flstf

I always thought of Reagan as a great communicator and leader with great vision and knew how to delegate well in order to accomplish his goals. I never thought of him as being overly intelligent, but then intelligence is probably overrated in regards to leadership skills.
Next time I'm at the library, I'll check out his memoirs book.

shakran

Not true, blatant flamebait.


Hey, the dems aren't the ones that tapped an actor to be president.

I seem to recall a certain democratic president who was all for abolishing style in the name of saving money, and he was hounded mercilessly for it by republicans.

Kerry is capable of stringing more than five sentences together without stumbling or losing his train of thought. If that makes him appear more intelligent than your guy, then perhaps you should find a new guy.


Agreed. But to get the job done, a leader must have a clear concept of what that job is. Bush. . . not so much.

dksuddeth

I don't believe GW is a genius by any means and some of his actions or decisions haven't been the best, but by no means is he stupid. I'd say he's 'smarter than the average bear', and with what i've seen out of most americans these last 4 years, that's pretty damn smart.

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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dksuddeth

kind of like kerry saying 'I actually voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it', love that train of thought.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

roachboy

let me know how underestimating the enemy is useful and then maybe i'll think about the question posed by this thread.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Poppinjay

I don't think the president is my enemy. I didn't vote for him, but I would hope for the best from him.

That hasn't happened. It's useful to know why. I think it is because he has a limited set of mental tools.

If there are enemies in the election process, it would be folks like Floyd Brown or the Swiftboat Vets who make outright lies to accomplish their goals. And they aren't stupid. I wish they were.

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Redlemon

Arrrrgh. His statement makes perfect sense, if you can handle more than a 10 second sound bite. He voted for an authorization bill that contained certain provisions, and it didn't pass. He didn't vote for the next authorization bill, because he disagreed with other provisions in the new bill.

Why is that so hard to understand?

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Ustwo

Well the interesting thing is that its not really a memoir as it is a collection of notes/thoughts, with edits and corrections as he made them. It gives you an insight to his mind.

When I was in high school we had a very good left leaning history professor (he is still teaching there) who was one of the few democrats I know who 'gets' Reagan. His premise was that Reagan was in some ways emulating Eisenhower. He would feign ignorance, or disinterest when he didn't want you to know what his plans were or what he was thinking.


I think my old teacher was correct in his assesment of Reagan.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

shakran

Because the truth doesn't matter as long as concealing it helps Bush. Making a big deal out of that statement even though the Bush campaign KNEW it made perfect sense helped Bush paint Kerry as a flip flopper, even while maintaining a non-vascillating image himself, despite changing his reason for the Iraq war every 5 minutes.


(edit - caught a typo)

albania

So there have been quite a few postings, but the general consensus is that he is either above average or average intelligence, with a problem giving speeches. All right, that was pretty much what I was thinking as well.

On a side question, let's get more specific, about selling the war, in our system today a president usually has to gather public opinion on his side before going to war. The question I ask is could Bush have sold the war without WMDs (I hate using that word) if he had good speaking skills? My opinion on the matter is that he could have done it without WMDs. A general argument for the war could have been summed up in: democracy for all, freeing people from tyranny, stopping a possible terrorist state plus getting some oil in the process. I’m guessing a lot of people would go for it, not everyone would agree but still I think it would have worked in spite of the fact that Bush isn't too good at convincing people. Anyway, do you believe that the fact that he's not too effective at speeches deterred him from going on this angle, or is it just that his belief that Iraq had WMDs was so ingrained that it would have seemed illogical to even start pursuing it?
In another part of this question lets assume that he had tried to sell the war without WMDs. Would it have worked with you, what if someone, a great speaker, had been president do you think that person could have convinced you?
Personally I wouldn’t be convinced but I can see the logical reasons why someone would be. I wouldn’t be vehemently opposed if it had been presented that way to me but I would not be supporting it in any way either.

***Just as a side note to this side question this question is NOT asking whether he lied about WMDs or whether it was right to go into Iraq, or what has happened in Iraq, it's just about how it is related to his intelligence/rhetorical skills, please keep your comments geared towards this if you wish to respond, plus it makes it a much more fun debate if people stick to topic.

Poppinjay

I don't think he's that eloquent. His only other gambit would have been to claim there were droves of terrorists in Iraq, he couldn't do that because the immediate reponse is that there are far more in Iran.

I don't believe that this war seems illogical because Bush is not gifted enough to explain it in way that sells it to me. He relied on Colin Powell and Secretary Rice to do that, and in fact left them out to dry as the hypothesis failed. I think most Americans want to believe Powell and Rice, and it was a huge hit to their credibility when they had to go on Sunday Pundit shows and defend their hypothesis. But better them than Bush. That would be an unmitigated disaster.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Stompy

General intelligence that pertains to anything relevant... probably below average. How does one get a 2.35 GPA in History? It's far from someone getting a 2.35 in, say, Particle Physics.

Intelligent in social engineering, knowing how to lie and manipulate, knowing which strategies work best for his agenda? Rather high, like any other successful politician that is lucky enough to land into the top position. Although he does rely on others way too much, so it might be their intelligence being used as opposed to his own. (Rove et al)

Intelligence doesn't really matter in a presidency, anyway. To be honest, it's a bit of a joke. Any one of us here could be president and do a better than average job of it because they typically rely on the general opinion of others as opposed to what they personally believe in.

I'm sure every day he's asking questions "How can we get around this?" "How do we make this work?" "what is the best approach", etc.

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roachboy

i do not see how the question of the construction of bush as president--which would entail thinking about the strategies of pooling the press, controlling/shaping information etc. on the part of the white house, the linkages between the white house and conservative think tanks and right media and so forth--can be linked to the question of whether folk think bush is himself a nitwit or not.

the former, that of bush as signifier, is more sociological, while the latter, that of whether bush as an individual is a nitwit or not, is at the most aesthetic (do people have to reconcile the evidence concerning bush as human being possessed of x intellectual skills, etc..to the fact that he holds the office of president? does it cause a level of dissonance unacceptable to many to consider that a nitwit could be president? these questions would extend to the construction of ronald reagan as well, who posed parallel questions--but would necessarily also involve the history of the construction of the person of the president at the mythological/public level, particularly in a television environment) and at worst arbitrary (a question of your personal politics--if you oppose bush, you think one way, if you support him another--so the matter is really just one of preference and not about bush at all).

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dksuddeth

It was the context in which he made this statement. He was pressed for an answer by the media and this is the BS that spewed forth. If he was any better at speaking he would have said that he voted against it the second time because of a and b and c.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Mantus

I recall in Alexandra Pelosi's "Journey With George", one the reporters stated that his speach actually degraded over time. That he spoke in a more elequent maner when he was campaigning for governor. Can anyone confirm this?

Poppinjay

I've heard that the whole speech degredation thing started when he campaigned for governor. And it's not so much degredation as it is development of a a drawl.

His father was a terrible speaker, and I think W. has inherited that. Remember his dad's, "I mean right on, whine on, harvest moon comment!" comment? WTF?

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet