Everyone's talking about Dubya's staged interview with the troops. Even our old friends at Bush Wired have chimed in. I'm not surprised that the whole thing was scripted, but I am astonished at how poorly W read his lines.
Many aver that this president has no brains, but I would counter that his real problem is that he has no talent. No "people skills." No communications skills. The job of American president combines both the ceremonial and executive aspects of being the chief of state. Bush still doesn't know how to give good ceremony. And he still hasn't mastered the basic political virtues of speaking well and conveying charm.
Reagan did ceremony well. Bush? I've never seen such incompetence. Really, when you think of it, Cindy Sheehan became an issue purely because he lacked the ability to talk to the woman on a basic human level.
4 comments:
These TV-screen dialogues are just so W can
show his back to the camera and the rednecks
can say: "See? No box on his back! It was
all a lie!" ;>)
It's less a question of stupidity, than apparent neurological damage.
This man's ticks, blinks, fidgets, inappropriate facial expressions, and faulty speech patterns suggest nerve damage, for which there is a ready explanation: years of alcoholism, compounded by the so-called "dry drunk" which explains (or at least coincides with) his salient personality traits (intolerance, anger, megalomania, inability to endure criticism, etc.).
Also, the last ten years have shown remarkable deterioration. Bush interviews taped in the 1990s reveal a relatively articulate man in control of his face. That's all gone now.
This ought to be very frightening....
Physical and health problems aside, I thought that Bush (when healthier) wasn't so much plauged by incompetence, as inappropriateness. He had charm, just the wrong kind. While reading Molly Ivins' "Shrub" in early 2001, which compares Bush's networking style as Governor of Texas to that of a kid frollicking in the school-yard with pals, I often wondered, "is he going to act like that much of a goofy frat boy in the White House? That should be...humiliating." I think the answer was yes--until 9/11. After that, he was expected to replace "goofy frat boy" with "leader," and couldn't quite make the leap. Instead, we eventually got "mean, hung-over, vindictive, whiny frat boy" as our head of state.
Yes, don't underestimate Bush's intelligence. He's not intellectual, he doesn't seem to see issues in any wider context, but he's smart, plenty smart.
It's the cunning intelligence of the fox that has found the secret entrance to the chickenhouse, and no matter how hard you make it, he will keep coming back time and again.
Liberals and leftists have been handicapped for five years thinking this guy is a dumb cluck. He's not. He's clever as can be, and whatever cleverness nature hasn't supplied him, Rove, Cheney et al are more than happy to supply.
We're up against intelligence, not stupidity. It may be an alien intelligence (take that any way you wanna), but stupidity it ain't.
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