I used to joke that Jeb’s bumper-sticker motto would be I’m not as dumb as my older brother! but it’s lookin like Dubya was the smarter one after all.
Latest joke is that to appeal both to his Hispanic supporters and to anti-immigration folks he’s blaming Asians for the “anchor baby” problem. Don’t deport you ♫ and don’t deport me ♫ Deport that baby behind that tree. ♫♫ Other Jeb! gems:
[ul][li] Rising health-care costs are not a problem. Within five years his Apple Watch will be managing his health care.[/li][li] Murray’s Bell Curve helps guide his thinking on black problems.[/li][li]Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter helps guide his thinking on sexual morality (though he draws conclusions opposite from Hawthorne. :smack: )[/li][/ul]
Any other contributions?
I don’t support Trump’s Great Wall of Texas but was intrigued to learn Jeb! thinks it will cost “hundreds of billions of dollars.” In fact, prices estimates for the best fences average only $4 million per mile. Is Jeb! just one of these dolts who throws in a “literally” or “exponentially” when trying to impress, but “exponentially” is too hard to pronounce, so he throws in “hundreds of”?
W seems to have cultivated an anti-intellectual image, as that played well in his election campaigns, in his first one (which he lost) he ran as the smart guy.
1A) Recollections of people who dealt with him as President (often foreign leaders) seem to conclude that he was a lot smarter and well informed than they had expected
Jeb seems to have been favoured by his parents and the brother have usually not gotten along. (W is a bit older than his siblings, he mentions in his memoirs that he sometime felt like a distant Uncle to them).
I would doubt if anyone since 1900 becoming president of the USA ( around when America became a major power ) could be stupid or foolish — which doesn’t imply possessing intellectual prowess — so W. proved himself as not really a dullard. Jeb has yet to face that challenge.
However, following strange ideas and demented beliefs also does not preclude intelligence or ability. Morality maybe.
He was best portrayed on “Li’ Bush” by running into the cabinets with a pot on his head. I think the whole Terry Schiavo thingy would still paint him as an idiot.
My dad knew W. a bit in college (although they didn’t exactly move in the same circles), and says that he didn’t give the impression of being that stupid - or that Texan.
I’ll rephrase “idiot” to “idiotic” in my previous post. They’re certainly not stupid men, but Jeb! seems like another candidate with an agenda. In fact, I don’t consider any of our presidents to ever be stupid people-- er, at least no one pressed the button for the big bombs in the Cold War. So there’s at least that.
When he was President, an English newspaper noted that when he was flustered or surprised, he tended to drop the folksy twang and speak normally and in complete sentences… unlike Bill Clinton, whose Arkansas roots became more apparent.
[QUOTE=Leaper]
Also, keep in mind that smartER is a relative term.
[/QUOTE]
True, but being 'smart" does not mean being a good leader, lots of very smart men have been horrible leaders.
W’s stammering cowboy routine was a sham. Look up his debates in Texas from the '90s. He talks in complete sentences at a brisk pace and sounds like he has his shit together. Even during his first presidential run he wasn’t that bad.
What confused me when he was POTUS is every once in awhile he would have embarrassingly cringe worthy moments during more somber events that would just go on and on, like when talking about terrorism or some war memorial or whatever. I remember some speculating it was some biological based cognitive decline, but there hasn’t been a diagnosis for anything, has there?
I don’t think it was a sham. It just doesn’t really make sense as an act. Especially since he was better the first time he ran for president. Some sort of decline makes sense.
Some people have suggested he may have gone on antidepressants. They say it made them stammer and stumble for words. I’ve not had that experience, but I’ve heard other people talk about that.
I don’t really think either Bush brother is a moron in a clinical sense. Almost every Governor, Senator, etc. (even including Sarah Palin!) has a 100+ IQ.
In political debates I use “stupid” as a metaphor for “having incompetent ideals and eager to inflict policies that rational humanitarians would find stupid.”
All I can think of is an SNL skit (pretty much the only one I’ve seen in a decade) - the Kardashian sisters:
*“I’m Kim, the pretty one.”
“I’m Khloe, the smart one.”
“I’m Kourtney.”
*
That, and the backlit panel I saw in the DFW airport, around 2001 or so. A photo of W, with the simple caption: “Sometimes political acumen skips a generation.”
Jeb may be smarter but the Georges were better campaigners. Neither of them would have been so stupid as to follow Trump like he’s the Pied Piper and dance over the right edge of the cliff. His latest where he says it’s the Asian anchor babies that we need to worry about was about as stupid as they come. Yesirree, what the Republicans really needed was to piss off one more ethnic group.
I have not been very impressed by Jeb from what I’ve seen of him. It’s hard to say if he’s smarter than his brother or not, because one of his big problems seems to be a lack of passion, and that makes him not very interesting to listen to. I agree that he isn’t a very good campaigner, but then neither was Kerry. That doesn’t necessarily make you stupid.
At any rate, if he’s supposed to be the “smart one”, I haven’t seen it yet. He doesn’t seem to particularly shine in the smarts department.
Yeah. I’m still pissed off at the entire fucking state of Texas for ditching Ann. Best damn governor the state has had, probably ever. But a lot of it was GWB’s presenting a conservative populist message in a competent package.
I have a vague recollection of an article written by a GWB-era intern or low-level aide who said that he was surprisingly (and exceptionally) sharp-witted in person, not at all folksy or bumbling, and if he got angry with someone in a meeting he could cut them down in a single sentence. Not at all the cringe-worthy buffoon we saw in public. The impression the author had of him was that he would have made an excellent leader of a large company where he could make executive decisions himself, but as a president he was crippled by the relationships he had with his powerful cronies in his administration.
I loathed GWB during his presidency, but now that some time has passed, I look back at him and think his life story must be fascinating to read. Maybe a true-life modern-day Faust.
So, Jeb I know nothing about, but if he is less competent than his brother, then surely Cheney is rubbing his gnarled hands and salivating at the thought of devouring yet another Bush soul ripe for the plucking, and we as a nation must unite and ensure that piece of evil is conquered and shoved back into the Hell which spat him out.