As the push to rehabilitate the worst president in living memory proceeds apace, former Bushies are crawling out the woodwork to beg us to take another bite of the shit taco and experience anew the tasty goodness.
In a post entitled “George W. Bush is smarter than you,” someone named Keith Hennessey, the former director of the George W. Bush National Economics Council (which is like being the Emeritus Chair of the Sarah Palin Center for Teen Pregnancy Prevention — discuss!) invites citizens to “test your own assumptions and thinking about our former President” through a series of questions:
This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree?
Nope. I assume he is unintelligent (or evil, but I suspect mostly dumb because I’m charitable that way) because he made policy choices that predictably resulted in a series of world-historical clusterfucks which killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of people, looted the national treasury, subverted our moral authority, undermined our global standing and widened the wealth inequality chasm. Next?
If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent.”
Kind of surprising that the George W. Bush National Economics Council would appoint an eighth-grader fresh from an introduction to logic class as director. Oh wait…
Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?
Uh-oh — Iooks like someone didn’t comprehend the straw man logical fallacy lesson! But let’s play along: The thing is that the aforementioned world-historical clusterfucks were predictable — and were in fact predicted in real time by many people.
It doesn’t matter if Bush’s policy views were derived from his “intellect,” Cheney’s colon or a Magic Eight Ball; they were not only wrong, they were disastrously and measurably so on virtually every important front – domestic, international, financial and social.
So a hearty “fuck off” to you, Mr. Hennessey, for having the effrontery to peddle what is demonstrably shit as Shinola while we are still digging ourselves from the reeking pile. It’s too soon for a rehab tour.
With a bit of luck, you might be able to sell this stinking load of horseshit to my great-great-grandchildren. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
Bulworth
This is a hard one, for
liberalsconservatives only. Do you assume that President Obama is anti-Americanhe is unintelligentbecause he made policy choices with which you disagree?fxd
Walker
Republican pundits really do not understand empiricism at all, do they?
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
It’s important to note that not only were the clusterfuck results predictable, they were also predicted and the predictions ignored.
Tim F.
Intelligence and intellectual curiosity/honesty are different things. One is more important than the other. Plus his judgment was terrible and he wore his daddy issues on his sleeve. It was trivial for machiavellis around him to pull the little strings and get him to jerk any way they wanted.
Amir Khalid
@Walker:
I suspect Republican pundits relate to empiricism in much the same way I relate to pork products.
Roger Moore
Honestly, I’m not sure that “Bush wanted it to come out the way it did” is the defense the Republicans should be using. If the failures of the Bush administration were the result of incompetence, there is at least the glimmer of hope that the next Republican administration might be competent enough to avoid the same mistakes. But if the outcomes we got from Bush were what he was hoping for, we should avoid any Republican administration because the only hope for avoiding the same massive clusterfuck is that they’re so incompetent they can’t even ruin things properly.
Chris
Kind of think she’s got it backwards. She loves President Bush, therefore she can’t possibly imagine that anyone else might honestly have a different assessment of the guy based on their assessment of his horrific performance (reflected richly in his job approval ratings), therefore the only way these people could possibly disagree with her is because they’re biased and uppity liberals… etc.
Michele C
@Walker: Don’t you remember the argument against the “reality-based community”? (see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community) So, the answer is, “No. No, they don’t.”
PeakVT
I suppose it’s just human nature to speculate about intentions and motives, of which the smart/stupid debate is a part. But we should push back on it, as Ms. Cracker does, because it’s a distraction from the actual outcomes of Bush policies.
OhNoNotAgain
Not only were the results predicted, but they were predicted over a decade earlier by his own father.
OhNoNotAgain
Not only were the results predicted, but they were predicted over a decade earlier by his own father.
NotMax
Gradation of intelligence is a red herring to divert attention from demonstrably being willfully ignorant.
cvstoner
“This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree?”
Is he implying that only liberals can answer the hard questions?
Never the less, I believe the answer is: I assume he is unintelligent because he made policy choices which disagreed with reasonable and reliable data, at the time.
Also: I believe he acted malevolently because he tried to defend his policy choices using obviously manufactured data and highly questionable assumptions.
This is not a case where hindsight is 20/20. Foresight was 20/20, in this case, and he chose to ignore it.
eric
Allow me to say that when people like me said “W is an idiot” we were not simply saying he is “dumb” but that he was a poo-poo platter of incurious, dismissive, ideological, anti-empiricist, and Republican, which, taken together meant that he was not a thoughtful man. He has shown unbelievably poor taste (Tucker and searching for WMDs) that it also leads me to believe he is heartless and clueless. So, when I say W is and was an “idiot” he is all of those things and not just stupid in the sense of someone not intellectually getting that Abe Lincoln was a real person and not a vampire hunter in a movie.
