Governing for dummies
Slate writes: Confidence Man - The case for Bush is the case against him. By William�Saletan:
"From foreign to economic to social policy, Bush's record is a lesson in the limits and perils of conviction. He's too confident to consult a map. He's too strong to heed warnings and too steady to turn the wheel when the road bends. He's too certain to admit error, even after plowing through ditches and telephone poles. He's too preoccupied with principle to understand that principle isn't enough. Watching the stars instead of the road, he has wrecked the budget and the war on terror. Now he's heading for the Constitution. It's time to pull him over and take away the keys."
When will Americans grasp the fact that Bush is fundamentally a stupid man? The reason he cannot change course is because he is not smart enough to see alternatives. He manufactures a straight path so that his decisions will be simple. He doesn't read history or philosophy or science, he has never travelled, he avoided all his life getting into any situation which would have tested his courage or endurance, he has no intellect, no curiosity, no depth, no engagement. With 911, suddenly a man who knew nothing about the world or why things happen was faced with an inexplicable horror. He didn't know what to do, except to try to simplify it to something he could understand. Such a man is easy to manipulate. His neocon advisors laid out a straight path toward the war they wanted. Because he had no ideas of his own about what to do, Bush gratefully took their path. He now happily calls himself a war president (whatever that means).
I know it is embarassing to think that, aided and abetted by your press corps, you elected an idiot as president. Canada once elected MacKenzie King, who was just as dumb (he talked frequently to his dead mother) and it took decades for Canada to admit how stupid he was. In the meantime, of course, thousands of Jews died during World War II because King wouldn't accept them as refugees.
Innocent people always pay the price when a nation elects an idiot.