Recently I've been emailing back and forth with NY Independent/Republican friends about environmental and political issues. During the correspondence, I was questioned as to why I often felt compelled to mention that "Bush is an idiot." And it was furthermore suggested that I and other liberals were claiming an impossibility that Bush could be an idiot and simultaneously a crafty manipulator (as indeed it takes a certain amount of intelligence to hoodwink people).
So I took it upon myself to try and explain this conundrum, and how it could be true that the man can be both.
My email reply follows after the flip. For you all, it might just read like a screed, but after you check it out, I am curious if others have had to sort through this puzzle of logic.
My email also hits on Obama as a crossover candidate. I really do think guys like these friends are super important to win over, and I guess that might be a separate discussion, but my primary goal in this diary is to hear how others have wrestled with the incongruous idea of Bush as both idiot and manipulator.
Good Gentlemen,
Thank you for the thoughtful replies re politics and environmentalism. Sometimes a touchy subject...
Upon reflection, I have had a few thoughts:
- If I were Barack Obama, I would really be reaching out to Independents like you guys. You are smart thinkers and mavens in your businesses and communities. And when he gets in, the support of you and your peers is going to be critical toward making things happen. That Obama is now being seen as moving to the center makes all the political sense in the world. Realistically he is and has been somewhere center-left and he is not the far left savior for which some ex-Naderites have hoped. I believe Obama understands the connections between business and government, and I am looking forward to his leadership toward a revitalized economy and a new green infrastructure. I pray he crafts us a new New Deal. I expect there will be some tax, regulatory, and health-care costs to this, but I am convinced he will ultimately move the country in a very positive economic direction. I also hope he goes out of his way to repair the constitutional damage done by Bushco. With the amplified presidential powers Team Bush has rammed through an acquiescent Congress politically afraid of impeachment, Obama could go on his own megalomania trip if he wants too. I doubt he would do that... but its been shown that power corrupts... My hope is that he stands up to thugs like Mitch McConnell and demands that Dems and Repubs alike get together and rebuild this country. His task is not enviable. But Obama is being incredibly politically smart. When he wants to get things through Congress, he will have the greatest grassroots support structure of perhaps any president, and I suspect he will call on his small army of citizens to be the force driving Congress away from complacency and bickering. We shall see.
- I'd like clarify the notion that Bush is an idiot. As John expressed, it is true that he can't be both a complete idiot and a crafty manipulator at the same time. If one has to choose, manipulation and mendacity seem to be his strong points, so we should probably go with that. Except that the Iraq War lies were a team job, so he can't take all of the credit. The cherry picking of intelligence, the leading, exaggerated, and false statements came from multiple sources, not just Bush (Cheney, Rice, Powell, Fieth, Rumsfeld, etc. etc.). Also, its seems that Bush actually believes the knowing bullshit he puts out, which might put him in some other psychological category.
As far as intellectual prowess, the guy is not completely stupid, its true. He made it through Yale Harvard. Even if he got special favors, he is at least as smart as your average college attendee. But then again watching him speak, especially extemporaneously, one is often left with that "Jesus, what a fucking idiot" feeling. And if you pick up a book of "Bushisms" your own brain does indeed start spinning. More to the point however is a debate over his judgment. As far as I can tell, and a great many others would agree, deciding the drop the ball on Afghanistan and go into Iraq instead was simply idiotic. Really, really dumb.
Evidently the Iraq idea was crafted before 9/11, at least per non-agenda driven Republican former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- who witnessed early 2001 Iraq deliberations. Whatever the time line, and whatever the motivations ("Saddam tried to kill my dad"?, "I want to be a war president"?), the end result was and is an idiotic choice.
This and so much more about the man causes rational people like myself to pull their hair out -- much to the delight of uncritical lockstep ideologues at Fox News. Bush has tied himself to the machinations of Dick Cheney. They and their cronies have created a legacy of torture, illegal detainment, illegal spying, repressed science, voter disenfranchisement, systematic dismantling of environmental regulations, a push to keep gays from having equal rights, unprecedented and dubious 'executive privilage', agencies like FEMA and others crippled by cronyism and negligence, a civil war in Iraq with crazy numbers of civilian casualties, no-bid contracts and a runaway price tag on that war, mercenaries out of control and above the law, a very much re-energized Al Qaeda, an Afghan government on the brink, an exhausted military with 4,000+ dead and 40,000+ wounded vets, a kow-towed news media that doesn't show dead vets coming home or much of anything else demanded of responsible journalism, inflammed anti-Americanism across the Muslim world, and much more... but these fuck-ups are just the ones off the top of my head.
These guys may get a pass for the economic woes, because the roots of it go back to Bill Clinton allowing deregulation, and even then it is certainly more than the creation of the president. Bush's avoidance of needed efforts toward conservation and renewable energy, and the ripples of his ill-gotten war aiding instability in world oil markets might be contributing factors, but even then you can't pin all of our economic troubles on Bush.
So does all of this make him an idiot? Obviously George and Dick have accomplished much of what they had wanted, and you have to give them credit... And as I said in an earlier email, recent events in North Korea may actually bear out to be a positive mark on his record. Be that as it may, their other 'success' all might add up to Cheney earning the Evil Genius Award and Bush coming in second as Crazy Sidekick. I really don't know which of these two guys is making the decisions. I suspect they contribute somewhat equally. But in the end, none of the 'accomplishments' I mentioned previously are what I would call smart choices for the country. People who want to see American and global progress hate the guy for good reason.
And then again there's that whole thing with Bush opening his mouth and speaking. Which when combined with his legacy of really bad choices and actions, reserves me the right to call him an idiot.
And I think history will prove me right.
How have other folks handled this? I can't be alone in wanting to express outrage at both Bush's effective mendacity and his apparently weak brainpower.
And how do you spar with your R friends? What is the balance between not backing down, and throwing bones where appropriate?
Thoughts?