Is George W. Bush REALLY stupid-or is it an act?

Great Debates
41

This week’s Newsweek has a good article on him. Amongst the things I read:

  1. He got re-elected in Texas by the biggest margin ever.
  2. He’s good at picking good people to work for him. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, that’s great. No one man can be good at everything.
  3. This guy overcame his drinking problem to be President. How many people can overcome a drinking, drug, etc. problem and succeed?

By the way, Bush won the election fair and square. He won in FL because he had the most legally counted votes. It didn’t matter if 100 million more people had the intention of voting for Gore, intentions are not counted.

42

So GW had money and influence. He still could have done nothing with it.

A lot of scions of influential, political or filthy rich families do nothing. They winter in the Caribbean (sp?), tan on the Riviera (sp?), ski in Switzerland. Why even bother with all this? If you had the dough, how many of you people critizing GW wouldn’t actually be enjoying yourselves rather than doing this?

43

If you want to find out more about Bush’s intellect, I suggest you go to some of the major news sites and start reading up on what his opponents are saying about him after having met him. Almost universally they say that he has a commanding presence, has a startling ability to cut to the most important points, and is a very good listener. One Democrat in the Senate (name escapes me, sorry), said that he thought Bush was ‘formidable’ in person.

If you want more evidence that Bush is not a lightweight, look at the people who are his friends and associates - peopel like the Chairman of Alcoa, who has been his friend for decades.

Apparently Bush has a tremendous skill for a President - he’s great at surrounding himself with the right mix of people, letting them do most of the talking, then moving the debate in the right direction. In other words, he has impressive leadership skills (and this is reflected in his history - he scored in the top 5% on the officer’s candidate test in the Guard). You’re seeing this in spades at the start of his administration - you won’t find a Democrat or Republican around who doesn’t think he’s done an astounding job so far in picking people, opening dialogue with just the right mix of groups to keep the liberals and conservatives happy, etc. Compare that to Clinton’s first few weeks after the election, when he managed to alienate just about everyone and made some horrible picks for his first cabinet.

In my mind, leadership skills are the critical skills for a president. I could care less how much he personally knows about Bosnia, as long as he has the ability to find the best experts on Foreign Affairs and delegate authority to them. No one person is knowledgeable about all the things a President must consider - Foreign policy, economics, history, geography, politics, science, the environment… So I’d rather have a guy who realizes his limitations than someone like Al Gore or Jimmy Carter, who know just enough about these subjects to overrule the REAL experts and micromanage the government.

44

Bush can be a convicted felon, for intentionally leaving blank questions on public documents that asked for information on his criminal record, including misdemeanors, which includes his DWI. That is fully prosecutable under Texas law.

This gives me a bit of optimism. Since the last President was accused of favoritism, disfavoritism, nepotism, illegal land sales and murder (in order to cover up the crime) and was as a result impeached for getting a blow job, why can’t we throw the new dumbass out for not filling in a slot on a jury duty form?

If you want politics to be less ugly, then you should elect less ugly politicians. Hand-puppets don’t count.

45

As far as Bush’s credentials go, I went to Exeter, which is the [superior ;)] sister school to his Andover, and I have to agree with fellow preppir lissener who said that either money or smarts will get you through. I know a lot of rich slugs who graduated from both places. However I also know a lot of rich and famous slugs who were kicked out, so Bush had to do at least passably well to survive, though not much more than it takes to earn a diploma from a public school.

As for getting into Yale, without an Andover transcript you cannot say what he was accepted for, but being grandson of an alumnus and Senator, as well as son of a war-hero/congressman/filthy rich Daddy Bush would have gotten anyone accepted. The New Yorker printed his transcipt – C average and SATs in the 1200s. This is evidence of somewhat above average intelligence, without much application to schoolwork.

Graduating from Yale is very easy to do, all of the Ivy’s pride themselves on graduation rates in the high 90s. A former Ivy professor once told me that a degree from Harvard, for example, only gaurantees that the kid know how to swim a hundred yards to pass the swim test. Yale is similiar, I’ve got friends there who never work.

