In the case of Bush, indifference and ignorance were long entrenched, already cast as virtues. And people in his constituency are drawn to him for just that reason. Jokes about Dubya's mangled vocabulary, revelations of his inability to identify foreign leaders and historical events - the educated classes in the blue states might have been gleefully appalled, but folks in the heartland, folks who take pride in describing themselves as 'ordinary Americans,' they were neither gleeful nor appalled. On the contrary. they resented the snobs who jeered at his natural awkwardness and innocent errors in an ill-disguised attempt to draw attention to their own erudition. Bush's hold on his constituency depends not only on the rhythms of sentiment they share but on their common antipathy to all things intellectual and refined, an antipathy derived from devotion to practical enterprise. Bush's people know the difference between being smart - as in quick, cunning, focused - and in being educated, overeducated, pseudo, verbose, affecting interest in in the useless, the unintelligible, the foreign. Unlike so many who mocked him for the stupidity, they knew Bush was smart, it showed in the way he looked people in the eye, always gauging, a gifted salesman scoping out the client.
So when Bush triumphs, his people triumph. When Bush confounds the highbrow critics - the tenured radicals, the effete Frenchmen, the African diplomats with thousand dollar suits and Oxbridge accents - all those masters of gray nuance, weaving their paralyzing out of distant causes and obscure consequences - when Bush the Bold confounds them with simple words and simpler deeds, well his people are themselves vindicated. They were right all along, right to be ignorant, right to be parochial - right, by God, just to be Americans.
- Thomas de Zengotita teaches at New York University's Draper Program.
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