I typed out what I thought was a good post in that thread in IMHO, then as soon as I submitted it, I find that the thread was closed!
Here’s a continuance of it, in the proper forum. And here was my post:
To tell you the truth, I do think Bush was (and is) an introspective person. But the impression I get from every single time I’ve seen him speak is that he’s the kind of introvert who’s secretly introverted. I think he probably does think a lot about things, probably some pretty deep issues, but I suspect he keeps it completely to himself. I think he doesn’t want to appear introspective because he thinks it might be taken as a sign of indeciciveness or personal weakness. But from everything I’ve seen of Bush, I think his psychology is more complex than people assume. I think he probably has a lot of thoughts that he keeps bottled up. The drinking problems he went through fit perfectly with this.
I don’t think he was a bad man, or stupid. I do think he was easily manipulated by others, and generally unqualified for his job as president.
The elder Bush oversaw probably the greatest number of government coups and the attempt to establish modern government in backwards nations, of any person in US history. That his son would be so divorced from the results of those tests as to think that he could simply beat up Iraq and Afghanistan’s military and go home is a testament to his lack of intellectual curiosity or even his awareness of his immediate surroundings. He may or may not be introspective, but if you’re not curious and know very little, you can sit there and think about things in a yogic state for centuries on end and you’re not going to come up with much. You have to know about the existence of other options, of previous forays and their results, etc. otherwise, you just don’t have anything to compare and contrast when you’re introspecting.
Personally, I have no opinion on whether he was introspective or not, but as said, it’s not really relevant.
No, he isn’t stupid. I’d say his intelligence is probably about average.
I’d say that his faith is pretty sincere. And maybe he was tempted to think that there was a divine hand behind his administration. I think he probably read some of his foreign policy into certain verses of Revelations.
Unfortunately, you don’t want somebody like that as President of the United States. Ask the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
The common wisdom was that he was a ‘fundie’, but I have my doubts. I don’t think that religion was anywhere near as central to his life so as to put him in the ‘fundie’ category. Also, assuming he WAS a ‘fundie’, he didn’t really do all that much to push the ‘fundie’ cause while he was president, so if he was he kept it between him and his god.
I think he was smarter than most people around here give him credit for, and I also think that a lot of the things that really tweaked 'dopers were affectations…he WANTED to convey that folksie air, like he was just folks. It was part of his persona…the man was a politician for the gods sake, and that persona not only got him elected (yeah yeah, I know…he ‘stole’ the election. He was still the guy sitting in the Oval Office when the smoke cleared :p) but got him RE-elected (ditto…‘stole’ this one too, so who was was the dummy?).
He was no genius, and he had serious flaws…arguably one of the worst presidents we’ve had in modern times…but he wasn’t nearly as stupid as people made him out to be. Nor was he nearly as fixated on religion as people assumed or made him out to be (again…I think it was part of his persona, more than a deep seated conviction).
I linked to an article in another thread comparing Bush to Perry where they said that if the two were brothers, Bush would be known as ‘the smart one’, and also contrasted their individual styles, and how un-alike they really are, despite how similar people ASSUME them to be. One thing in that article that really struck me was how Bush was uncomfortable around ‘fundie’ types, and was against proposals to curtail gay marriage (he was talked into it by Rove, who’s motive was, of course, votes), while Perry is pretty much a caricature of what most people on this board THOUGHT Bush was actually like.
At any rate, regardless of whether he was or wasn’t a ‘fundie’ or was or wasn’t smarter than the average bear, he was still a horrible president, and that will be the actual measure or yard stick he will be measured up against by history. My guess is he will be ranked in the bottom 10 of all time.
Obviously, I can’t psychoanalyze President Bush and I don’t know what he was thinking, so this is all speculation based on his actions and his history, but I don’t think it’s a matter of introspection or the lack of introspection as it is a matter of conviction and stubbornness, in that, once he makes his mind up on something, he sticks by his decision, whether it turns out well or badly.
That being said, I don’t know that President Bush is overly introspective. I think he largely acts on instincts and what feels right to him. That doesn’t mean that he’s not smart, or that he’s not capable of thinking things through, but I think he tends to trust his instincts and his read on a situation.
That being said, somebody’s conclusions are only as good as the information he has, and from what I’ve heard, President Bush wasn’t really somebody who handled disagreement well and didn’t like it when people argued with him. So most of the people he surrounded himself with in the White House were people who wouldn’t argue with him on major things.
Interestingly enough, the person who reminds me the most of President Bush is President Clinton. Not in terms of conviction or stubbornness. Clinton was famous for changing his position to whatever he thought would be popular. But, in terms of both his trusting his instinct and his unwillingness to hear the sorts of things he didn’t like to hear.
Also, for what it’s worth, regarding the other question, I don’t think there’s any way you could call President Bush a fundamentalist. He’s a born-again evangelical, but in terms of belief, he’s a pretty standard conservative Methodist.
I think he was a pretty intelligent man. But, as I said in the other thread, I think he was not introspective. He knew a lot of things but he never stopped to think about what those things meant or if what he knew was true or if what he didn’t know might be important. In my opinion, Bush’s philosophy of life was “I know what I know.”
