I was having a conversation recently about watching a Bush blooper reel and how funny it was. I don't think Bush is a dumb person, you can't be stupid and achieve as much as he did while in office. The amount he accomplished is staggering. Two wars, new branches of government, education policy. -Almost all of which I disagree with, but still the guy had an agenda and he was able to make it happen.
What do you think, is Bush dumb?
Who cares? I'm the smartest person in my family; I'm actually probably the smartest person in my group of friends. They're all doing much better in life than I am. George Bush was not a good President. He fucked up a lot of stuff, stuff that I'm going to have to be fixing in the nest two or three decades. He could've been the smartest man in the world but he still created a society of incredible debt, prolonged wars, environmental mess, an educational system now compiling the issue of decades of already misguided policy. I'd rather have an idiot that had stumbled in to the right choices. Now off to my steadily more expensive college class that will get me a job almost no where. I can go on to spend years in debt up to my ears struggling to make a living, watching a government that I can't trust expand upon everything Bush did. Shit, my really big developmental years, the time I spent in school, was basically spent with the country in a constant state of war. Awesome. Well, at least he was smart.
Yes. But I'm also taller. Now as you go up higher the air is thinner, yes? So the taller you are the thinner the air is, which means your vision is less obscured, so your perception is better. Now, perception is reality, ergo my superior perception leads to a superior reality. So, I exist in a superior reality, if we recall the principle of "cogito ergo sum" - latin is a smart people language - then we can simply reverse it. I am in a superior reality; thus, I must think in a superior reality. Now simply divide the whole equation and you reach the only logical conclusion. Quite simply put, I think in a superior manner, as you can clearly see in my flawless logic.
Well, shorter people may have another intelligence factor that would effectively cancel out your thinner air theory. Less height means less length means less distance from heart to brain, so the shorter the person, the better the oxygen supply to the brain. But now that I think about it, if the heart is closer to the ground, it will have to work harder to push blood against gravity since the force of gravity gets stronger as distance to the center of the earth decreases. So I guess you're right. Sorry I misjudged you!
I understand that, but its a defense against what is an irrelevant attack. A President should not be judged on their character or intelligence. They should be judged on their Presidency. I'll put it in terms I can understand, and you might too. Metaphors are fun. So let's say you go see a movie with some friends, specifically the new Transformers movie - Transformers 4: Rise of the Cobra Surfer - and it is predictably dogshit. Your one friend happens to be really annoyed by this movie. So he rants off about it, saying how the acting was terrible, the cinematography was confusing, the narrative was awful, the dialogue was unbelievable and cheesy, and the CGI looked like shit. His criticisms do not sit well with your other friend. Let's call them Larry. Larry really liked it. So he tries to defend it. He tries to defend the acting but of course he's wrong and is crushed. Same with the cinematography, the narrative, and the dialogue. So he goes for the last criticism: "No, the CGI was really great! They really managed to animate these gigantic dumb ass robots and it looked totally believable when they punched each other." Turns out Larry is right! The CGI was actually really well done and received praise. Guess what? You all still saw a shitty movie because it had an ass for a narrative, dialogue made out of wood and a lack of chemistry, shots that made no sense and obscured the action, and acting that could have been better accomplished by putting toddlers in front of the camera and letting them drool for three hours. You can have CGI as great as it gets, you can have a President as smart as they come, but if the film or the time spent in office is still abysmal for basically everything in the country, then its a failure. Intelligence and CGI are both tools; they are a means to an end, but not the end in and of themselves. The end for a film is usually a really good narrative, and the end for a Presidency is supposed to be improving the country. If that wasn't accomplished, then who cares if the tool was good? It still didn't work.
I get what you're saying, just it doesn't matter in the context of this discussion. This article itself does not win/lose any debate about the merits of the Bush presidency, because it simply doesn't engage that debate at all. It does however, dispel the notion of Bush being unintelligent, which is an issue entirely separate from success/failure of the presidency. I have no idea why you are conflating the two. It's a non-sequitur. Like someone writing about the great Vitamin A content of potatoes and you talking about how monoculture of potatoes led to Great Irish Famine. About the same general topic, but you're railing against something that isn't the point. Basically, my point is, I have no idea why you're upset this essay didn't to respond points it wasn't even attempting to respond to in the first place. Thesis of the essay: Bush is smart. I'd say they proved that. Why are you looking for something else?
I just don't think that's a necessary explanation. When people say that Obama is a stupid because he's black, and yes I've heard this, I don't acknowledge the argument. It is literally ad hominem. Same with Bush. Its not like the people who earnestly believe that Bush is a dumbass are going to change their mind, nor will the article change any minds about his presidency. Its just the process of stepping up and countering an argument that no student who has ever taken a debate course should use. If you heard the argument of "well Bush is stupid" in a college class, the first thing out of the professor's mouth should be something akin to a small object flying at the student's head for arguing from a logical fallacy before the fight really even began. In terms of why I'm spending so much of my words on my distaste for his time in office, its because I think that's the point of the objections rather than just defending his intellect. Also because then I could write something rather than just say that I agree. I agree with the basic premise; George W. Bush was smart. That is a very boring post to read. I'm losing track of my thoughts I think I'm going to try and sleep now.