MattF
But… Bush enforced a dress code in the Oval Office. Unlike… that one.
Ruckus
I believe idiot bush is a fucking idiot. I do this because there are massive amounts of real evidence. Before, during and after everything he does and says.
Horseshit piled this high generally requires machinery to dispose of. Lots and lots of earth moving machinery.
WereBear
It’s not that I disagree with the policies. It’s that the policies are dumb.
cvstoner
“This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree?”
Is he implying that only liberals can answer the hard questions?
Never the less, I believe the answer is: I assume he is unintelligent because he made policy choices which disagreed with reasonable and reliable data, at the time.
Also: I believe he acted malevolently because he tried to defend his policy choices using obviously manufactured data and highly questionable assumptions.
This is not a case where hindsight is 20/20. Foresight was 20/20, in this case, and he chose to ignore it.
Chris
@Tim F.:
Exactly.
I don’t think Bush was “stupid,” for the record. He may very well have been, but his defining trait as a politician was a total lack of interest in the business of governing. For most of his presidency, his job was done for him by the Republican Party hacks he populated his cabinet with while he vacationed in Crawford, and he didn’t start sort-of reining in the worst of them until six years into his presidency, after the voters gave his party the worst electoral shellacking in a generation.
Bush’s intelligence is irrelevant, really. Even if he had any, he clearly wasn’t interested in applying it to the job.
scav
Keith Hennessey, the former director of the George W. Bush National Economics Council May just have observed that George W. Bush is smarter than “Me” and extrapolated from there.
Sounds about their level of logical rigor. Don’t look at the underlying coding, it may very well be that Keith can eat a pretzel.
eldorado
maybe dubya and cheney could have european rehabilitation tour starting in the netherlands.
El Cid
I don’t assume Bush Jr. is unintelligent: that would suggest a lack of empirical evidence upon which I made that decision.
Unfortunately, Bush Jr. was a very significant actor in the public sphere for years and years and years, and provided great amounts of empirical evidence upon which I based that conclusion.
God I hate these fucking turds.
‘Huh? Huh? How do you know? How do you know that guy who keeps gettin’ everything wrong and talks all dumb-like and doesn’t seem to know much about anything ain’t eleventy-billion times smarter than Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and, um, King James put together? Huh? You don’t! You don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t.’
Todd
He sounds like a guy who has consumed too much of his namesake while spending 8 hours at a rapfight.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Attila the Hun: he meant well.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
They want it both ways.
We should give it to them. Both ways. Good and hard.
bemused
Selling stinking loads of horseshit is what they do. It’s the people stand in line to buy it that
make me feel extremely stabby.
Jennifer
He might as well have stated that as “Might it be possible that a magical unicorn that shits 50-carat diamonds….” because like the conservative he posits, such a thing does not exist.
Svensker
I want to save this paragraph and re-read it periodically. It makes me happy.
Redshirt
I’ll say this for Bush: I may disagree with him on everything, but I’d love to do some Jello shots with him then hit the artist’s studio for some drunk painting. Artsy AND boozy!
scav
Keith Hennessey, the former director of the George W. Bush National Economics Council merely observed that W. was smarter then He was and extrapolated from there. Sounds about their level of intellectual rigor, just don’t examine the underlying coding. Nasty rumors about that Keith Hennessey managed his pretzel eating sub-routine.
Eta? has the dreaded lag reappeared?
Eta. yup yup, so this is me, looking as silly as usual.
JPL
@MattF: The only reason that Bush enforced a dress code in the oval office is because he wasn’t there half the time. It had nothing to do with him personally.
The Dangerman
Liberals are looking at the wrong metrics wrt Bush; sure, tens of thousands died unnecessarily, but how did Halliburton do?
JCR
Fucking logic, how does it work?
Ruckus
@bemused:
Really it’s not the standing in line and paying that gets me, it’s the taking it home and enjoying it for dinner. Then taking a bath in it. Then having the leftovers for breakfast.
And then telling everyone else how good shit tastes and smells.
I am not a kook
Nice to see all factions on BJ agree on something. Now, who is the troll on call? Thread needs some “butbutbutobamatoo”.
MattF
So. I get it. ‘Evil’ is a policy choice. There’s a sort of elegance to that claim– certainly refutes the librul fallacy that Republicans don’t care about ‘policy’.