46

You seem to have a very strange definition of “running” a campaign, that it means doing everything necessary to get elected. So I suppose that according to you Vince Lombardi did not run the Packers; instead just hired a bunch of guys to do the actual work. Here in the real world “running” means “being in charge of” as in choosing who you want to do the work. Unless Rove and Hughes put a gun to Bush’s head and demanded to do what they wanted, the ultimate responsibility, and therefore the credit, is Bush’s.

Completely irrelevant. It is silly to condemn someone for failing to achieve a goal that he never intended, and had no significant reason, to win. You might as well say that a Super Bowl winner is not a good team because they didn’t score any field goals the entire game.

But it was Bush’s campaign that put the election in a position in which the USSC would decide it, and it was the Bush campaign that convinced the USSC to rule in their favor. It’s not like the USSC deciding the issue was an inevitable conclusion; it was possible for Gore to win outright, but Bush’s superior campaign prevented that. I find myself becoming overly reliant of football metaphors (And I’m not even a fan! Honest!), but this objection is like saying that since the game hinged on a controversial penalty decision, the team that won wasn’t really all that good. If they were so awful, why wasn’t the other team able to defeat them despite the ruling not going their way?

Might as well finish off this point with another football anology. If there’s a tie, and one team wins in sudden death, is there no real winner? You can say that it was just luck that one team won and one team lost, but the fact remains that one team won and one team lost. It’s time to accept reality. Bush won. Deal.

Perhaps not directly, but what they did base their votes on was influenced by the candidates, and their ability to influence these factors in their favor depended in part on their intelligence.

What exactly is your point? That since Texas’ governor doesn’t have much power, Bush must be stupid?

Well, gee, maybe oil isn’t his thing. Maybe politics is his thing. You know, there are people that are generally intelligent, but can’t do everything. They’re called “normal”.

Actually, the formal interviews are largely for show. It is usually at the informal meetings that the real decisions are made.

Let’s see: Hitler had charm, Einstein had command of facts. Remind me again who ended up ruling Germany?

You have already said that you don’t find Bush’s choice of words to be his strongest area. So why would tranlation hurt him? Wouldn’t it, in fact, cover up his ackward phrasing, and therefore make him even more effective?

The fact that he was nominated for, and won, a presidential election shows very clearly that he inspires confidence.

47

I can be a convicted felon. You can be a convicted felon. Everyone can be a convicted felon.

48

Here’s a bit of a ponderance…

What evidence is there that Bush got through these top-notch, highest-calibre schools using only his name?

The notion that Ol’ Daddy did it all for him is quite easy to bandy about, but is there anything other than anti-Bush rhetoric that supports this claim? Y’know, like, facts and stuff?

Suggesting that a person can achieve such honors just 'cuz of a four-letter word is absurd… that assumes that the dozens of professors, deans, and other staff that he came into contact with were willing to waive standard scholarly guidelines the second he whips out the little slip of paper which reads “Bush”.

Sounds like another allusion to a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to me… apparently, the 'Publicans have been plotting this “coup” for decades!! They’ve sold out to alien colonists!!

And, oh, Vinnie…

I agree. However, I’m not too terribly surprised at his lack of articulation, but that’s probably just because I went through a Public Speaking class at school… and damn, there are some people who make Dubya seem like an expert orator!

And if he were to speak like he does in private during a nationally-televised debate, he’d have won in a landslide. Didn’t you see his appearance on “Oprah”? Everyone who knows him has always stated that he hates being behind a podium. Based on testimonials from those who have come into contact with the man, he gets by MUCH better than he does when he’s got several hundred million people watching him (the Great Communicator, he’s not, that’s for sure).

49

Let’s see if we can . . . ummmm. . . go over the good points. Then, we will go over the . . uh . . .bad points. Then, um, let’s look at them. Umm . . .then, we decide.

