A couple of quotes

[ericcoleman]

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

who also said:

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I don't believe, these days, that Bush is a moron. He's not terribly intelligent, but his intelligence is limited more by his deliberate adherence to an ideology that makes him stupid rather than by a lack of innate ability. His "too stupid to speak coherently" image is at least in large part deliberately assumed.

His ideology makes him stupid because it guides him to see any issue as pure black or pure white based on superficial tests against a short arbitrary list of unquestionable moral principles. The fact that those moral principles are a carefully chosen subset of the large and contradictory jumble of Christian thought is not the problem. It's the ideology that leads to reasoning like "al-Qaida is true evil, therefore it's OK to torture people we think might be members of al-Qaida", or "abortion is evil, therefore it's wrong to fund groups that sometimes favor abortions, even when those groups are the only hope mothers in some poor countries have of getting any kind of medical care".

[musicmutt.livejournal.com]

The other thing, too, is that he is also at the mercy of his advisory staff. The real power sits not with the man chosen to be presented as leader but resides with the people behind the scenes who are really pulling the strings. They are the ones who get their way without having to be responsible for the consequences. The political leader's job is not to wield power as much as to draw attention from who really is.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I used to buy into the theory that Bush was nothing but a puppet being manipulated by Cheney and Rove, but I don't think it's completely true. While I don't think Bush is fully aware of the depths of his advisors' schemes, I think he really does know the rough outlines of most of what his administration is doing, and he wants it that way.

[musicmutt.livejournal.com]

I believe PT Barnum used that second quote when setting up his first sideshow, too.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I believe it was also Mencken who said "When I was a boy, i was told that anyone could grow up to be President. I'm beginning to believe it."

[barbarakitten-t.livejournal.com]

thanks, eric...i just kittened tea all over my monitor and it is now obvious to my co-workers that i am NOT working!!!!

[ericcoleman]

it's all part of my plan to destroy all monitors ...