At 8:29 PM -0700 8/26/04, R wrote:
>To be fair, innate intelligence has to do with capability and
>ignorance to do with variables such as educational opportunity and
>personal diligence. But the conundrum remains. Is intellect
>important in presidents? If Americans can't solve the question
>definitively in the matter of John Kerry and George Bush, we damn
>sure ought to make an educated guess.
To be fair, if any 50% of the population of this country - of *any* country - got to go to the top prep school in the US, go to Yale undergrad and to Harvard MBA, those people would be quite successful. But when one guy gets all those advantages and still manages to be a complete failure at all his businesses and at both a governorship and a presidency, well, that takes real innate unintelligence.
>One highly imperfect but salient way to do so is at the level of
>campaign tactics. Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a
>higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure their SATs and college transcripts
>would put Kerry far ahead. Yet at this point in the campaign, Bush
>deserves an A or a high B instead of a gentleman's C when it comes
>to neutralising Kerry's knowledge advantage.
Power hires experts. Karl Rove made Bush who he is. The only credit George Bush gets is to know when to sit back and enjoy the high.