INTELLIGENCE

Proof that Bush has above average intelligence:

Graduated from Yale with a C average
Earned an MBA from Harvard
1200 SAT scores
Got in the top 5% Nat’l Guard officer test
Flew a fighter plane in the Nat’l Guard
Didn’t get thrown out of prep school
Proof that the guy is a dope:

Horrible grammar
The “opening and closing of sutres” joke on the Letterman show
Running businesses into the ground in West Texas
Apparently once you are in Yale, most likely you will graduate

COMMON SENSE

Proof of good judgment and common sense:

Ability to delegate
Ability to dialog with opposing groups of people and to persuade them

Proof of poor judgment and common sense:

Cocaine usage
Alcoholism
DUI

CHARACTER

Pro:

Apparent loyalty to wife Laura (OK, I realize that being loyal to your wife should be expected, but this is politics we are talking about, and I have not even heard a sniff of evidence that he has been another Clinton)
Loyalty to friends from Texas
Service in the military (I’ll get to that in a second)

Con:
Cocaine and alcohol abuse (again)
Weaseled out of Nam by getting Daddy to pull strings for him and serve in the Guard
When asked in a debate if he would use abortion as a litmus test, refused to directly answer the question (I know Gore didn’t either, but Gore isn’t our next prez. Were not talking about Gore here.)

WORK ETHIC

Pro:
Ummm . . . uh . . .

Con:
Complete lack of intellectual curiosity and study
Spent 20 years between college and the age of 40 partying and drinking
Stopped his campaign the night before the election, and went to bed early and slept in while Al Gore campaigned non-stop for 48 hours. In such a close election, a candidate with any sort of work ethic would have stayed up and campaigned to the bitter end as well.
Doubts that if his Dad weren’t George Bush, he’d be a store manager at the Midland, TX Wal-Mart right now with a degree from West Texas State in Business.(Conversely, maybe if he hadn’t been born into privilege, he would have been forced to develop a work ethic and gotten to the Presidency by work ethic alone)

CONCLUSION:

Now that I step back, I think George W. Bush is my hero. Here is a guy with above average intelligence whose parents gave him some breaks, and he coasted by. He really didn’t accomplish a single thing until the age of 40. Before that, his life was a haze of booze, drugs and playing with family businesses.

His befuddled bumpkin demeanor, poor vacabulary and horrible speaking ability is due to a simple lack of work on his verbal skill, and maybe a lack of reading (hence intellectual curiosity).

Thanks to his name, and a good sling of Bullshit and natural sales ability, George W. Bush is proof that there is hope for slackers after all!!!

50

I will not address the rest of the post since it is off topic. His grammar is not horrible, he has made some gaffes but read any interview with him of any length and his grammar is normal. When he speaks on camera sometimes his grammar can be stilted because he is being very cautious, this has nothing to do with intelligence.
He also made a bad joke on a TV show, this has nothing to do with intelligence. I’m sure we all know very intelligent people who have told a lame joke. He was not running for Tonight Show host.
Running busineses into the ground. During the eighties in Texas the oil business was going through a very bad spell and just about everybody was losing money. Maybe he isn’t John D Rockefeller but that does not show a lack of intelligence.
It is interesting that graduating from an Ivy League school is presented as evidence that he is a dope. I think that says more about your willingness to overlook evidence than it does about Bush.
I did a search and found a site that says Bush’s SAT scores put his IQ as being better than 80% percent of the population. I think that is probably at least one standard deviation away from the median. While that may not make him a genius I think it more than qualifies him intellectually to be president.

If your defintion of a slacker is someone who graduated from a distinguised college, was fraternity president, learned how to fly jet fighter planes, earned a Harvard MBA, ran for Congress, started his own business, was CEO of a corporation, owned a baseball team, got a stadium built, assisted on a succesfull presidential campaign, ran for governor and beat a popular incumbent, ran again and won with 70% of the vote, passed education, tort, and tax reform with an opposition controlled legislature despite not having as much statutory power as most governors, raised 90 million dollars, defeated a popular war hero for the nomination, and defeated a sitting vice president for the presidency. Yes there is hope for all of the slackers out there.

51

I think it goes deeper than that. The process is so expensive that virtually no one can afford it out of their own pockets. Getting the money ($100 million for GWB this year) takes a lot of schmoozing a lot of wealthy donors, who naturally expect something in return. That takes convincing them that you can win, and furthermore are their best chance at getting their points of view represented in office. I do agree that it doesn’t take much raw intelligence in the conventional sense, but it does take political skill and shrewdness to accomplish. As such, it is a rough sort of weeding out before the campaign ever formally starts.

The topic of candidates’ pretending to be for the people so they can get our votes, while really being beholden to their financial supporters, is an ancient one, of course.

52

Is anyone else wondering how Bush’s favorite technique for getting people to go along with him, namely slapping them on the back and giving them frat-house nicknames, is going to work on Arafat or Putin?