Chris
@The Dangerman:
True. His administration was the most blatant instance of “public policy exists solely to shovel money to the rich, any harmful byproducts of that process are irrelevant and not my problem” we’ve had since the Gilded Age.
russell
Actually, I find this particular statement not so hard to believe.
I don’t know if Bush was actually unintelligent, or if he just didn’t give a flying f**k about anything other than what he, himself, was interested in and wanted.
Unable to complete an English sentence? Or simply not all that interested in making the effort to actually be articulate, and in fact annoyed that anyone would require that of him?
Alcohol-induced brain damage is also a possibility.
NotMax
On the Liberty Bell Curve, Bush falls squarely in the crack.
McJulie
@Roger Moore:
DING DING DING we have a winner.
Although, to be… fair, I guess? I don’t think the outcomes were exactly what the Bush admin were HOPING for. I mean, I think they HOPED they could stomp on Iraq and have everything work out great even with no plan for the occupation. I think they HOPED they could convince all the other UN nations to go along with the invasion. I think they HOPED the financial house of cards would never collapse, or at least, wouldn’t collapse so soon before a presidential election. I think they HOPED the federal levees protecting New Orleans wouldn’t fail during Katrina.
Still, I think they did exactly what they meant to do, most of the time. They were just hoping the ultimate outcomes would be a bit different. Like, they were really hoping to privatize Social Security.
Eric U.
not only were the clusterfucks predicted real-time, but those that were making the predictions were called un-American. So yeah, fuck off mr. Hennessy
NotMax
@Chris
Harding and Teapot Dome wasn’t chopped liver.
maurinsky
@scav:
That made me snort water out my nose.
Ruckus
@russell:
Or the alcohol covered up the inadequacy that was always there.
El Cid
By the way, when applied to conservative political leaders, “stupid” must mean literally unable to navigate from room to room, to string a sentence together even plausibly, whereas for non-conservatives, “stupid” begins at a much higher level.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
It is also possible that an highly intelligent 2-headed and 6-armed sentient being from the plant Xanadu might have reached a different conclusion than moi, but I thought we’d abandonded ad lengendarium arguments sometime back in the 18th Century.
Jon
How to figure out if it’s too soon to get over Bush:
(1) Are protons decaying?
(2) Is the universe within moments of energy death.
(3) Has someone invented a time machine to go back and erase him.
If you answer yes to any of these questions, then it is not too soon. Otherwise, it is.
Petorado
Yeah, right. Of course C Plus Augustus would have cleaned the academic clocks of today’s college students, something Bush himself would admit.
Cris (without an H)
Nothing to add, just quoting for truth.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
@McJulie: Or at least they hoped none of the fallout would occur until the next person was already in office. In that they succeeded to a large, but incomplete, extent.
Gian
He supposedly choked on a pretzel and fell on his face. With his substance abuse history I expect he was shit faced and fell down while drunk.
And he failed to ask Turkey for permission to use their soil to put troops on to attack Iraq.
I’d love to see it explained how that was smart.
Mnemosyne
This is one of those times when I miss Toko Loko (a little) because this is a very good example of how IQ doesn’t really predict much of anything other than how well you do on IQ tests. W would probably score pretty high on a standard IQ test, but his inability to look beyond the confines of his world means we end up with the crappy, short-sighted policies he gave us.
A mechanic or plumber who’s intellectually curious and reads about (for example) history or popular science is much smarter than someone like W, even if s/he would score lower on an IQ test.
Cris (without an H)
By the way, that’s two Betty Cracker posts in less than a week that deserve comments as simple as “This is one of the very best posts this site has ever produced“
West of the Rockies
Well, the Republicans remind me a bit of the Vatican when it comes to their retired or dead party leaders. They seek beatification. There are those who are now in the process of proving that Joseph McCarthey did, indeed, produce three miracles (as did Saint Ronnie). There are those who are trying to prove that Nixon was a good president and a good man, that GWB will be judged as an extraordinary leader.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: Republicans (on the whole) are all about faith-based arguments and religious fervor.
I guess this is human nature. I know that I think Carter accomplished some great things while in office (though I sure wouldn’t suggest his name appear among the top-five presidents of all time).
RSA
Oh great, a logic lesson. Here’s a lesson in return: You don’t “assume… because…” The “because” makes it a conclusion. Somehow, though, I’m not surprised that a Bush supporter would confuse assumptions with conclusions.
RaflW
Wow, what a condecending fuckbag this Hennesy chap is.
