BUSH - DEEP OR DOPE?
Good article today discussing how Bush likely has a higher IQ than Kerry, and how that just makes Kerry and the lefties crazy.
Good article today discussing how Bush likely has a higher IQ than Kerry, and how that just makes Kerry and the lefties crazy.
Democrats’ denunciations of the president’s IQ bemuse me because Bush strikes me as a lazy but clever and unscrupulous operator who, ever since he quit drinking in 1987, has contrived to get whatever he wants out of life. As I wrote in the Oct. 11 American Conservative in a review of John Sayles’s film “Silver City,” in which Chris Cooper portrays a moronic politician with Bush’s mannerisms, “In the president’s lone losing race, his 1978 run for Congress from West Texas, the victor stressed Bush’s two Ivy League degrees. Bush resolved never to allow himself to be outdumbed again. And the Democrats haven’t outsmarted him since.”
John Podhoretz made a book out of this premise. His BUSH COUNTRY masterfully debunked a slate of liberal arguments commonly used to discredit Bush. He convincingly argued that part of Bush's genius is playing dumb.
Sure, your typical liberal is smart, but typically has large blind spots. I know, I was one of them. Generally the left cannot understand the right. The right, however, generally can understand the left. The left thinks the right is wrong because they're stupid, simple, unenlightened, narrow. The right thinks the left is wrong because they're sincerely misguided. The guy who understands both perspectives is the smarter, and generally the more effective.
To demonstrate this point, on Thurs July 29, the day after John Edwards' convention speech, a colleague pulled me into his office and asked me to sit down. He was sincerely perplexed. Earlier that day in the break room, some people were discussing the speech and I mockingly asked whether Edwards had mentioned his father was a mill worker. That's all I said. Later that afternoon this fellow sits me down and says, "I'm confused about something and I wonder if you can help me. I understand you're a big Bush supporter (from that one small comment). Now you're an intelligent person. Explain to me, I really don't understand, how can an intelligent person support Bush?" He really did not understand. We talked, and he nodded, with the occasional "mm" or "I understand," but it was clear he did not and could not understand. That is the liberal elite's mentality in a nutshell. It bothered him so much that he needed to talk to me about it, yet there was no way he was going to be able to receive my point of view. The conversation ended with him suggesting I read a certain book that might bring me around to his way of thinking.
Sure, your typical liberal is smart, but typically has large blind spots. I know, I was one of them. Generally the left cannot understand the right. The right, however, generally can understand the left. The left thinks the right is wrong because they're stupid, simple, unenlightened, narrow. The right thinks the left is wrong because they're sincerely misguided. The guy who understands both perspectives is the smarter, and generally the more effective.
To demonstrate this point, on Thurs July 29, the day after John Edwards' convention speech, a colleague pulled me into his office and asked me to sit down. He was sincerely perplexed. Earlier that day in the break room, some people were discussing the speech and I mockingly asked whether Edwards had mentioned his father was a mill worker. That's all I said. Later that afternoon this fellow sits me down and says, "I'm confused about something and I wonder if you can help me. I understand you're a big Bush supporter (from that one small comment). Now you're an intelligent person. Explain to me, I really don't understand, how can an intelligent person support Bush?" He really did not understand. We talked, and he nodded, with the occasional "mm" or "I understand," but it was clear he did not and could not understand. That is the liberal elite's mentality in a nutshell. It bothered him so much that he needed to talk to me about it, yet there was no way he was going to be able to receive my point of view. The conversation ended with him suggesting I read a certain book that might bring me around to his way of thinking.
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