Is George W. Bush really "Stupid"?

[maxsolomon]

Mrs. Solomon & I have this ongoing "disagreement". She contends that Chimpus Maximus is literally stupid, that he is not intelligent, and is a pawn of his advisors, particularly Karl Rove.

I say that's essentially giving him a pass, & underestimates his revolting "talents"; faking accents, faking christianity, gladhanding, avoiding any convictions, avoiding saying anything of substance. That he is not stupid, and he posesses a kind of intelligence - political intelligence. It got him "elected" twice. Plus, thinking of him as a pawn absolves him of a portion of the guilt for the WAR CRIME that is HIS ALONE - only George Walker Bush made the decision to invade Iraq. He is the President, and only he made that choice. He's not stupid, HE IS AN ASSHOLE.

Her rebuttal: no, he's just stupid. He can't speak in coherent sentences.

So, DU, is he just stupid?

[graywarrior]

1. He's about as smart as any conniving alcoholic

[maxsolomon]

Cunning is the word i used.

cunning like the weasel.

which does a disservice to the noble weasel.

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. Yes, and getting dumber daily due to brain cell death

[TallahasseeGrannie]

43. Damn you are right

alcoholics are the world's best liars. Any recovering alcoholic will readily admit to that. There is an AA joke that goes: "How can you tell when an alcoholic is lying?" Answer: "When their mouths are open."

[graywarrior]

45. Another one is "of course your family is dysfunctional...

you're in it."

Applies to the entire Bush clan.

[rodeodance]

2. lazy and incurious is more like it. born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

[orpupilofnature57]

9. But he talks like an ignoramus, so let's make him President!! Neo-Nuts

[wtmusic]

3. Yes he's stupid

Plain fucking stupid. So stupid he doesn't know he's stupid. They prop him up as best they can, but he's one fucking conceited, arrogant, stupid MF.

[acmejack]

4. It is said he never forgets a name.

I don't think is of low intelligence, no serious book on him pictures that way.

[samdogmom]

16. What kind of name? The real one or the one he bestows?

[knowbody0]

5. he is stupid and empty

[Atman]

6. I used to agree with you. But no longer.

He is a puppet, and the worst kind of stupid. Too stupid to realize he is being used. I don't think he even had much to do with his own "election." His Poppy and Poppy's friends told him he was going to run, and he ran. They put him where he is to do their bidding. He is truly a stupid man.

[orpupilofnature57]

7. He'd have to go back to college, and pay attention this time, to be stupid

[Webster Green]

8. Elected twice?

Hmmm.....interesting theory, but, I don't think so.

[maxsolomon]

10. hence the quotation marks

that comment is inevitable here. perhaps i should have said "sworn in" twice?

[Nite Owl]

11. Nope I don't think he is really

stupid at all. It's a cover to keep the blame off of him is all. He's no Bill Clinton when it comes to brains but he's not as much of a dummy as he appears. An evil sort of smarts.

[Estel]

12. I am with both of you

and think he is a stupid asshole

[klook]

13. He's willfully ignorant, and lazy, but not stupid.

There's a difference. I don't think G.W. Bush is a genius by any means, but he's of at least average intelligence. What's really striking about him, though, is his conscious choice to be uninformed or ill-informed. He has this in common with the vast majority of his supporters.

[ComerPerro]

14. He's stupid. But that doesn't remove blame from him

because, stupid as he may be, he still approves of all this evil shit.

And, he still is an arrogant asshole.

[emcguffie]

15. go back and look at earlier debates

When he was running for governor of Texas, in his debate with Ann Richards, he was quite articulate.

Personally, I think he has ADD -- which can make people stutter and stammer and have difficulty expressing their thoughts coherently, thus making them appear much less intelligent than they actually are.

He's canny. No, he's not brilliant. But he's certainly smarter than he appears to be.

In my opinion, that is.

[buff2]

27. Bullshit.

Stop making excuses for him. He is one of the most ignorant assholes I've ever seen to hold public office. Listen to any of the others talk,Democrat or Republican....NONE of them talks like he does. I've never heard ANYONE talk like he does.The only reason he gets by with being STUPID is because we HAVE NO FREE PRESS.

If we had real journalists,this asshole would never have been able to steal both elections.The media can either make ya or break ya.Just ask Al Gore and John Kerry.

[lpbk2713]

17. He's a three-time loser...... (Or "looser" to you freepers out there)

He's a Boosh, he's an alkie, and he is, yes indeed, stupid.

[Missy M]

18. I think bush has low intelligence with possible brain damage....

from alcohol abuse. Anyone who lacks curiosity like bush does is not very smart, is narrowly focused and can't see past his own agenda.

[Ladyhawk]

41. My mother has a high IQ, but she lacks curiosity.

I think she doesn't like to be exposed to anything that doesn't adhere to her preconceived ideas. Maybe shrub has the same problem, but he's also an idiot. There's something wrong with him that is draining what few wits he had. He's either on some kind of drugs or there's something wrong with his brain. He looks and acts dumber every time I see him.

