (*sic]/i]) of any kind.” Get real.

64

Bush was governor there… so he picked the accent again ?

Being president doesnt prove Bush is above average intelligence… after all he might just have been put there. We call that the “Turtle in a Tree rule”. Whenever your dealing with someone that seems “stupid”, limited or out of place but still in power. Take care. If a turtle is high on a tree… SOMEONE put him there. Dont touch.

65

I remember reading a defense of Dan Quayle that essentially claimed that his great skill was diplomacy and negotiations, and that he was used by the Bush Sr. administration to handle several very difficult diplomatic assignments, at which he succeeded. The problem was that his handlers tried to style him as a miniature clone of Bush Sr., who was smart and erudite, and what resulted was Doonesbury’s Danny-boy caricature.

Sam’s comparison of Bush and Gore is telling. Perhaps a better question is: why do Republicans succeed by (or despite) looking stupid, and why do Democrats succeed by (or despite) looking intelligent, when neither perception is accurate?

66

It’s correct to judge their kinesic and verbal intelligences that way.
And romance novels, you can TOTALLY judge those by their cover.

I’m in the “Dubya is not a smart man” camp, but by presidential standards. He comes off as barely more evolved than a chimp when compared to many in Washington, but he’s not short bus material in most circles by a longshot. I’m sure he knows some stuff, but Gore would whoop his ass at scrabble or trivial pursuit.

Tangential Rant:

I tell you what is subliminable, is that in the year 2000, the world didn’t end. We had lost all faith in the dignity of the office of president cause Clinton, while an inspiring president, turned us all a bit cynical when he got a hummer and lied repeatedly. Eight years of a booming economy and lies we were willing to accept.

We were ready for some conservativism after the multiple piercings and tattoos we got when we thought the world was gonna end; we woke up with electricity and gas and cable tv on January 1 2000, and realized that there were going to be consequences for our actions, that no aliens or asteroids would land on earth and destroy the place, along with our overdue cell phone bills.

We were left with little faith in the integrity of the office; any moron can do it, right? It’s not like it matters. The president can lie to our faces and we’ll forgive him, even elect him for a second term. He really doesn’t need to be smart cause there are smart people around him, he really just needs to be honest. Any moron can do it.

So we elected any moron.
End Rant

67

I second greck…

Anyone who thinks there are honest politicians deserves what they get.

68

LIAR! They are rarely if ever as smutty as the cover promises.

69

There was supposed to be a smilie there, greck. Sorry.

70

Is george bush stupid?

Anyone who runs for office in this day and age has to be. Any halfway intelligent person would not put themselves though all that politicians are put through. The reason we have sub-par people elected is the all the mean things the public thinks they have a right to say. We have scared away almost all of the good leaders, look at England, they treat their politicians worse than we do which leaves only the most twisted hollow remaining tools to run things. The love you take is equal to …

ah hell who am I kidding, the boy is just plain thick.

71

I asked someone in his late 20s how many continents there were. He told me 12 in a questioning tone of voice.

Watching and talking to this guy you would think he was more intelligent than GWB. I just watched Bush on TV for 10 minutes and concluded, there is no one to vote for but Gore since Nader can’t win. I’m not a Democrat.

Dal Timgar

72

Here’s the impression I get: I think 120 is probably about on the mark. The man is quite intelligent. However, it’s also painfully obvious that he is not very knowledgable about the world at large, as is made plain by the extremely simplistic analysis of world events that we keep hearing from him. This is a question of ignorance, though, and not stupidity. His intelligence is made manifest more in the low cunning with which he has advanced his career (a more charitable person than I might label it political savvy, rather than low cunning).

73

Bush is stupid like a fox. He’s not a good public speaker, granted, but I’m pretty sure a lot of that “Aw shucks, I’m just a good ol’ boy who don’t know nothin’” act is just an act, and people who underestimate Bush, from Ann Richards, to Al Gore, to Sadaam Hussein, tend to get the worst of it.

74

I just want to zero in on one point that alot of people just throw out and forget…

This guy can fly a fighter-jet.

How easy is that? I know we’ve got some pilots here, perhaps they can chime in. I imagine it takes hair-trigger reflexes, good hand/eye coordination, lots of training and a great deal of concentration. I also know that no matter how much money my daddy has my brother could never fly a fighter jet, and I think that we can all agree that my brother is pretty stupid!:wink: .

With that in mind if our prseident is “stupid” how can you dismiss this skill?

75

you may, however, dismiss my typing.

76

Oh, for fuck’s sake, y’all.

I lean to the left (though pragmatically; I ain’t no socialist), and I’ve said many times in this forum that Bush is not unintelligent. Ignorant, stubborn, and frequently just plain wrong, sure. (In this, I agree fully with Dogface, God help me.)

But stupid? No. As I’ve said before, and as Captain Amazing says above, I think it’s a useful image insofar as it causes people to badly underestimate him as an opponent. On paper, Gore should have demolished him. Instead, Bush made him look like a piker.

Add to that the stunning success of Bush’s legislative agenda. He’s basically gotten everything he’s asked for in the first half-plus of his first term, minus a few judicial appointments that get high-profile play to make the Dems look bad. Tax cuts? Police powers? Check and check. At this point in his presidency, Clinton was stumbling all over don’t-ask-don’t-tell and the collapse of the health care initiative. By a simple standard of political effectiveness in pursuit of a stated agenda, if you compare Bush to Clinton, Clinton is basically a hayseed, while Bush is a razor-tipped juggernaut.

Don’t buy into the stupidity myth. If you do, you play right into the Bush team’s hands, and we’ll be saddled with the bastard for another four years. And incidentally, I think that’s why Dean has gotten so much traction, because he’s treating Bush as the heavyweight he is, and has come out swinging for the fences. The other Dems are still sniping at each other, which makes them look like they’re afraid to take on Bush. Be interesting to see whether Clark learns that lesson.