53

First, Bashere:

>>I’m not desperate for any concession at all. You have two mutually exclusive pieces of evidence 1) Bush is an idiot 2) an awful lot of people voted for him. You need to explain 2, in order for 1 to make sense. My response is that, well, if he’s so stupid, imagine how bad the other guy must be.<<

I’ve already stated that comparative intelligence is not the #1 criterion in voting in this country. That an awful lot of people voted for him does not make him the smarter candidate. Nor would that alone make Gore the smarter candidate had there been less funny-business in Florida. [And if you absolutely deny that there was funny-business in Florida, then this discussion is meaningless].

>>To which you respond; it is obvious. Democracy is flawed to the core, because people are stupid. This is obvious, because your guy lost.<<

No, democracy is flawed because, to paraphrase an Onion article, my vote can be counterracted by that of a hairdresser down the block who prefers the other candidate’s tie.

>>You then go on to respond that Bush won because he cheated. He outmanuevered your guy in a court of law. He manipulated public opinion to the point where more people thought Gore was a sore loser, than thought that bush cheated.<<

That’s right. And the USSC voted along strict party lines. And thousands of votes were deep-sixed. Fascinating that the executive of a county where quite a good many Gore votes were covered up is now on the Cabinet.

>>You claim that this is because Bush’s handlers were better than Gore’s. You refuse to follow that to its obvious conclusion (that Bush is better at surrounding himself with good people than Saint Gore is). Instead its one conspiracy after another.<<

I have never contradicted the fact that Bush ran a better campaign. But he does not get all the credit. And it does not, on its own, make him a smarter or dumber person.

>>You may not be aware of this, but the president of the US does not run the country by himself. There are a vast number of people that he HIRES. His first opportunity to HIRE people and to prove that he can HIRE people well is the campaign. Gore did a bad job. Bush did a good job.<<

Okay, so he can hire people. I haven’t really made a big issue of this point. That he ran a better campaign is not linked with how he’d do as president. You still have not adequately addressed the notion of his lacking in formal intelligence.

>>Posters have addressed your mistaken belief that Bush lacks native intelligence. He outscored Gore on every formal measurement of intelligence (grades, the SAT). He went to two ivy league schools.<<

And after all of this shining intellect, he became an alcoholic, cocaine abuser, and was convicted of a misdemeanor. So what does his aptitute at age 20 really mean to us now? I’ve asked this question already, it has not been addressed.

>>a) Bush is not a convicted felon.<<

Misdemeanor.

>>b) Nearly a quarter, not a half, of the people eligible to vote voted for him. Roughly the same number as voted for Gore.<<

When I said “half the voters,” I was referring to the people who actually voted. Those who don’t vote don’t have a vote that counts.

And The Ryan:

>>You seem to have a very strange definition of “running” a campaign, that it means doing everything necessary to get elected. So I suppose that according to you Vince Lombardi did not run the Packers; instead just hired a bunch of guys to do the actual work. Here in the real world “running” means “being in charge of” as in choosing who you want to do the work. Unless Rove and Hughes put a gun to Bush’s head and demanded to do what they wanted, the ultimate responsibility, and therefore the credit, is Bush’s. <<

I think Bush probably listened to Rove and Hughes, since both are smarter than he, and both are not politicians, they are strategists and campaign managers. They were brought on board because they could run a campaign.

Anyway, I still haven’t been shown how this links to Bush really having all that much applicable formal intelligence now.

>>But it was Bush’s campaign that put the election in a position in which the USSC would decide it, and it was the Bush campaign that convinced the USSC to rule in their favor. It’s not like the USSC deciding the issue was an inevitable conclusion; it was possible for Gore to win outright, but Bush’s superior campaign prevented that. I find myself becoming overly reliant of football metaphors (And I’m not even a fan! Honest!), but this objection is like saying that since the game hinged on a controversial penalty decision, the team that won wasn’t really all that good. If they were so awful, why wasn’t the other team able to defeat them despite the ruling not going their way? <<

Bush ran out the clock because nearly every official in Florida was on his side. The Supreme Court voted on strict party lines, while one of the most blistering Dissent opinions in history was written by Justice Brennan.

