Hekyl and Jekyl

An exchange between Dan and I today.

Dan:
Boy, I just don’t buy that, “Bush is a smart guy, but he just can’t articulate himself well.” One, 90% of the time, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…. Two, I’m not sure there’s a type of metric you can use to explain away his apparent stupidity as not actual stupidity. I mean, if stupidity isn’t poor vocabulary, lack of factual knowledge, and inability to think on your feet, what’s left? “Street smarts?”

Me:
He’s definitely dumb in all the ways that matter to me. He may be socially ‘smart’, meaning he can glad-hand and make people like him in person, but he’s such a stupid dick that he’s not likely to win me over.

He’s the sort of guy bad movies are made out of. Black Sheep, the one that’s just like Black Sheep but has a different name; any of those where the good for nothing rich kid is forced to stand on his own two feet and learns some lessons. Except in this case, no lessons are learned because he’s never allowed to see the consequences of his actions by his handlers. He simply exists in his own rarified world of unreality.

And you know that all the weird inbreeding that’s gone on in that lineage can’t be good for you. He just has too many connections to too many other prominent families in his gene pool for there not to have been the negative aspects of inbreeding.

Over the 5+ years we've had this immoral asshole as our president I've vacillated between the 'smart-inarticulate' and 'just plain dumb' camps as I've witnessed his battles with his native tongue, and his general deportment. I have finally reached my conclusion.

As I said above, the man is dumb by almost any metric. As I've said before, he has consistently underachieved in every aspect of his life EXCEPT politics.

He seems to come off as genial to those that have close contact with him, though I wonder whether the bright glow of power blinds people. But he must have some abilities to charm or he wouldn't be the ferocious fundraiser he is. People (bad people - or stupider people) do seem to think they like him, and some even seem to worship him as some sort of saint or savant.

I see a narrow-minded, immature, spoiled, good-for-nothing rich kid who never once was interested in how the world worked but may have abandoned curiosity altogether when he found Jesus. Whether his discovery of religion was the result of genuine soul-searching or simply a way to get Laura off his back about his drinking and his natural affection for simplicity I can only hypothesize, but it certainly hasn't done wonders for his intellectual rigor. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who sees EVERYTHING so clearly. There seems to be no doubt nor hesitation in anything he does/has done. It's mind-boggling.

He's inarticulate, which for me is a complete 'whaaaaaaa?!' when it comes to being a politician. 90% of your job is talking, and consistently losing fights with polysyllabic words shouldn't help you to win elections. Whatever that appeal is to Americans is surely part of our 'race to the bottom' as Dan has expounded upon.

If you believe your choice of president should be influenced by who you'd rather have a beer with, then you shouldn't vote. If you want someone 'more like you' as president then you may want to seek psychological help.

Lots of politicians suck, from both sides, but the standard we measure them against should always be the James Madisons, Thomas Jeffersons, Abraham Lincolns and Teddy Roosevelts of our past. All of these guys were among the smartest on the block, and why would we want something different today?

I have no idea.