on this day...my thoughts on dubya

[renate]

42. interesting question--did he have an evil intent, or was he just a very, very dim megalomaniac?

"Megalomaniac" sounds rather dramatic, but then again, he was the most powerful person in the world, placed in that position despite being completely without any merit. I'd be pretty confident in my abilities, too, if that happened to me, and I don't know whether I could be convinced of my unsuitability for the job if I were anointed by almost half the country and five members of the Supreme Court.

I think he was completely stupid, intellectually incurious, intolerant of negative news or criticism, high on power, and utterly lacking in introspection. Evil? Well, he started a war for personal reasons, so there's that. But he was encouraged to do it by people who were smart enough to know better and were therefore undeniably evil. I think he could have been persuaded out of a lot of his actions if somebody around him who had a sense of decency had ever actually tried to do so.

I'm not saying he's not evil, but I do think the case could be made for his simply being out of his depth, easily manipulated, way too confident of his talents, satisfied by being kowtowed to without having to work to earn it, and not being smart enough to know that he was nothing special. That was always the thing that stuck in my craw with him even when he was just sitting there not bombing other countries or whatever--I could put up with a GOPer who weighed the evidence and simply came to a different conclusion (e.g. Jon Huntsman), but the ones like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin who are just too dumb to know how dumb they are drive me crazy. And of course there's a whole different category for people like Cheney and Wolfowitz and Bolton (and, and, and from that administration) who are out and out evil.