[ladjf]

19. All that matters is that his "puppet wires" are hooked up to the

puppeteers fingers.

[Tower]

20. When a stupid man wears a $20k suit, they call him "shrewd".

You know- it's like "eccentric". If you're poor and crazy, you're crazy. If you're rich and crazy, you're "eccentric".

Bush's most moronic mistakes aren't simply verbal gaffes, you know. The man is a complete fuck up. An imbecile. People tend to explain away his stupidity as some sort of deeply shrewd act because it's scary to think of a man who's not qualified to manage a McDonald's restaurant being in charge of the US government. It's scary for alot of reasons.

Anyway, yes- Bush is an incurious, incompetent man-boy. He's stupid. Don't let the jet fool you.

[Warren Stupidity]

22. I agree with you.

Chimpus Maximus is not a moron, he just plays one on teevee.

No seriously: he is dumb as a stump. Only explanation that works. He is the ultimate boss's son.

[Im with Rosey]

23. I have to go with Mrs. Solomon on this

Just remember even stupid people are not absolved of anything. Other than perhaps sometimes they are not as quick as more intelligent people, maybe not as fully able to comprehend abstract thinking, I think there are varying degrees of stupid. He is not a complete idiot but in any other environment, would you hire him, would you trust him, would you value his opinion? Would you think that his input on a problem was viable? Think f howoften it is possible to persuade someone of less intelligence that you are right, it doesn't take much, it doesn't take much for people like rummy or cheney to persuade him to think or do whatever they want. I think he is stupid AND an asshole.

[Greyhound]

24. To answer I suppose we must define stupid.

Is he stupid in that he does not understand what he is/has done? I don't think so. Is he stupid in that he would never have been admitted to, let alone passed Yale & Harvard, w/o name & trust? Absolutely! He probably has a roughly average IQ, but that has now dipped into the double digits. He is definitely the first pResident in my lifetime that I know I'm smarter than, and I'm not nearly smart enough to be CiC.

[tonkatoy57]

25. He's differently abled

stupid? check
incurious? check
woefully uniformed about the world around him? check


cunning? check

He has a kind of emotional intelligence that allows him to project himself in a way that pleases his viewers. The religo-crazies see him as one of them. The small government conservatives see him as one of them. The "hoorah" shouting troops see him as one of them. But he's not really anything like them.

Bush is like the the salesman or preacher who has a serious "ick" factor but you still, against your own better judgment, find yourself strangely attracted to them.

For me personally, I never felt in the least drawn to him. He was an incompetent dumb ass from the get go. However, I saw people I like and respect fall for his bullshit. The only way I can explain it is that he spoke to their interests and prejudices. He offered them comfort and absolution for those small, mean feeling which live deep inside all of us.

[maxsolomon]

28. "emotional intelligence" is the term we always use to differentiate.

we came to some agreement about his "intelligence" when I brought up Chauncey Gardner from Being There. He's like that, except evil.

Being a blank slate onto which people willingly project their desires is a neat trick. I can't do it.

[Qibing Zero]

26. I don't think he's faking anything.

Sure he stretches the 'common man' thing when the analysts think it'll help, but he's not faking it. He's not just stupid either. He's ignorant, and happy to remain that way. He got by all his life on next to no knowledge thanks to his family, and now thinks he still can get by on his faith-based blind as all hell convictions.

He's that asshole at your workplace that knows absolutely nothing, but insists he knows what he's doing and in turn messes everything up for everyone else to fix. He still keeps his job because he lies incessantly about the smallest things, and sucks up, pretending he's really a good worker. He has a complex. He can't be wrong, ever. After all, he has god on his side. He gets rid of the people in his administration who disagree with him.

He's also power hungry and wants his name in the history books, and with a little poking here and there, and a little false logic, he can be directed in whatever path his 'cronies' want him to head off in. He thinks he's a big man because he sends people off to war, and speaks on megaphones at photo-ops. He's the modern day pharoah - he thinks god smiles down upon him, and the people look up to him. To the driving forces behind his movements, things couldn't work out any better. After all, the thought of having absolute truth is the strongest control factor to exist.

[Larissa238]

29. I totally agree

And I cant stand people who remain willfully ignorant. Why dont they all go back and live in their caves, and let the rest of us take care of the world?

And I hate that he uses religion to back him up when everything he does is contrary to his so-called beliefs.

[Qibing Zero]

42. Yes, definitely

I was born ever-curious and always seeking to learn about the world around me. However, I was raised to shut off a lot of those avenues and given the short answer for everything. Naturally, I eventually rebelled from that, but it took a long time and I still bear the scars from having a closed mind at times. I know what it feels like to not be able to think about certain things, because at one time my mind held those barriers up without me even realizing it.

I know what it's like to be stuck in that loop, but I just don't understand what drives people to become like that in the first place, and what makes them want to press it on other people.

