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Sunday, September 12, 2004
What's so pathetic is that after reading this concise, justified and broad attack on Bush's policies, even without addressing it with potential counter-arguments, one's left to wonder what alternative one has. George Bush seems, again, the feather candidate, needing just the slightest breath of life to knock him over. And once again, a Democratic candidate with a sad mixture of old-leftism and meandering principles has been utterly confounded by him.
Oh, and again once more, those who want to serve as Democratic attack-dogs-by-proxy are achieving the profound mistake of insulting Bush's intelligence. Even in this otherwise-smart article by generally-smart Timothy Noah:A common theme is the theoretician's contempt for empiricism. But how did George W. Bush, of all people, end up getting conned by a bunch of eggheads? Typically, it's intellectuals, not party-hearty Dekes, who are most susceptible to grand untested theories. It was a reasonable worry, for example, with Bush's 2000 opponent, Al Gore. Bush, who not only lacks intellectual curiosity but seems to hold in contempt those who possess it, does not belong to the risk group for willed agnosia. One would have expected Dubya to growl at his advisers, "Enough of this hifalutin' talk. Tell me how we're going to solve the problem at hand." But on the evidence, whenever Bush attempts this (as in the quote from the Suskind book, above), it comes out a mere feint, easily quieted by the enunciation of one of the words his PR superstructure uses to define his presidency: "steadfast," "entrepreneur," "forceful," or whatnot. This suggests that, although not easily conned by intellectuals, Bush is easily cowed by them. He is intimidated out of trusting his own Texas-bred common sense. So rather than willed agnosia, a better diagnosis for Bush is probably hysterical agnosia brought on by exposure to deep thinkers. No wonder he hates them as a class. Engaging Bush on the grounds that he's stupid is just, well, stupid. And it shows some stupidity that despite losing with this strategy in 2000 and then in mid-term elections, many are choosing to stick with it. Calling Bush stupid isn't an argument, it's a dodge.
Steven I. Weiss 10:11:00 PM
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