Certified Mutant Enemy
If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that Hitler made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore Hitler is unintelligent.”
MikeJ
@MattF:
Reagan?
Mustang Bobby
Ooh, faulty logic AND the “no true Scotsman” gambit. Halfway to Troll Bingo.
scav
@RaflW: The insufferable in full-throated burnishing of the indefencible (and all too already-suffered).
Chyron HR
Conversely, Republicans have perfectly legitimate reasons for believing that Obama is a terrorist-loving America-hating muslim rapist welfare thug illegal immigrant affirmative action election-stealing baby daddy crackhead who can’t speak without a teleprompter, so shut up.
Just Some Fuckhead
Heck of a job, Hennessie!
Great post, as usual!
RaflW
@russell:
Eghad, if MBA’s are the intellectual yardstick, I’m pretty sure the average airport golfcart driver is as smart as a U.S. MBA candidate.
cckids
What is this “stupid OR evil” nonsense? I’ll vote for both, every time. There is mounds of evidence for it.
RaflW
@West of the Rockies: Carter, to his enduring credit, has worked his butt off for decades, post-presidency, on the issues and values he cared and continues to care about.
Dubya doesn’t appear to even have the energy (thank fsm) to keep up the grifting and cronyism that were his hallmarks.
scav
@RaflW: So that’s who 6months should be talking to instead of the cab drivers!
The Moar You Know
I never have thought that Bush was stupid. Not at all. I just think his fundamental interests were:
1. Getting wasted (I sympathize).
2. Showing up Daddy (I get that one too.)
3. Something else. I suspect the paintings are a huge clue.
And I think he really didn’t give a shit about anything else, let others do it for him, and that resulted in the disaster that was his presidency.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think Bush’s legacy will be that he stymied a good portion of Cheney’s evil agenda by sheer incompetence.
ricky
For Mr. Hennessey:
mdblanche
Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree?
No, I assume he is unintelligent because he has a long track record of making deciderings that ended in disaster.
danimal
If intelligent conservatives actually engaged in intelligent dialog, and then used their intelligence to steer the country in a reasonable (albeit conservative leaning) course, we would not be in the mess we’re in.
The failure of intelligent conservatives is one of the biggest problems our country faces. They are afraid of the mouth-breathers, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to spot an intelligent conservative in the crowd because they’ve used their intelligence for camouflage. Cowards.
I don’t give a damn about whether Bush is intelligent. Forest Gump (“stupid is as stupid does”) had more policy sense.
Ted & Hellen
President Obama was hawking the tasty goodness of the Bush Shit Taco yesterday also too, and yet, strangely, you don’t mention that at all, Betty.
I’m sure it was an oversight.
West of the Rockies
@RaflW: Oh, I absolutely agree! Carter (post-presidency) has been a shining example of what good a person can do. GWB has done diddly-doo-dah.
West of the Rockies
@Ted & Hellen: I suspect it is because Obama has the foolish notion that being a gentleman with Republicans will make them return the favor and respond with decency and compassion to him. Silly rabbit!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
The nefarious plans of the evil mastermind are always crippled by the blundering incompetence of goons and minions. There must be something seriously wrong with the Evil Enterprises Temp Agency they all seem to use for staffing purposes. You’d think that the Invisible Boot Stomping on a Human Face Forever of the Free Market would have fixed that problem by now, but noooooo….
cckids
@West of the Rockies:
I think he is smarter than that. I believe that he is modeling decent behavior to attempt to stem the descent into ugliness that was so accelerated during Duhbya’s term.
Betty Cracker
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Heh! Ain’t that the damn troof!
patrick II
@JGabriel:
Your prejudice agai st Bush’s intelligence shows when you assert those predictable results were not desirable desults. Bush is a smart guy who got exactly the results he wanted.
Scotius
@scav: Precisely. Just because W is smarter than Keith Hennessey doesn’t mean he still isn’t stupid.
Ted & Hellen
@West of the Rockies:
IF that were true, and it’s not, you’d have to add “incoherently stupid and gullible” to your description of the rabbit.
Chris
@NotMax:
Yeah, but not on the same scale, I don’t think. It didn’t involve the deaths of 3,000 Americans or the destruction of an entire country. (Though some of the little imperial ventures into the Caribbean and Central America that Smedley Butler was writing about might qualify).
JWL
Although I’m not the charitable sort where war criminals are concerned, and believe the traitorous scum was evil, those are good words, Betty Cracker.
Real American
Who cares if Bush was smart–what matters is that he was incompetent.