Sometimes I wonder if they really do think education is the problem, and that we should be heading backwards in time, instead of forward. I wonder if religion plays a part, and they long for the days when the church was a staple in everyone's life. Then I think they must just be in it for power, and controlling both information and the education level of the people are the best ways to maintain that power.



In the end, all I know is that as long as we want to keep our personal freedoms, we need to get them out of office and start spreading some real 'truths'.

[The_Casual_Observer]

30. Poker player stupid.

I've seen some really dumb ass people that were great poker players. bush has poker player skills.

[leftofthedial]

31. he's cunning and he's skilled at being one of the rich chosen ones

individually, personally, he's a helpless idiot

he's a lazy, incurious, willfully ignorant arrogant sociopathic dolt, lucky enough to have been born into wealth and power and raised by Babs to be consumately manipulative of his status.

He is both stupid AND 100% culpable (though not he alone) for his acts.

[DaveJ]

32. Stupid? Yes, but "a throwback" is more accurate

He is a throwback. Dictionary meaning: 1: an organism that has the characteristics of a more primitive type of that organism. But it's not that he was necessarily born a throwback. I think that throwbacks are made, not born. He's a grunt, unthinking, uncivilized neanderthal, characteristics that sometimes are admired in today's short attention span society but in reality have no redeeming qualities.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

33. Shallow, yes. An asshat, yes. Stupid?

Yes, I believe so.

34. I would agree that he is average

other than political savvy. He lives in his own white rich guy bubble. Maybe people like him because they think he will uphold the status quo and they are afraid of the alternative (black, hispanic, aggressive woman). But things are falling apart even with his supposed status quo, as seen in the hurricane response, so people don't know where to turn now.

I don't understand the sociopath thinking of a lot of rich people anyhow. I was quickly eliminated in a jury selection when the subject was awarding already rich people, a giant amount of money. There is a kind of sociopathic thinking to that top 1% of people that make the millions. Read Studs Terkel's "Hard Times". Many rich people barely cared about the depression that was going on.

[MN ChimpH8R]

35. He has a certain reptilian cunning

but intellectually speaking, Chimpoleon is considerably dumber than a brick. Just LISTEN to him. No one with an IQ over room temperature speaks like that.

edit for sloppy typing.

[understandinglife]

36. Cunning, controlling, ruthless, cold-blooded, mass murderer and thief.

Just to be accurate.

And, no, he is definitely not stupid and to pretend he is, is about as wise as pretending you will not be shredded if you jump into a tree chipper.



Don't do it.


Peace.

[Toots]

37. Bill Clinton "Underestimate Bush* at your own Peril"

:shrug: Clinton is a pretty wise man and I believe what he says.

[DaveJ]

38. That doesn't negate the point: Stupid = dangerous. n/t

[kerry-is-my-prez]

39. Paul Begala has followed him for years & says it's partly an "act"

He's from Texas and knows what he is like....

[MemphisTiger]

40. I say he's no rocket scientist, but he's not as stupid as he looks

you don't get two terms as president without being smart. He's certainly not articulate, but not stupid.

[Freddie Stubbs]

44. He was smart enough to beat Ann Richards, Al Gore, and John Kerry

Just because he is not a great public speader does not mean he is not smart. Never underestimate your opponent.

[spanone]

46. He's a no-man. A fraud. A charade. Chameleon. Phony. Opportunist.

[Individualist]

47. He's a stupid asshole.

[Tatiana]

48. He's stupid and MEAN. A deadly combination. n/t

[Quixote1818]

49. I don't think he could manage a hardware store!

Yes, I think he is STUPID!!!

[Fight_n_back]

50. Did people debate if Clinton was smart?

I wouldn't mind his stupidity if he admitted and then listened to people.

[emdee]

51. I think he's a narcissist

<snip>The most telling thing that narcissists do is contradict themselves. They will do this virtually in the same sentence, without even stopping to take a breath. It can be trivial (e.g., about what they want for lunch) or it can be serious (e.g., about whether or not they love you). When you ask them which one they mean, they'll deny ever saying the first one, though it may literally have been only seconds since they said it -- really, how could you think they'd ever have said that? You need to have your head examined! They will contradict FACTS. They will lie to you about things that you did together. They will misquote you to yourself. If you disagree with them, they'll say you're lying, making stuff up, or are crazy.

http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html

[BreweryYardRat]

52. Hmm...

I doubt he was all that bright to begin with, and years of heavy drinking and snorting coke probably knocked a lot off his IQ.

Bastard's good at manipulating people, though, and he has very intelligent advisers.

So, in conclusion:

Dumb as a post, but manipulation skills and advisers make up for some of that.

[buzzard]

53. Al Gore doesn't think so,

http://moveonpac.org/gore5/

excerpt from his speech at Georgetown University regarding Iraq

"There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups. I think he is plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. But it is crucially important to be precise in describing what it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is ideology – and not his religious faith – that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency."