
Bush: Terrible President, Also Not a Smart Man - kareemm
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/bush-terrible-president-also-not-a-smart-man.html
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venomsnake
The greatest achievement of Bush is giving high quality material for Jon
Stewart to work with.

Whether his personal intelligence was high or low is irrelevant. But he
handled almost any issue with the grace of a monkey with a wrench in a glass
castle. With similar results. And he never had any real crisis to deal with.
Terrorism while tragic is not a serious geopolitical treat and 9/11 should
have been treated like Katrina and not Pearl Harbor(Perpetrators and
masterminds and collaborators should have been brought to justice but the
Eichmann way - kidnap and trial, as Obama proved the US president have long
hands) Mishandling of the financial crisis also didn't help. The decade that
US was focused only on terrorism is a wasted time. There could have been much
achieved otherwise.

Maybe Bush was held hostage by the hardliners in his party that completely
took over the party after 2008 - that is argument I can accept and would have
made decent Democratic president - he was never openly hostile towards the
less fortunate.

But his legacy is like so - a wasted decade, 2 infinite wars, more american
lives lost in the war on terror than the 9/11 attack themselves, loss of money
that could have fixed almost everything in US,the beginning of the erosion of
the civil liberties and a financial meltdown.

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dragonwriter
> Terrorism while tragic is not a serious geopolitical treat and 9/11 should
> have been treated like Katrina

I think that's the first time I've seen the handling of Katrina held up as a
positive model that anything else should reflect. I'd maybe understand "9/11
should have been handled the way Katrina should have been handled", but even
then the two are so disparate in character that it wouldn't be clear what the
analogy really meant in any kind of concrete terms.

~~~
venomsnake
I meant Katrina as a mark in the national debate/ conscience. Tragic one off
event, which while we should try our best to avoid does not bring enough
substance to be the pillar, let alone the foundation of the policies
afterwards.

The handling of Katrina was terrible, but for various reasons the event did
not scar the public deeply. Maybe because no one could figure out how to
(ab)use it for media whoring and free pass for every legislation.

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kbenson
I'm not what anyone would call a Bush supporter, but the portion where they
veer into personal attacks on his intelligence seems a bit out of place, if
only for how low it stoops. I think that argument could have been framed much
better.

To me, it seems like he's someone that easily gets flustered when speaking
publicly, and has the unfortunate habit of digging in when he feels threatened
(and he probably got overly sensitive to feeling threatened as time went on
and he was mocked for his speaking.

It's also probably partly me. I would rather look for an explanation that
doesn't entail him being an imbecile. Regardless of whether I liked or
approved of him, I most definitely don't like the idea that we were lead by a
moron for eight years, and what that implies about the country and populace
that elected him - twice (depending on your view, I guess).

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lutusp
It seems Bush's supporters are once again arguing that he was
misunderestimated.

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rebelidealist
Some who worked with him claimed he gave off an impression of an
"extraordinarily intelligent" man.

[http://www.quora.com/George-W-Bush/What-is-George-W-Bush-
rea...](http://www.quora.com/George-W-Bush/What-is-George-W-Bush-really-like-
in-one-on-one-conversation)

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amalag
I think one needs only to look at this paintings to decide for oneself.

