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Comment by mietek | Hacker News Reader

What do you really know about George W. Bush?

http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

Love that piece. It's worth pointing out also that Keith was there only for the final year of office, rather than near the beginning, which is one of the best pieces of anecdata against the post-1994 ongoing dementia theory (which a priori I still think is more likely than the "playing dumb" theory). There is of course other anecdata on Bush not being as intelligent as Keith claims, but the big issue that should make most people have low confidence in either extreme is it's hard for people to form an accurate mental model of the President. The 4th image from http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/04/08/the-essence-of-peopling... highlights the issue.

I don't much like his policies, but I always had a big question mark in my mind when it came to Bush's raw intelligence. He spoke like a man who didn't know how to speak in public, not like someone who was ignorant or addled. There was a peculiar absent-mindedness to his gaffes ("misunderestimate", "is our children learning") and so forth but it had a more "way out of his element" feel rather than coming from a place of stupidity. I doubt I'd be able to do much better in front of a large and frequently very hostile audience.

Part of my problem with American politics is that so few know how to think clearly about the actors involved. I guve Bush considerable benefit of the doubt when it comes to mental capability but I don't agree with him. And I dislike Obama for his failure to uphold the values he got elected on, not (as many feebleminded urbane Democrat voters suppose) because of his skin color.

> He spoke like a man who didn't know how to speak in public, not like someone who was ignorant or addled.

His problem went beyond not knowing how to speak in public, which, by itself, is not a sign of not being intelligent. He was truly very dull, something he himself admitted to ("I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed").

Aside from that, if you passed through college, then through grad school and always referred to the Internet as "the internets", and to "the google", then public speaking is the least of your worries.

> He was truly very dull, something he himself admitted

You may wish to rethink this.

You'll have to give me good reasons to. No, downvoting is not one.

Was not the linked article sufficient?

It's revisionist history.

Bush is clearly not as dumb as he was caricatured. But he certainly couldn't lead in any way on his own without daddy's entourage telling him what to do.

Could any head of state? The depth of expertise required to hold that kind of position is far more than one man can deign to have.

The linked article was fluff piece by a friend of his.

What do you mean by this?

Dull people don't usually call themselves dull. "Reasonably intelligent" or "average" are more common.

Think, was there perhaps a strategic reason to paint himself so?

Think, was there perhaps a strategic reason to paint himself so?

Socrates, at his trial before a jury of Athenians, is said to have used a variation of the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer defense to provoke sympathy: "I'm just a humble country boy, not worldly and sophisticated like you", etc.

Not that Bush is any Socrates, but the stratagem is the same.

It's actually better for GWB's legacy if he was an easily manipulated simpleton. If he's truly a secret (to all observable evidence) genius, that also makes him a heinous war criminal and corrupt crony capitalist.

To add to this, as a student in India, I would often run across people who thought Bill Gates was an Idiot. Not sure from where that caricature arose. But some people simply hated Bill Gates, and believed he didn't deserve to be the richest person in the world.

I'd have to talk to them and explain he was a work horse extraordinaire, and was the equivalent of great project manager, programmer, and a business guy all rolled into one.

Its very common to hate successful people, who don't fit our narrative of what a hero should look like.

Nobody I know hates GW because he's successful. They do, because of the mess he got us in. Yes, he was led to taking the actions he took by smarter and more devious people around him, but the ultimate responsibility was with him, or on him. He was the president.

I don't know about US politics. But I have seen people unjustifiably bash successful people. In fact, this is the common place ideology in today's feel-good culture to deride other people, to make their own shortcomings look acceptable.

Bush?

When asked a question, he'd never give an answer that illustrated a deep depth of analysis.

Now he certainly could have done the analysis all the time, but he never spoke about it so I did not have any insight into was his thinking process was.

Now, I never thought he was dumb but his persona of well-mannered everyman never slipped even one bit, so if it's a mask, I have no idea what is beneath it. He could be average or a genius or low intelligence with extreme charisma. I don't know.

> When asked a question, he'd never give an answer that illustrated a deep depth of analysis.

You wouldn't either if you were talking to the general public.

