GWB-- NOT an idiot?

[Titania]

Hear me out here. Watch this video. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA)

The earlier video was from a debate for his first run for the Governor of Texas. He lost that one.

Not mentioned in that video, he was advised by his campaign manager to downplay his education, speak more slowly, with more hesitation, and to play up his drawl.

He won handily after doing that.

Not going to say his presidency wasn't a disaster. However, his poor speaking skills are an affectation. Apparently, he's clever and well spoken in private.

Wow. :mellow:

[Ptah]

Perhaps the onset of some medical/mental condition?

Or just more fodder for conspiracy theories...

Nice.

[Rhu]

Perhaps the onset of some medical/mental condition?
That idea has been floated before. (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/09/14/a_medical_cause_for_bushisms/)

[Works]

He's smarter than he appears.

[rainfall]

Hear me out here. Watch


But he's just reciting things he memorized... :)

[Psy-goat]

It was said after his first gubernatorial defeat that he vowed to never be outdumbed again.

[Titania]

But he's just reciting things he memorized... :)He has done that since, and he still sounds dumb. Not the (somewhat) sharp guy from the video anymore.

[MadamI'madaM]

I'll buy that he slowed it down, downplayed the vocab slightly, and played up the drawl...


but instances like this one (http://youtube.com/watch?v=mi49tvs8jp8) where he was put on the spot and failed epically seem too elaborate for simple affectation.

[PsiKik]

I don't buy the Bush is dumb line.

I think he is dumbing himself down to appeal to the
dumbographic of his electorate.

When Bush leaves office he and his pals are going to have one massive party to celebrate a job well done - probably the most successful criminal endeavor in history. A moron would not be able to pull off such a feat.

[V Profane]

I've heard this before too. I think it was Chomsky pointing out that calling him dumb and making fun of his mispronunciations plays into the Neo-Cons hands by endearing him to the good 'ole boys who don't go in for that fancy book lernin', and making liberals look like elitist assholes. Lots of people have said he didn't talk like he does now when he was at Yale.

He is scared of horses, though. But that's only sensible.

[floid]

I resided in Texas when Bush was it's governor.
He might have been able to better memorize statistics or had more time to spend practicing the skills related to public speaking in those days, but, in day to day interaction with the press or other situations that required some degree of improvisation he appears to be just as stupid then as he is now.

I remember thinking when he first announced that he was going to run for President, "There's no way anyone outside of gun toting rednecks and oil men will ever vote for that dumb ass."

It would appear I didn't realize how awash in guns and oil the US of A really is.

The fact that he said he went to church and prayed to jesus got a lot of people to vote for him without ever looking into anything else about him, too.

Sunday School, guns, and oil apparently constituted an overwhelming majority over the last decade.

[V Profane]

Maybe it was all the booze and coke.

[Rajah]

Maybe it was all the booze and coke.He should have kept on 'em...

[C.J.Woolf]

One of Bush's professors at Harvard Business School remembers him. (http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/16/tsurumi/) (You might have to watch an ad to access the article.)


For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

...Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.

One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative."

Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"

...Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."

Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.

"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.

..."I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."

Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."

Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.
(Emphasis mine.)

[floid]

Being "badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion" is a more euphemistic way of saying that, in every way that matters to anyone other than George W. Bush and his buddies, George W. Bush is pretty damn stupid.