Al Gore, on the other hand, won his first seat in Congress based solely on his abilities, and not his name or family connections. Please. The reality is that they aren’t particularly distinguishable if you look at family background and education, although I suppose Yale and Harvard graduates would beg to differ. (I would insert a smiley here if I knew how).
KSO, go to the bottom of the page of any thread. Click on the “Smiles” underlined in red, and you will get a screen showing how to do it.
I think it is important to define what one means by “competent” - after all, Reagan managed to get to be a beloved, nearly worshiped 2 term president while having what could generously be called a little less than a steel trap for a mind, and suffering the beginnings of Alzheimer’s to boot.
Making it all the way to the presidency is no proof of intelligence or intellectual ability.
A few flubs while delivering an ultra-formal speech is no proof of lack of intelligence or intellectual ability, either.
So only the “right” sort of people should be allowed to vote?
The ability to make good decisions hiring people is evidence (not proof, but evidence) that he is of above average intelligence. There is a very clear correlation there.
See above.
But that doesn’t answer the question of why it came down to the officials if he is so incompetent. Why wasn’t Gore able to achieve a strong enough lead that the original count would have shown him to be the winner? At the very least, Bush is Gore’s equal in running campaigns.
You should make a clearer distinction between evidence that Bush is unitelligent and rebuttal to evidence that he is.
We aren’t discussing whether Bush is a genius. We are discussing whether he has normal or above normal intelligence.
Since you think I’m wrong, I must be?
Okay, so Bush has only inspired confidence in 49.9% of people. Isn’t that still rather impressive? If Bush can resolve only 49.9% of the world’s conflicts, I’d say that that’s pretty good.
As much as I hate Bush (and that’s a tremendous amount,) I just had to point this out. “Lack of poor grammar” is a double negative. Basically, you just said “Bush’s excellent control of the English language reveals his stupidity.” I know what you meant, and I agree with almost everything you’ve been saying, that was just an amusing little observation.
Gore wasn’t really qualified to become president, either, he was just underqualified in other aspects. He was just the “lesser of two evils.” However, Bush was CLEARLY a moron. I bet half the people put to death in Texas were smarter than him (that includes a mentally challenged person.)
Curious, what did he major in at Yale? Switch flippin’? Independent study on the affects of cocaine and alcohol abuse? Nepotism? Hypocricy?
puddleglum . . . Why don’t you get to your point? LOL
WOW! What a coincidence, quite a few of the people he has nominated for high positions also happen to have helped out his Dad. Hmmmmmm . . .
Maybe a bit OT, but . . . did anyone see Letterman the night after he was on for a second time? Where he was cleaning is reading glasses with Maria Pope’s sweater during a break. It just looked so boneheaded and to me it came across as disrespectful. Another thing, two minutes of his interview with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show were edited out. So much for being so wonderful in more “relaxed” settings.
And I suppose you know what happened during those two minutes?
The show is filmed live. They don’t film it a week in advance, then edit it so as to perfectly fit in the time slot. They have a few hours to make sure that they take up no more than their allotted time.
::whips out Occam’s Razor:: Most likely, they went over time. Happens more often than you think. Some guests just get going so well that they don’t want to stop… other guests, when they suck, are cut short. The fact that they had to edit parts out implies that, yes, he DID do better in a more “relaxed” setting.
Embarrassingly enough, however, is that unlike Bush the post DID recite the names of all the cabinet members of the Rwandan government.
The Ryan:
I can hardly believe you used a comparison that effectively defeated the purpose of your pro-Bush arguments. Especially a Hitler comparison. I can’t believe you wrote that in all seriousness. I mean, I’m not a fan of Bush. But do you know who Hitler was? Dear God, man!
Sorry, that just shocked me. Resume thread.
Brennan - Breyer… mea culpa.
Also, I did not mean to say Attorney General. I meant Secretary of State… Katherine Harris, the harpy. Another mea culpa.
>>So only the “right” sort of people should be allowed to vote?<<
Not at all. The point I was making was that having won the vote, whether the popular vote, the electoral vote, or some other vote does not really mean any one uniform thing, since no two people in the electorate choose candidates on the exact same grounds. One person may see education as a priority, while another wants a nice president, while another is looking for whose tax proposals seem more beneficial, while another votes for the Texan 'coz he’s from Texas while another one votes the same way his older brother votes, and so on and so on.
>>The ability to make good decisions hiring people is evidence (not proof, but evidence) that he is of above average intelligence. There is a very clear correlation there.<<
It is not evidence in any way shape or form of above average intelligence. Making an effective decision does nothing to elevate his intellect or my perception of it. He was not flying solo. He did not make all these decisions. The Republican party wants a Republican president, ideally as much as Bush wants to be President. It’s their money that ran his campaign. He was their investment as much as he was his own. This whole hiring business is silly.
