Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, April 20, 2008 4:36:38 PM
After I wrote
my last post, I recalled a conversation with my mother that was rather enlightening.
It is not so much interesting for what was said, so much as the assumptions. My mother was talking about something she had read about people who knew president Bush prior to his time in office. She seemed utterly surprised to hear him described as intelligent by so many.
Which came as a surprise to me, as, not being surrounded by liberals and not watching mainstream comedy, I had completely forgotten the liberal trope that Bush is an idiot. I knew that highly partisan souls tend to like to paint him as a dolt, but I forgot that supposedly mainstream people on the left also really believe that he is some sort of cretin.
It just boggles the mind. He graduated from an Ivy League school, he got better grades than Kerry. He holds an MBA from Harvard. He held numerous managerial positions and did quite well. He won the office of governor and did a good job running Texas. Yet somehow people think he is stupid. It can't just be the accent, as liberals don't think Carter and Clinton are fools. Nor can it be a poor speaking style, as Al "Cure for Insomnia" Gore is a darling of the left as well.
I don't quite get it.
I mean, I think Bush has a poor grasp of true conservative principles, and is too confident in the ability of the state to cure ills, but that is true of most politicians, and almost all of those on the left, so that is certainly not why people think he is dim. Obviously partisan resentment over the 2000 election could explain why a small number of people hate him and would want to thin him an idiot, but why the rest? What convinces so many otherwise normal people that Bush is an idiot?