In 2003 she complained that storm names were too white. She demanded that “all racial groups should be represented” and asked the weather officials to “try to be inclusive of African-American names.”
…claimed in a speech that US is 400+ years old (“we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not”).
…claimed in a speech that there are two Vietnams today - North and South: “Today we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they’re living side by side.”
… and of course she, when in her role as the Congresswoman that is sitting on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics she visited the JPL she asked the guides if the Mars Rover would be able to show “the flag the astronauts planted there before”.
There is a problem with this, if that was the case then there are only 2 options when he got us into Iraq, 1) he was given the information but was incompetent and clueless to see how he was being manipulated, or 2) he knew what was going on and he is a dirty rat.
As they say one should not blame malice when stupidity will do, but then again if defenders of Bush like Keith Hennessey want to push what in reality is the “evil” explanation they are welcomed to do so.
Agreed. W is dumber than the average POTUS but smarter than the average American – at any rate, smart enough to earn an MBA, which most Americans probably are not. But there are none so blind as those who will not see, and none so dumb as those who will not think.
Oh, Nixon was pretty damned smart – blinkered and narrowminded in some ways, but smart. He mistakes were driven by his demons – his social inferiority complex, his persecution complex, and most of all his fundamental dishonesty. Nixon never accepted even in theory that a pol has a duty to tell the truth to the people, his attitude was always that those in-the-know will make the decisions and “the public will be told what the public needs to be told.” Quite a tragically flawed figure, but you have to be a great man in the first place to be that. Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland is worth a read, BTW.
Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge is also worth a read. Reagan was indeed a nasty piece of work as a human being, a lifelong self-aggrandizer, a cold and indifferent parent, and what intellect he had was severely limited by his habit of viewing the world through a lens of heroic mythology.
On a very recent and very damming documentary (Inside Job) the point was made that many economists got scott free because the mainstream media barely questioned or investigated why was it that the economists that approved of the ideas and methods that led to the meltdown did not had at least a hit on their reputations, it seems that as usual they still can get plum jobs.
Hey my mommy says I’m really smart when we conversate. Can I cite that when I apply to college?
(Seriously, though, absorbing information is cool and all but intelligence lies in drawing conclusions and crafting effective policies from that information. Bush sucked ass at doing that.)
I still think one property of stupidity remains the incapably to acknowledge that a scheme was a mistake, in essence making yet another mistake; the Dred Scott Decision came very early in his presidency and very quickly many on the North saw it as a horrid decision. It ended strengthening the North’s opposition to slavery.
And then for 4 years Buchanan did essentially nothing to deal with the issue and allowed it to get worse.
I don’t know if hereditary monarchs count as “politicians,” per se, but since they do/can exert political power I can’t resist mentioning the sad case of Carlos II of Spain.
Ford did not deserve his reputation for physical clumsiness (that’s also covered in The Invisible Bridge, BTW), but I recall even Betty said of him, “He never was much in the brains department.”