>>What exactly is your point? That since Texas’ governor doesn’t have much power, Bush must be stupid? <<

That alone doesn’t do it, no. But it mitigates the achievement. And his family was already big in politics by the time he was governor, so it’s not half so impressive as his getting into Yale.

>>Well, gee, maybe oil isn’t his thing. Maybe politics is his thing. You know, there are people that are generally intelligent, but can’t do everything. They’re called “normal”. <<

And a “normal” president could run this country into the ground if we hit a bad spell.

>>Actually, the formal interviews are largely for show. It is usually at the informal meetings that the real decisions are made. <<

I don’t think Yasser Arafat is really all that interested in the real, informal, cozy, friendly George W. Bush. You are wrong.

>>Let’s see: Hitler had charm, Einstein had command of facts. Remind me again who ended up ruling Germany? <<

Let’s see, Einstein was a Jew during the rise of anti-semitism in Germany while Hitler was in jail. Hitler was also a rather successful demagogue. He also was a skillful leader in some areas, while being an absolute megalomaniac for the most part. And I would not say his leadership of Germany was a good thing for the world.

>>You have already said that you don’t find Bush’s choice of words to be his strongest area. So why would tranlation hurt him? Wouldn’t it, in fact, cover up his ackward phrasing, and therefore make him even more effective? <<

I guess that’s a good idea. He should bring a laptop wired up to Babelfish. Every time he speaks, they can translate it into French and then back to English. It wouldn’t sound half so dumb.

>>The fact that he was nominated for, and won, a presidential election shows very clearly that he inspires confidence.<<

Not in most folks.

  • Toiletduck
54

Don’t I wish Brennan were still on the court. Breyer wrote the dissent.

Better to be corrected by a friendly face than an opponent.

:smiley:

55

Don’t forget:

  • Was AWOL for over a year from the Air Guard (he left right when they started mandatory drug tests, hmmm…)
  • Insider trading
  • Abused governor’s powers to evict residents from Arlington so he could build a new stadium there
  • Diverted state monies to big contributors
  • Lying under oath (saaaaaaaaaaaay…)

For details, see http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm

56

The accusation has been made that George W. is “dumber than a post.” In an effort to disprove this, a Jeopardy-style contest was held between GWB and a post. The conclusion:
GWB did better at U.S. history, U.S. geography, and biology. The post did better at math, world geography, and grammar. The conclusion, therefore, was that the contest was a tie and GWB is NOT dumber than a post.

57

quote:

Originally posted by Vinnie Virginslayer
CHARACTER

Con:
Cocaine and alcohol abuse (again)
Weaseled out of Nam by getting Daddy to pull strings for him and serve in the Guard

Why do you have cocaine and alcohol abuse under the CHARACTER heading? Aren’t they diseases?

58

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Toiletduck *
**When I said “half the voters,” I was referring to the people who actually voted. Those who don’t vote don’t have a vote that counts. **
(italics mine)

Amen and Hallelujah, Toiletduck. Would that all Gore devotees see the matter so clearly.

59

I didn’t find that funny so according to Vinnie’s criteria telling a bad joke makes you an idiot.

60

This is not correct. George Bush got SATs in the 1200s and had a C average at Yale. This was reported in the New Yorker which uncovered his Yale transcipt from archives.

Al Gore had an SAT of 1355 (625 verbal, 730 math) [Turque, “Inventing Al Gore,” p. 44). He had a C average his first two years at Harvard while majoring in English and an A to B average his second two years while majoring in Political Science. (Ibid. 56) Ironically, Gore earned honors for his senior thesis “The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969.”

One source of possible confusion: Gore ceased attending Seminary to attend Law School and his uncompleted courses were converted to “F’s.” He was then elected to congress before finishing law school and decided to go to Washington instead of completing his JD. It is often erroneously reported that he “dropped out” of either school, but this is only true in the sense that George bush is “dropping out” of the Governership of Texas to be President of the US or that Lieberman would have been “dropping out” of the Senate to be VP.

I think that Vinnie’s analysis is pretty good here. Bush is slightly above average intellectually, but lazy. Connections through his father made him head of the Rangers, and then Governor of Texas, but he did suprisingly well in both jobs.

He wouldn’t be where he is if his father were not President. On the other hand he wouldn’t be where he is if he were incompetent either.