As i said in the other thread, I think he was stupid, a fundie, and thought of himself as a Messiah; chosen by God to lead God’s Country.
Yes; one thing I heard consistently about him was how intellectually isolated he’d made himself, how much of a bubble he lived in. He avoided watching the news, didn’t allow people who disagreed with him to talk to him, and in general was cut off from the world by his own desire. I recall the account of how he didn’t realize Katrina was even a disaster until his people in desperation showed him DVDs of disaster footage they’d compiled, because he hadn’t even glanced at the news about it.
:dubious: I find that extraordinary difficult to believe. The President doesn’t watch the freaking news to, er, get the news…that’s what he has staffers for. They brief him daily on what’s going on. What you are saying here is that he was ignoring the folks briefing him on a daily basis to the point that he wasn’t listening to them at all. I would need to see a valid cite to believe that of ANY President…I don’t think ti’s even possible.
I also seem to recall that Bush was urging the local government to evacuate before Katrina hit, so that would mean that he knew it was going to be a disaster, but then forgot about it later and had to be reminded, after being told about it in several briefings…or something.
Outside of the title, there wasn’t any talk of fundamentalism, just introspection. But the point would remain, if you only know or understand one thing (i.e. mainstream Christianity), it doesn’t much matter if you’re introspective or not, you only have one path to go down.
A little googling gets me some reports from the time. A quote apparently from from Newsweek:
No, everyone was telling the Administration it was likely to be a disaster; in response, he told them everything would be fine and went on one of his many vacations.
Bush was notorious for ignoring people who warned him of upcoming disaster. He was warned against an Al Qaeda attack, warned against Iraq, warned about Katrina.
I have to say I’m a little disappointed, did everyone missed that really messed up fundamentalists like Ted Haggard had the ear of the president at least once a week?
“Intelligence” takes many forms. Whatever GWB’s IQ was, he lacked intellectual curiosity and was manipulable. O’Neill’s accounts of one-on-one conversations with Bush and of cabinet meetings make that clear – indeed should frighten any reasonable person. I think GWB would have made a great sales manager for an auto dealer.
As to his fundamentalism, one can find several quotations implying that, like the Blues Brothers in the Belushi-Ackroyd farce, Bush claimed to believe he was on a Mission from God. And, unless one imagines Chirac to be lying, I can’t understand anyone who’s not amazed by the following strange account from Jacques Chirac’s book:
The President also consults regularly with ambassadors and government officials from the People’s Republic of China. That does not make George W. Bush Chinese.
I stand by my claim; Bush is not an atheist by any means, but much of his professed Christianity was a play for votes. He did not consider himself the “messiah” or any of the usual Der Trihs stuff; I think Bush’s association with Christianity is much more casual than a real fundamentalist, and I further think the only time he really took the concept seriously was to help him with substance abuse. Come next Sunday I strongly suspect he’s much likelier to be worshipping at the alter of the National Football League than than of Jesus Christ. I would further suggest that Bush personally probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass if gay people get married or not.
By comparison (the comparison that started this discussion) Rick Perry is the real deal. Perry is genuinely a fanatical Christian. Perry actually, legitimately beleives the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and that homosexuals are evil.
One of Michael Moore’s movies, I think it was Fahrenheit 9/11, featured some clips of interviews from when before W was governor and in the oil business. He was far more fluent in English than 1999 and later, when he sounded like an absolute moron every time he opened his mouth. This was not a stupid accent problem, he had the same accent. In the clips he sounded like a highly intelligent and ambitious man.
He seemed to me to be sincere about his religious convictions and crediting religion for stopping his severe drinking.
It may be that his drinking and possible other substance abuse hurt his mental faculties. It may be that he dumbed it down for politics.
He was quite easily manipulable by Cheney and Rumsfeld until he realized that they burned him very badly during the Plame affair. He refused to give Scooter Libby a full pardon despite badgering by Cheney. This was probably punishment for Cheney and Libby making him look like an idiot over Plame, which probably cost him dearly among his family’s allies in the intelligence community.
I think he was in way over his head as President. Of the current Republican contenders, Romney, Huntsman and TPaw might not be. Gingrinch probably wouldn’t be in over his head either, but he is probably the most sick narcissistic fuck ever to seek the office, so let’s hope he gets nowhere. As for Bachman, Perry et al, God save us.
Pawlenty is out of the race, Huntsman is a rounding error in the primaries at the moment, seeking that elusive “rational Republican” vote, Romney is not going to survive the primary process because of his Mormon faith and Gingrich is running solely to ratchet up his speaking fees. Sorry, but the Republican race is among the sorriest bunch of loonballs this Democrat could ever wish for.
Ok my source is a few books I have read about the man and some conversations with people who have met him; what I can tell is that he is more intelligent then people gave him credit for, pretty much everyone who knows him well says that he is well read. Indeed one person I know who is no fan of his told me that in private his accent is actually quite different.
And looking at his policies, he never really went the fundo route; he took Cheney on as a VP despite knowing about Cheney’s gay daughter, he allowed Federal Funding for existing stem cell lines and increased funding for AIDS; above and beyond what the right wanted.
I would take Chirac’s recollections with a bucket of salt, Chirac hated Bush (it was mutual).