The short answer is who cares? My main feeling about it is that I'm just glad he's gone. As Jonathan Bernstein says, it's great that we've had such a slow news day lately that this is what requires our full attention.
"It’s nice that we’re back to slower news days, so that we can debate whether George W. Bush is actually highly intelligent. Bush administration official Keith Hennessey argues for Bush."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/24/happy-hour-roundup-92/
I also think his verdict on the question is right:
"I agree with Ezra Klein: Bush is probably a smart man, but he was terrible at presidenting."
What is interesting, is the question of whether the GOP is going to go to battle to try to repair W's image. Bush himself has been trying to do just this with his recent discussions about his new found love of painting and his interview with Diane Sawyer.
Bush tells us that his love of painting reflects his "precocious nature." Good to know.
"Among the scenes that Bush has tackled: painting his own feet while taking a bath, as well as animals. The paintings were first discovered in February after Bush family emails were hacked, the Associated Press reported."
Jeb Bush thinks his brother deserves credit for not "carping about Obama."
"I think my brother deserves a little credit for not sitting on the sidelines and carping about his successor," Jeb Bush told high-dollar GOP donors at an event sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, according to the Los Angeles Times."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/jeb-bush-says-brother-deserves-credit-for-not
Talk about setting the bar a little low. I mean that's been standard operating procedure for all Presidents not to "carp" about their successor. Certain things don't really deserve special praise. However, I guess with W. you have to take what you can get.
Actually I will offer the President one piece of praise. He told a great joke on Sawyer regarding his painting:
"In an interview with the Dallas Morning News published two Sundays ago, Bush added that painting gives him an opportunity to "create." He also reflected on what others think of his work."
"It’s nice that we’re back to slower news days, so that we can debate whether George W. Bush is actually highly intelligent. Bush administration official Keith Hennessey argues for Bush."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/24/happy-hour-roundup-92/
I also think his verdict on the question is right:
"I agree with Ezra Klein: Bush is probably a smart man, but he was terrible at presidenting."
What is interesting, is the question of whether the GOP is going to go to battle to try to repair W's image. Bush himself has been trying to do just this with his recent discussions about his new found love of painting and his interview with Diane Sawyer.
Bush tells us that his love of painting reflects his "precocious nature." Good to know.
"Among the scenes that Bush has tackled: painting his own feet while taking a bath, as well as animals. The paintings were first discovered in February after Bush family emails were hacked, the Associated Press reported."
“By the way, that’s not that easy to paint, water hitting water just so, you know, and the perspective… It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” he told ABC on Wednesday. “It may reflect my precocious nature, me painting myself in a bathtub."
More things about Bush's painting that are good to know: he's painted 50 dogs.
Jeb Bush thinks his brother deserves credit for not "carping about Obama."
"I think my brother deserves a little credit for not sitting on the sidelines and carping about his successor," Jeb Bush told high-dollar GOP donors at an event sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, according to the Los Angeles Times."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/jeb-bush-says-brother-deserves-credit-for-not
Talk about setting the bar a little low. I mean that's been standard operating procedure for all Presidents not to "carp" about their successor. Certain things don't really deserve special praise. However, I guess with W. you have to take what you can get.
Actually I will offer the President one piece of praise. He told a great joke on Sawyer regarding his painting:
"In an interview with the Dallas Morning News published two Sundays ago, Bush added that painting gives him an opportunity to "create." He also reflected on what others think of his work."
"People are surprised," Bush said. "Of course, some people are surprised I can even read."
It's so funny because it's true. In all seriousness, I don't begrudge him his hobby. Whether or not it's enough to stem his unpopularity is another question.
I doubt this piece is written by a former Bush adviser is going to do much to improve his popularity. The title of the piece is George W. Bush is smarter than you.
I assume that some who read this will react automatically with disbelief and sarcasm. They think they know that President Bush is unintelligent because, after all, everyone knows that. They will assume that I am wrong, or blinded by loyalty, or lying. They are certain that they are smarter than George Bush.
I ask you simply to consider the possibility that I’m right, that he is smarter than you.
It seems to me that a lot of this comes down to the idea that he's the President so of course, he's smarter, which is not such a smart argument:
"And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls, I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration, on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both."
This is the job description of a President. All Presidents have to deal with lots of different issues foreign and domestic. Does this mean everyone who serves as President is smarter than everyone else? Talk about an empty credentialism. There is however, a certain level of delegation. I don't know that it's true that this makes a President "smarter" than an economist or other specialists who advise him, This is the trouble with saying Bush is smarter than "you." It begs the question smarter at what? Mr. B may be smarter than Ms. A at politics but dumber at chemistry. An adviser usually is more of a specialist than the President. Both may be intelligent but in different ways: there are different kinds of intelligence.
"Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he’s from Texas or because of his accent? Because he’s an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?"
Actually Bush went to both schools and that doesn't help my estimate of his intelligence as he went to these schools as legacies and has the grades to match.
At the end of the day, Bush wasn't what you'd call book smart, but obviously he was smart enough to know what he needed to know. As Klein says, perhaps a smart man but a terrible President.
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