77

It doesn’t make much sense that a person could become president, even with Dad’s help, if he were stupid. There are, however, different kinds of intelligence. IQ is a fairly accurate measure of one kind of intelligence, but not of the kinds that make for a successful politician. I doubt there’s any way to gauge his IQ without getting hold of his school records, but I doubt it’s either impressively high or impressively low.

As to the types of intelligence politicians need, he obviously has a good grasp of how to get along with people, to lead, and to reach a decision and stick to it. And he knows how to lie with a straight face. He is also, I hear, a good conversationalist.

He apparently has little interest in those things which most would consider the mark of an educated person: history, literature, philosophy, science. His use for religion appears to be mainly to get a handle on his position. I have read that he’s gone from being a fairly tepid protestant to being essentially a Calvinist. As is the case with his office, I assume he believes himself to be elected.

I would say that, on the whole, he’s a largely ignorant man, self-delusional as to the effects of his actions, and prone to tunnel vision. A lot of presidents, and politicians in general, are like that. One doesn’t get to be president if one is prone to self-doubt (unless you’re Jimmy Carter, who actually only seems to have had that problem while president).

He seems to possess all the qualifications necessary to be president, except that he continally manages to make the wrong decisions, and to take any bad situation and make it worse. I wouldn’t say he’s stupid, but he’s incredibly inept. I realize this is a fairly bathetic end to my overlong post, but I just can’t stand the guy.

78

Hey.

Not to insult the pilots out there? But, while you can’t be stupid and be a good pilot, you certainly don’t have to be more than average intelligence. I know a lot of pilots. And I know several who can’t work their way through 3 paragraphs of F.A.R.'s without their hand being held.

So, I’m glad those guys aren’t lawyers. But they may be fantastic pilots.

And it IS a lot like driving, in that some people are just fantastic at it. And some people are just crap. And intelligence is not really the big difference.

You need good reflexes and spacial skills (which is why I will never attempt to get my pilots license) and the ability to make good decisions quickly.

Someone who is extremely intelligent, but tends to dither or be extremely deliberate might make a lousy pilot.

Someone like me who has crappy spacial sense (left? right? what are these concepts) might make a lousy pilot.

Bush may or may not be actually stupid, but he certainly makes stupider decisions than I want my pres to make. And he seems to value emotional decision over intellectual ones.

The big WHA? moment for me was way before the war, he was making statements about Putin, that he had just looked into his eyes and knew he was a good person. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2000197.stm

This may or may not be true, but when you’re making decisions for a buncha other folks, you might want to take the guys KGB past into account before you start writing “Friends 4 Evah!” on each other’s notebooks, okay?

79

Dont’ forget Gore was a ‘liar’. You hit upon an important truth here - the media likes to tag labels on public figures, so that they can write stories with a hook. It’s also much easier to target a piece when you have a label on someone, than it is to have to write about the nuances of someone’s position.

Just to give you an idea of how badly the media can misjudge someone - when Gerald Ford was President, the media tagged a ‘clumsy bungler’ label on him, and stuck to it. Every time he stumbled, stammered, or dropped something, it made the papers. Chevy Chase started his career by caricaturing him as a clumsy oaf.

Yet Ford was easily the most talented athlete of any president that the U.S. has had in the last 50 years. He was a college all-star center football player in Michigan, and went on to teach boxing and football at Yale. Later in life he took up Golf, and was a scratch golfer.

And yet, to this day people think he was a Klutz. And why? Because he beaned a woman with a golf ball on camera once (I saw Tiger Woods do the same thing a couple of months ago), and he beaned his mixed doubles tennis partner on camera once (how many other Presidents could even PLAY tennis without looking silly?).

After those two incidents, the press had its ‘hook’, and focused on him like a laser beam, playing up any incident that fed the stereotype. It was a total fabrication.

The same thing happened to Gore with his ‘lying’. I doubt that he’s said any more whoppers than any other presidential candidate, but because he was caught in a couple that sounded fairly spectacular (and were actually not fair characterizations in the first place), the label stuck, and everything he said after that was parsed with a microscope.

Let’s face it - the mainstream media SUCKS. They are terrible at their jobs. You want to talk stupid and uneducated? Forget the presidents - no one gets to be president without being quite smart. No, if you want to find the real morons, have a look at the idiots in the press who filter and twist our news.

80

I used to teach ground school for private pilots. You’re right - the academic requirements for a pilot’s license aren’t too difficult.

However, if you want an instrument rating, you’ve got to be pretty sharp. A lot of people flunk out of the instrument rating program.

And if you want to be an airline transport pilot (ATP), you need to start to lean some serious skills.

Bush was a military fighter pilot. Those guys don’t just learn to fly - they have to learn the systems of their planes, which are very complex. They have to learn IFR flying in very fast airplanes. They have to learn a zillion procedures. And they have to do it fast. The pace of training for these guys is extreme, and the washout rate is high. Many of Bush’s peers no doubt had degrees in engineering - a common prep for fighter pilots.

Is it possible to be of below average intelligence to be a fighter pilot? IMO, no. Do you have to be a genius? No. You have to be a bright guy with an agile mind, good reflexes, a healthy amount of courage and moxy, and excellent overall skills.

And while people can argue that Bush’s daddy got him into Yale, no one can say that Bush’s dad got him a seat in a fighter jet. It just doesn’t work that way, because patronage-appointed fighter jocks have a habit of dying, and that doesn’t look good on the CO’s record. No, the only way you get to fly front-line fighter jets in the military is to be better than about 90% of the guys who also want to do it.