Kevin Drum does a pretty good job. I'd say between the two of them they pigeonhole him. Drum discusses that piece by Hennessey-President Bush is Smarter Than You Are and point out that it's not very persuasive. As he points out, last week was Be Nice to George W. Bush Week anyway. Hennessey really went over the top:
Thanks to the opening of his presidential library, this is officially "Be Nice to George Bush Week," and we've had quite a few entries in an ongoing competition among conservatives to persuade us that Bush was really a whole lot better than we used to think he was. One of the most widely linked is an essay by Keith Hennessey titled "George W. Bush is smarter than you."
Thanks to the opening of his presidential library, this is officially "Be Nice to George Bush Week," and we've had quite a few entries in an ongoing competition among conservatives to persuade us that Bush was really a whole lot better than we used to think he was. One of the most widely linked is an essay by Keith Hennessey titled "George W. Bush is smarter than you."
"And that may well be. I always thought Bush was a reasonably smart guy, and anyway, above a certain level it doesn't matter much. Other character traits become a lot more important. Still, Hennessey is trying to convince us that Bush is really, really smart, and I'm afraid I remain unconvinced. Here are three examples he provides to demonstrate Bush's high IQ:
"[He] was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up."
"....We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters, then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my time working for President Bush, it would be an editing session in the Oval with him and his speechwriters. You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending a sentence you inserted into a draft speech, with President Bush pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice."
....On one particularly thorny policy issue on which his advisors had strong and deep disagreements, over the course of two weeks we (his senior advisors) held a series of three 90-minute meetings with the President. Shortly after the third meeting we asked for his OK to do a fourth. He said, “How about rather than doing another meeting on this, I instead tell you now what each person will say.” He then ran through half a dozen of his advisors by name and precisely detailed each one’s arguments and pointed out their flaws. (Needless to say there was no fourth meeting.)
As Drum points out, what this amounts to is that Bush was a "conviction President" who had little patience for nuance or detail. This pgeon holes him very well.
"None of this suggests that Bush is a dumb guy. But it doesn't demonstrate a ton of analytical depth either. It suggests that (a) he has a good memory, (b) he's perfectly able to understand policy arguments when he wants to, but (c) most of the time he had little patience for this stuff and instead simply wanted to do what his political instincts told him to do. He's smart enough, but his intellectual curiosity was limited, and his willingness to allow his instincts to be overridden by policy concerns was minimal."
"Maybe you think that's good, maybe you think it's bad. But it is what it is. There's really no need to pretend that Bush was some kind of unappreciated intellectual superman."
"Hennessey is proabaly overcompensating. I think Drum sketches out Bush very well. Add to this Bernstein's sketch and I think we've nailed Bush:
"The discussion of George W. Bush's intelligence, or lack thereof, continues. My position on this, as I've said many times, is that I've heard him speak on baseball and he sounded sharp enough; I attributed the evidence of his presidency not as a lack of innate intelligence, but as a consequence of his lack of interest in the world of public affairs and policy."
http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2013/04/bush-principles-and-presidenting.html
Ok a lack of interest in policy, and, one other overriding characteristic: a dogmatic belief in his own moral compass.
"Presidents do not have any special claim to superior moral intuition, no matter what Carter or George W. Bush seem to believe. Nor do they have any special ability to channel the beliefs of "the people," as Wilson believed. When they attempt to do so -- when they attempt to base policy choices on their principles -- they are apt to get it all wrong, because there's no institutional reason that they should get it right. We might as well select our presidents by lot."
At this point I think we've nailed Bush. It well quantifies why I never liked Bush-he's my least favorite PResident in my lifetime-tied with Reagan. Reagan and Bush were very similar in that both tended to conceive of issues in large overriding moralistic terms. Both had a real sense of moral arrogance-sharted by Dick Cheney as we see in his movie. He simply doesn't think he made any mistakes in 8 years and that's that. I think that Bush's-Reagan was similar in this too-lack of interest in policy is due to his moral arrogance. He tended to think he already knew what was "Right and Wrong" and didn't like nuance for just this reason as this might call his arrogance into question.
Bernstein does maintain that there's a difference between Reagan and Bush: Reagan was a very good politician while Bush was terrible:
"The difference, really, between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is that Reagan -- who surely was as much of an ideologue in some ways as Bush -- was at his best pretty good at seeing danger and avoiding it. George W. Bush? Spectacularly bad about seeing danger coming and avoiding it. That's not because Reagan (or other, even better presidents) had better "principles" or ideology or guts -- it's because they were excellent politicians. George W. Bush, alas, was a terrible politician, and a terrible president."
I guess you could argue how terrible he was-he did get elected twice. On the other hand he's about as unpopular former President as we've ever seen so his game certainly hasn't worked for the long term.
Ok a lack of interest in policy, and, one other overriding characteristic: a dogmatic belief in his own moral compass.
"Presidents do not have any special claim to superior moral intuition, no matter what Carter or George W. Bush seem to believe. Nor do they have any special ability to channel the beliefs of "the people," as Wilson believed. When they attempt to do so -- when they attempt to base policy choices on their principles -- they are apt to get it all wrong, because there's no institutional reason that they should get it right. We might as well select our presidents by lot."
At this point I think we've nailed Bush. It well quantifies why I never liked Bush-he's my least favorite PResident in my lifetime-tied with Reagan. Reagan and Bush were very similar in that both tended to conceive of issues in large overriding moralistic terms. Both had a real sense of moral arrogance-sharted by Dick Cheney as we see in his movie. He simply doesn't think he made any mistakes in 8 years and that's that. I think that Bush's-Reagan was similar in this too-lack of interest in policy is due to his moral arrogance. He tended to think he already knew what was "Right and Wrong" and didn't like nuance for just this reason as this might call his arrogance into question.
Bernstein does maintain that there's a difference between Reagan and Bush: Reagan was a very good politician while Bush was terrible:
"The difference, really, between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is that Reagan -- who surely was as much of an ideologue in some ways as Bush -- was at his best pretty good at seeing danger and avoiding it. George W. Bush? Spectacularly bad about seeing danger coming and avoiding it. That's not because Reagan (or other, even better presidents) had better "principles" or ideology or guts -- it's because they were excellent politicians. George W. Bush, alas, was a terrible politician, and a terrible president."
I guess you could argue how terrible he was-he did get elected twice. On the other hand he's about as unpopular former President as we've ever seen so his game certainly hasn't worked for the long term.
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