It's an irrelevant question. He was an effective leader and a terrible policy maker; that is what matters. He was effective at enacting all of the policies he wanted (in contrast to Obama), but, unfortunately for all of us, the majority of those policies were, and continue to be, disastrous. It doesn't matter if he's smart or not. What matters is what you do, not what you can do. Cheney is also supremely smart, I'm sure. Same with Rice, Wolfowitz (sp?), Bolton, etc. They were all so smart they outsmarted themselves by deluding themselves into believing they knew how to handle Iraq. Who gives a shit how he may have scored on an IQ test?
HA. This makes perfect sense to me. Still, when you don't take the force out at second and go straight to first, saying "he has heart" can be comforting. Less so when someone invades a nation under false presences. Still, I like the analogy.
The class went dead silent. I f*cking bet it went silent. He just interpreted a perfectly natural question as a coded query on the presidents intelligence or lack there of. If I was in that class I'd be embarrassed for him and remain pretty silent while I waited for him to shake off the all too obvious chip on his shoulder regarding this topic. It sounds like he had prepared this speech ready and jumped on the first opportunity that presented itself to make his case. I don't live in the US, but Bush seemed to suffer from a hell of a lot of gaffs and blunders. I'm sure all presidents have made mistakes but Bush had an air of.... Buffoon is the most apt description I can think of. I'm certain off camera he is an intelligent chap, how could he become president without being an intelligent man. It would be impossible. But saying that some of the most terrible ideas I have heard came from intelligent people.One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”
I was reading another article on the revision of Bush's history and this clip was used to show how his stupidity was misunderestimated http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-...!
I think the bit we are all neglecting is does the thing that IQ tests test exist and if it does is it intelligence that it measures. With his intellectual laziness (saying iran when he meant iraq axis of evil speech), incompetence (not only was the war wrong but the outcomes he predicted were wrong).
an education policy that put us father behind in education.
If IQ tests, test for something real and GWB has that quality in spades then IQ is not intelligence. There is no evidence in the article that Bush is smart at all just an MBA pontificating.
disappointment.
Well considering that he has an MBA from Harvard it would be assumed he'd be on some sort of similar level. That said, I think it would be embarrassing for the American people if someone as stupid as people think Bush is actually became president. Getting that far takes intelligence. I think the comments on his intelligence were really more about the "culture" and "persona" of Bush.
Bush chose a persona when he decided to run for office. He decided to be seen as a man's man, all-American, rancher, so on and so forth (the West Wing has a few great episodes on this sort of trope, by the way). He was extremely effective in fooling Americans into thinking he was "on their level." He wasn't. He has an MBA from Harvard. He's been knee-deep in political theory his entire life. He's a genius. But geniuses don't get elected President of the United States. He chose his legacy, effectively. It's a bit stupid of his former advisors to walk around trumpeting how smart he actually was -- do you see Bush himself doing that? Does it matter? No. He decided to be perceived in a certain way, it worked, and now he is and will be forever seen as a down to earth kind of guy. Anyone (read: any liberal) who falls into the trap of believing they are so much smarter than George Bush is blinded by partisanship.
I've never thought he was dumb, as I've never met the guy and can't really say. Like the article states, just because I disagree with some of his policies doesn't mean I think he's dumb. His "daddy being rich and famous" isn't solely enough to get you into the presidency. I just think he is kind of a frat boy and likes different things when it comes to his personal life, and that he's just not the greatest public speaker. But like the article states, how would I or you look if all of our mess ups or speaking mistakes were published around the world on twitter, youtube, and mocked on The Daily Show everyday? But the people who flat out call him dumb and unintelligent, most of which have never met him, I think are the real geniuses (not). Regardless of who someone is or how high a profile they are or how well you think you know them because of how the media talks about them, at the end of the day, we don't actually KNOW these people in real life. So being judgemental and hateful of someone you've never met is the real character indicator of the people doing the name calling. Maybe he is super intelligent, maybe he is as dumb as a bag of rocks. Personally I've never met the guy, but everything I've read and watched about him, people always say he was surprisingly sharp and witty behind closed doors, and that's all the real evidence I have to go on. So I guess my answer is "I don't know, I've never met him", but everything I've read about him from people that have actually spent time with him seems to imply that he's certainly not as dumb as the public likes to hope, and actually might be a pretty smart and sharp guy. He was just an easy target for the media to hate on because of his personality, and they did.What do you think, is Bush dumb?