I've met a couple politicians I considered dumb, and was very surprised at how smart they were in person. I'd be very careful concluding any President is a dimwit.

that's really fascinating, I'm not a liberal, but very opposed to the Bush presidency - I'm entitled, to since I voted for him once. And I always believed him to be stupid. And I think these days, I do the "No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent." because if he's dumb, the policies he executed that I disagree with it just a matter of ignorance, and not evilness. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Assuming that that article is correct, all that proves is that smart people often make dumb decisions, which we've known for a long time.

How on earth such things don't surface harder ? W Bush was an idiots idiot for decades. His 'speech fumbles' are still very bad in form and "content" to me. I'd never expect to read anything of that sort about the man ever.

If Bush is that smart, what does that tell us about his questionable decisions on other things? Why start a war in Iraq based on WMD's that weren't there, and a government that was not in league with Osama bin Laden? Why start dragnet surveillance? Why let the CIA torture people? Why do the ridiculous tax cuts at the same time we're spending big dollar on a war?

If Bush is that smart, he must have good motives for those things, or if not good motive, hidden motives.

I can't see any scenario where deciding against extending surveillance in that manner is the wrong decision for the executive: the potential downside of not doing it is very high (in the event of an actual attack you will be hit by your opponents for endangering the public); the potential downside of doing it is only criticism from the very small number of voters who take communication privacy very seriously.

I've always been a believer that smart people can come to very different conclusions on how to do things.

Just look at the number of people who fall within the Alan Kay camp of mutable state vs those who like Haskell.

Look at those who think Lisp should have ruled the world versus those who believe Prolog just never had a fair shake.

There's a bunch of issues that reasonable people can reasonably disagree on.

Granted when it comes to politics I believe all motivation is hidden because ture radicals can't win the vote by coming out and telling people they plan a revolution. They have to claim to be only slightly off center, then continually reframe the issue till people begin to see things their way.

Guantanamo Bay was a great example. If you'd asked Congress "do you want to authorize a secret camp to torture dissidents just offshore from the continental USA?" then they would have said no. Yet now that the camp exists, the question has been shifted to "Do you want to close our black-ops torture camp, and move all those people with grievances (legitimate or not) against us to your home state's prison system?"

Now even Congressmen who hate torture feel unwilling to go down in history as the one who let 'terrorists' into gen-pop, even if in fact our prison system is perfectly capable of handling dangerous individuals (like all the homegrown terrorists we have).

This isn't a counterpoint to Bush actually being intelligent, but the most convincing theory I've heard about the war in Iraq is that Sadam Hussein was going to sell oil for Euros instead of Dollars (and he had formally announced those plans). The idea is that speculation about future oil not being bought and sold in dollars would devalue the dollar as countries would hold less in their reserves, and this would start a more rapid cycle of devaluation.

EDIT: Looks like people don't even want to deal with this as a theory.

you should really parse the WMD stuff over again. The history on this is as follows: Post Iran-Iraq war Hussein had a WMD development program, and then the UN inspections regime came and put several of them "under seal". In the runup to the Iraq war, the US repeatedly asked where these sealed WMDs were and Hussein refused to disclose where they were or allow inspectors to see them, and the US spun that as implying that he COULD use them to supply terrorists with WMD (technically true, unlikely to actually happen). Ultimately, after invading the US found them, and they were still "under the UN seal", unable to be used in any military context.

The US also never argued that there was a direct connection with Bin Laden, just that Iraq was covertly supporting terrorism. Which is similarly flimsy, limitedly true, and definitely manipulative of the US public.

So, the Bush administration was incredibly deft at taking minor truths and spinning them in the public's mind as molehills that justified bigger action. Not to justify their actions, but in the strictest sense, Iraq did have WMDs, and Iraq did support terrorists.

And why did Hussein refuse to disclose where the WMDs where or allow inspectors to see them? Because he wanted to bluff neighboring countries (primarily Iran, I believe) into thinking that he had them and would use them in a pinch. But that bluff ran into the US's desire to control who had WMDs, with disastrous results.

There's a lot of people whose intellectual credentials are unassailable that supported all of those programs. The differences in opinion come down to values and ideology, not intelligence.

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