Fark posted a link to this calendar of Bush quotes. Here are a few choice selections:
“The California crunch really is the result of not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”
“If affirmative action means what I just described, what I’m for, then I’m for it.”
“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
And the most frightening of them all:
“Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”
-When asked in an interview to name something he’s not very good at
Sorry. I think that he is an intellectually lazy (as opposed to stupid) tool of big business, but a propensity for tripping over his own tongue should not be a statutory barrier to office. If he can get the vote of five Supreme Court justices, he gets to be president. Let it go and move on.
The worst was “I know how hard it is to put food on your family.” Not the mangled syntax so much, but that it was a blatant lie. He doesn’t know how hard it is to feed a family.
In fairness to the Shrub (who I think is nearly too stupid to be president), there’s nothing stupid about this line. Canada and Mexico are huge trading partners for the U.S.; Bush’s assertion means simply that the balance of imports is shifting away from those two.
Or did you think that Canada and Mexico are somehow “overseas”?
How about when he asked the president of Brazil, “Do you have black people too?” This was not just garbled syntax or a malapropism, it was a dumbass thing to say.
Sorry I managed to mangle that as well, it should read:
“It’s clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
I wonder when he’s going to tell the Germans that he’s a Jelly Donut? Or refer to former President Hoover Heever. Or pick a dog up by it’s ears. Or bonk someone in the head with a golf ball while falling down an airplane companion way.
C’mon, every President has done/said goofy shit. Give the dork a break.
Hey, I helped put him there, I can make fun of him!:p;)
“Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”
-When asked in an interview to name something he’s not very good at
That’s not just goofy shit, thats our most important public policy figure telling us that reading indepth public policy isn’t one of his strong points. Is the Whitehouse drawing up fow charts with pictures and cue cards for him?
Regarding the rest of them, whether he said them or not, it will be difficult ever to top this classic from Clinton: “That depends on what your definition of is is.”
What irks me about this whole “How stupid is Bush?” debate is not the argument about whether a few ineptly worded remarks are evidence of intellectual weakness, but rather that, having been characterized as the Forest Gump of the White House, every time he manages to walk and chew gum at the same time without falling over someone uses it as evidence that he’s got the brainpower needed to be president.
There is a lot of ground on the intelligence scale between “vegetable” and “Einstein”, and just because Bush isn’t one doesn’t make him the other. I have serious doubts about his ability to understand the requirements of his post to the degree that he needs to, but I don’t think he’s incapable of basic day-to-day bodily functions.
Frankly, given that the US may be going to war for the purpose of gaining votes for the Republicans and oil rights for George’s cronies, whether or not the President can form a coherent sentence is not high on my worry list right now.