To quote myself:
Anyway, I still haven’t been shown how this links to Bush really having all that much applicable formal intelligence…
>>But that doesn’t answer the question of why it came down to the officials if he is so incompetent. Why wasn’t Gore able to achieve a strong enough lead that the original count would have shown him to be the winner? At the very least, Bush is Gore’s equal in running campaigns.<<
I could easily say that Gore was not able to achieve a strong enough lead that the original count would have shown him the winner because the press called him the winner so early on that Bush voters came out in droves. I could easily say that Gore was not able to achieve a strong enough lead because thousands of Gore votes were deep-sixed. I could say that it is because large portions of the voting population were denied the vote.
I would add that one of the caviats we’ve all learned about the Florida electorate is that elderly Jewish Floridians strongly support Pat Buchanan. I could also say that my point above about voting signifying nothing is crucial to this issue.
Winning Florida and the Electoral college really says nothing about either candidate because of what I have already explained about the electorate. I have pointed out that not everyone votes based solely on intelligence. I can also add that a lot of people dumber than Bush, as well as people smarter than both candidates have the vote, so their appraisals would not match ours. You have roundly ignored this point.
>>We aren’t discussing whether Bush is a genius. We are discussing whether he has normal or above normal intelligence.<<
I think you have yet to get the foot in the door of convincing us that he is even going to be a competent president, save for his ability to hire people.
Wait… look at his Secretary of Housing, whose only experience with such matters is that he once lived in Federal Housing. In a Republican county where many Gore votes are most likely locked up tight.
>>
Since you think I’m wrong, I must be?<<
Isn’t that what this is all about? While candor is an important part of diplomatic relations, it simply isn’t enough. The job of President is not an informal one.
You have pointed to nothing hinting at his formal intelligence except his choice of staff, which I have already mitigated, since it likely was not entirely his decision.
Meanwhile, there are many occasions where you suggest that I am a die-hard Gore supporter, or that I think Gore is a genius. I do not. I think he’s a smart fellow. But if you want to cite SATs, I scored higher than he did. No mark of genius.
>>Okay, so Bush has only inspired confidence in 49.9% of people. Isn’t that still rather impressive? If Bush can resolve only 49.9% of the world’s conflicts, I’d say that that’s pretty good.<<
Bush was chosen by the Republican party at its primary. Subsequently, many saw the vote as a party line decisions after 8 years of a Democratic administration. But still I wonder if there are as many Republicans out there who would have preferred McCain as there are Dems who would have liked to see Bradley on the ticket?
Meanwhile, I think most of us are still reeling from your bringing up Hitler’s charm to somehow plug for Bush. I’m afraid you can’t recover from that one unless you really believe that Hitler did something good for the world, or even, to be incredibly selfish, for Germany alone, in the long run.
- Toiletduck
I think I see the problem here. The argument is trying to prove something without any applicable facts pro or con to the subject. This whole thread is based on personal opinion. Like this:
Pro-Busher: “He got through some of the highest-ranking schools in the country.”
Anti-Busher: “Daddy did it all for him.”
PB: “He got through flight training for one of the more dangerous planes for the time.”
AB: “Daddy did it all for him.”
PB: “He’s proven his ability to choose advisors wisely.”
AB: “Daddy did it all for him.”
Hmm… on second thought… seems one of these opinions is rather repetitive…
Ah, well, derive from that what you will.
Do you know what happened during those two minutes? No, neither of us do. But it was Bush’s handlers that said they wanted full say over the entire interview and wanted to be able to edit things out. He didn’t run over time, they edited the show to make him look better.
You didn’t comment on the completely retarded moment from the Letterman show where he cleaned his glasses, it was on tape, and pretty obvious what he was doing. Can you defend him on that one? Didn’t thinks so. I think I have a right to say that it’s very possible Bush did something just as stupid, if not stupider during those edited minutes.
I have not once mentioned Dubyah’s dad in any of my commentary here. I do not know enough about the particular situations which found him in Yale, Harvard, the Natl. Guard and whatnot. I have instead focused on his behavior and his statements, while also relying a little bit on his cloudy and ilicit past.
Those who oppose my view in this regard have come up with one thing that Bush does competently: he can hire people well.
And I have responded to this by saying that his winning an election is really an affirmation of very little. And now, a few days removed from when I jumped on this thread, I can see that the lack of experience of some of his new Cabinet members-to-be matches his own.
Meanwhile, I have mitigated what intellect-value people might take and assess from his position as governor of Texas. It’s a weak governorship. And for that, I can also say that pops was President at that point. But I don’t have to. Because I’ve already stated above re: general elections that getting elected to a position does not really indicate or settle anything except that, for one reason or another, the laws and countings indicate that one person was selected by the electorate. He won buy a large margin in Texas. So Texas liked him.
If elections were a litmus test for intelligence, Reagan could never have gotten elected. Twice.
The rest of his qualifications re: Yale, Harvard, SATs, Natl Guard go back at least some 20 years or so. Since then, he’s killed countless braincells on various abused substance, legal and otherwise. And Cs at Yale are not too damned impressive anyway.
People then bring up his informal intelligence, amiability and charm. This is probably what helped him clinch as much of the electorate as he did despite his obvious deficiencies.