Incompetent isn’t synonymous with stupid; it just means one lacks the skills necessary to do a job. Was George W. Bush smart? I don’t know and I don’t care. I never met the man so I can’t determine that for certain. But I sure as hell can determine that he was incompetent–he lacked the skills necessary to be President and, as such, did a terrible job.
Mike in NC
@JPL: Also, too: dry drunks tend to be like that. Control freaks, etc.
Maude
All you have to do is look at a photo of Bush and look at his eyes. He is stupid. What he did was evil.
catclub
@Tim F.: Plus he was a lazy ass.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: Plus he was lazy as fuck.
Chyron HR
@Ted & Hellen:
President Carter was hawking the tasty goodness of the Bush Shit Taco yesterday also too, and yet, strangely, you don’t mention that at all, Tim.
I’m sure it’s because Carter is a member of the glorious white race. Uh, I mean, “an oversight”.
Redshirt
@I am not a kook: Good call. He just punched in for this shift.
West of the Rockies
@Ted & Hellen: “Gullible”? Perhaps. “Incoherently stupid”? Your blind rage is showing, sir and/or madam.
Fred
I don’t know about the IQ of Dubaya but as to the Bushies in general, seems like every mistake they made resulted in them getting exactly what they wanted. What they wanted didn’t coincide with what was good for the nation or the world so they let us all think they made terrible mistakes.
The biggest “mistake” was ignoring all that Clinton admin. crap about Osama BinLadin. Oops! “Pearl Harbor Moment”. Gotta have a war! It just rolls on from there.
And how dumb do you have to be to win two elections that you really lost? ‘Course having dad apoint a Supreme Court to apoint you POTUS helps a bit too.
tjmn
Cave ab homine unius : Beware the man of one book.
The Pet Goat.
Cris (without an H)
He’s also on record as liking Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. So that’s two books. Throw in the Bible, and I think you officially have a library.
doc g
His undergraduate transcripts reveals a C average student, so he is clearly smarter than a class of MBA students.
W. is not dumb. He is much worse: willfully ignorant.
Patricia Kayden
George Bush didn’t speak proper English. He spoke like an imbecile (made up words, made up phrases). Just sounded very dumb. Kind of like Dan Quayle, who also wasn’t very bright. Or Sarah Palin.
I’m with Paul McCartney on this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/paul-mccartney-makes-fun_n_598650.html
Ted & Hellen
@West of the Rockies:
You don’t read well, do you?
Jennifer
Heh. I used to play a game I called “the George W. Bush brain-teaser.” Here’s how it worked:
Prior to the elections of 2000 and 2004, whenever I would get into a conversation with a rabid Bushie, I would let them know in no uncertain terms that whoever the other guy was, that was who I would be voting for. When they would ask why, I would reply, “well, I really only have one litmus test when it comes to voting for president, and it’s this: whoever I vote for has to be at least as smart as I am, and George W. Bush is not. Because that’s a big job, one that I wouldn’t want, and if I don’t feel like I would be good at it, then I sure as hell don’t want anyone who’s not even as smart as I am doing it. I’m like that about a lot of things – I don’t hire people to do jobs for me that I could do better for myself. So…how about you? Do you think Bush is smarter than you are, or do you just think it doesn’t matter if the president is at least as smart as you are or not?”
I never received a straight answer on that. No one, not one single person that I played the game on, ever admitted that they were dumber than George W. Bush. I got a few half-assed “good advisors make up for whatever he might lack” answers, to which I would quickly point out that he needed to be at least smart enough to recognize who was a good advisor and who was not. This part of the game never got played after 2000, because by then everyone knew better than to tout his genius advisors.
Lurking Canadian
@Mnemosyne: Bioluddite! Cudlip!
On topic, I’ve thought GWB was dumb since the first time he looked into a camera at me. The expression “lights on but nobody’s home” was coined for a reason.
Of course, the history of monarchy shows that stupidity (even stark raving insanity) in a ruler can be overcome by a competent prime minister or grand vizier. Unfortunately, Bush had Cheney in that role, who is competent in certain ways, but none of them are good.
JR in WV
@Ted & Hellen:
President Obama was being polite. He doesn’t have to run for anything now, but he was well brought up enough to know when to tell a white lie to be polite.
ETA:
Oh yeh, you mispelled Helen; and FU2!
West of the Rockies
@Ted & Hellen: I misread your comment because I am so accustomed to merely scanning them since they are so inevitably and irretrievably stupid as to be worth no further time on my behalf. Run along now, little troll. Run along….
Tehanu
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You said a mouthful, brother.