To which I replied that this informal intelligence is not what’s going to help him when he has to make crucial decisions in foreign and domestic policy. When he has to negotiate, mediate, deliberate, delegate, and other “ate” words.
There’s quite a few responsibilities that the Prez is held accountable for. And many of Bush’s supporters are still fighting to get a foot in the door to suggest that he’s even of “normal” intelligence.
I don’t think “normal” intelligence, which you can quantify by a 1200 on the SATs or Cs at Yale or whatever is good enough for one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I would rather have someone with George Bush’s charm, a bit more charisma, and a lot more intelligence… and may I add knowledge of the world around him. He’d be a politician who couldn’t name all the members of the President’s Cabinet if he didn’t happen to be the one to pick them himself.
I felt I might as well recap the central thrust of my argument one last time, since I’m hopping a jet in a few hours for foreign shores to celebrate the holidays and this thread will likely run away from these arguments or die out before I return.
- Toiletduck
“Is George W. Bush REALLY stupid-or is it an act?”
It is an act. Like Columbo.
I hope.
Don’t forget that the guy got through Yale and Grad school while being a SLACKER. That says a fair bit for his intelligence. If he were a model student, studying every night, and still got C’s, then you could make the case that he wasn’t really very bright. But if he managed to coast through on C’s while doing nothing, it was probably his intelligence alone that carried him.
Look: How a guy comes across on TV has NOTHING to do with intelligence. There are a lot of mediocrities out there who sound intelligent because they know how to speak in sound bites. There are others with stage fright, or who adopt bad mannerisms, or who simply don’t perform well in front of a camera for myriad reasons who may come across as stupid when they aren’t.
The prototypical example of this is James Stockdale. Remember him? Ross Perot’s running mate? He was vilified by the media for being ‘stupid’. Saturday Night Live ran endless jokes about how dim he was. Slow, senile, unintelligent. That was the rap on Stockdale. How accurate was that?
Well, let’s see. Stockdale was a full Admiral in the Navy. He has a Ph.D from Stanford, and was a professor there. He is currently a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institute. He has thirteen honorary Doctorates, and won 26 medals in Vietnam, including the Medal of Honor and two Silver Stars, along with several Distinguished Flying Crosses.
But he didn’t come across very well on TV. The cardinal sin. So we ridiculed him and wrote him off as an idiot.
I’ll repeat: If George Bush was your neighbor, you’d probably be in awe of him. Masters from Harvard, undergrad at Yale, fighter pilot, two-term governor of Texas. But jeez, he’s got that ‘deer in the headlights’ look on TV, so he’s GOT to be an idiot, right?
Two obvious mistakes, and this is not a live interview. You had ample time to review and even preview your posts. According to the logic, if you can call it that, of the OP you must be an idiot too.
Bush has a history of distinguished accomplishment and one of the best educations this country has to offer. He has also had a few problems with grammar. Any fair minded person would not say that a verbal flub or bad joke invalidates a Masters from Harvard. Whether Bush is articulate could be debatable. Whether he or Gore is smarter or more qualified to be president is also debatable. However, whether he is dumb, lazy, or a slacker is not. There is massive evidence that he is an intelligent, hard working person. There has been no actual disputation of the evidence, just snide remarks.
I would just like to add that I don’t think grades and SAT scores measure anything. I got 1240 on the SATs, and I have an A average. Whoop-di-doo. That just means I know how to take a test. And all that Bush’s grades and scores mean is that he either knows how to take a test, or got lucky. It happens.
I personally think Bush looks pretty foolish. But if you are going to argue his intelligence or lack thereof, it might behoove you to look for times in his life where he exhibited intelligence, after college.
The addictions were not very intelligent. I do realize that alcoholsim is a disease, however, he had to start. He exhibited very poor judgement when he became dependent on alcohol. That in itself doesn’t make him a fool, stupid, or an idiot. However, if there are more bad calls than good calls, he is probably an incompetant fool.
And from reading all of your arguements, I can’t decide. I guess it depends on how you look at things.
For example:
Side A:Mr. X got straight As in HS. THat proves he is smart enough to go to a good school.
Side B: Mr. X did get straight As, however, he took plastics 101, Carving 101, and the lowest level English, History, and Math he could get away with it.
I hope all of this makes sense…
Yeah I’d be in awe of my neighbor for being able to weasel his way out of drunk driving offences. I’d be in awe at the amounts of coke he could snort. I’d be in awe at how he could ruin numerous businesses and still not be bankrupt (or be held accountable by stockholders). I’d be in awe when he tells stories from his time in the Ivy league and the bitchin’ parties he’d go to. I’d be in awe at the fact that he hadn’t accomplished a damn thing for most of his adult life. I’d be in awe that it took such an “intelligent” guy 8 years after a DUI (or DWI whatever) to figure out that he might want to change his life style. I think I’d be in awe at the fact that a President’s kid lives next door to me, and at all the second and third chances he’s gotten and what an easy life he’s been handed to him. Yeah, he really is awe inspiring.