George W. Bush is smarter than you (2013) | Hacker News Reader

George W. Bush is smarter than you (2013)

keithhennessey.com

63 pointskory74 comments

I'm sympathetic that GWB was smarter than he seemed, but there was plenty of evidence that he wasn't smart in the sense of the very curious and thoughtful high-functioning people that we all know.

Listen to him give an answer to a question about Native American sovereignty: https://youtu.be/kdimK1onR4o?t=25

That's not a verbal misstep, that's someone who doesn't know the definition of the word sovereignty. After invading several countries.

Or watch the 10-minute interview where he defends his foreign policy to an Irish reporter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vefD3WSiis

If I may quote a telling section:

Reporter asking about Iraq:

> The world is a more dangerous place today. There are terrorist bombings every single day. It wasn't like that two years ago.

GWB's response:

> What was it like September 11th, 2001?

The whole thing is a train wreck. So either GWB isn't as smart as the OP claims, or he is smart, and just happens to be profoundly dishonest. I'm not sure how OP can claim he'd get high pass marks without trying though. We have his transcripts, we don't know how hard he tried, but he certainly didn't get anything resembling a 'high pass'. He was a straight C student.

I think the most charitable thing to say at this point is that if he was as smart as claimed, his intelligence in no way helped his presidency. For all of the 'grilling of analysis and recommendations' he did, he sure made a number of objectively terrible decisions.

There's also the litany of massive strategic blunders which happened on his watch, the consequences of which are still plaguing the US today.

- Discouraging counter-terrorism investigations prior to 9/11 [0,1]

- The famous ignorance of government warnings of the coming attack which arose despite that discouragement

- Decision to invade Iraq

- Initially laissez-faire approach to the housing and financial crises. You didn't have to be smart to see those coming, you just had to be paying attention and apply basic economic principles.

These are all executive decisions for which he was responsible as President.

If this is smart, I'd hate to see dumb.

[0] http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=thomas_picka...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke#9.2F11_Commi...

I will say faking is also an art and don't forget he got his training from a president/father.

I see this happening in corporate environment all the time. They will speaks the right things, quickly pick on your analyses and run with it as their own, interrupt you midway just to make you feel little because they have power over you.

But when it comes to handing something impromptu they struggle. When they have to make a decision, they struggle. When it comes to execution, they usually fail horribly.

Sadly arrogant display of power is considered a sign of intelligence by some. I have seen a lot of such fakers so I don't believe in credentials until I see what they actually achieve.

I wasn't really old enough to understand and judge GWB's presidency, but from what I do know I can say my opinion of him isn't great.

Anyway, the first video about Tribal sovereignty doesn't really prove the point that he was stupid in my mind. I don't know what would be a good answer to that question, and I don't think he did either.

There's a difference between not having an opinion of tribal sovereignty and not having an understanding of it. In my reading, GWB doesn't understand it. Further, if GWB was such a smart person, he should have both.

Any moderately informed, politically active person could answer that question broadly. Most politicians I vehemently disagree with could talk intelligently about the topic for a half hour. GWB has a history degree from Yale, he spent most of his life in politics, he was the governor of a state, and then President.

He should definitely have an opinion on Tribal Sovereignty, there are something like 6 million native Americans in the country, it's kind of an important topic.

I really don't like this article. It makes me think that I might have been very wrong in my judgement of GWB. More and more I have been finding out how much of life is a mirage of perceptions, many of them far from reality.

> I really don't like this article. It makes me think that I might have been very wrong

Did you intend to draw a connection between these two statements?

> I really don't like this article. It makes me think that I might have been very wrong in my judgement of GWB.

Why would that cause you to not like the article? If an article teaches you something new, something true that you didn't know before, isn't that virtuous? If your prior beliefs were wrong, wouldn't you want to know they were wrong?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the above poster was being sarcastic.

Yeah I read it as tongue in cheek too.

The biggest barrier to understanding someone is distance from the source. If you spent more time near a person your judgement would be much better. The problem is we cannot be close to so many people to really understand them.

Ironically perhaps, time heals this barrier. I could never have accepted this article in 2008. In 2016, I've already come to this conclusion and this article is just "duh".

I find that most likely it wasn't even my own judgement of GWB, it was the one I accepted as truth, one that was relayed to me over a long time by other people, but not one that I developed by reading unbiased facts over a longer period of time. Simply because thats not possible. You can't consume facts as news, thats not on offer and has never been.

I'm with you. And I've realized lately that what I've come to believe as facts were just merely mainstream public opinion, where the opinion came from somewhere with intent and was adopted by my peers, then adopted by me.

If I truly reflect, I expect that many of my judgements of anything are rarely my own.

You should take pleasure in chipping away the illusions and exposing as much of the reality as possible.

If you'd like to really explore the feeling you've described, read https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-arg...

Yes, that is a great article. I actually did read it a while back, and it contributes to my changing understanding.

Its funny you say that makes you dislike the article.

I agree with everything he wrote, and it makes me like this article a lot.

> Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree?

This was spot-on to who I was 10-15 years ago in the bush years. I've actually come to the conclusion since then, before reading this, that I was very wrong about that (and a lot of other things) but this article is spot-on.

I know its a hard thing to realize and accept that you're living in a delusion, I'm right there with you on that.

Yes, exactly my opinion if Hitler had won.

I don't think GWB is stupid. But I've never really gotten this article: Keith Hennessey spends some time claiming that if GWB were a student at Stanford, he'd always be getting high grades without trying, and whenever he did deign to try he'd always be at the top of the class.

It seems like a high act of trollery, especially since we do have transcripts of just how well he performed at Yale and they don't offer nearly as rosy a picture of GWB's academic acumen.

To the extent that he's successfully getting people to not trust media representations of public figures, good on him, I guess.

I don't think he's stupid but I know he coasted through life on his parents money and prestige. It's not much consolation that Al Gore did the same. John Kerry and John McCain both funded themselves with family money and connections as well.

I think people are generally fed up that US politics confuses legacy with competence.

But when Bush became president, he surrounded himself with the same Republican apparatus that his father did, leading to disastrous results. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter how smart Bush was. His decisions were stupid.

It is intellectually lazy to call the decisions of people you disagree with "stupid" instead of trying to understand how their priorities and principles may be different than yours.

There is no defensible set of priorities and principles by which invading Iraq can be supported as not "stupid", other than perhaps, "It is our priority for the Pentagon to spend more money." (not sure if that's really defensible though...)

That wasn't the most annoying thing about GWB, however. Even though that invasion was misguided, it was misguided in a particular way that reflects a particular flawed mindset, which wouldn't surprise observant voters. The most annoying thing was that he waited until the end of his term to shit the bed in completely different fashion, with the "bailouts". I can understand a President who is owned by the military-industrial complex. I can understand a President who is owned by the two or three most influential investment banks. A President who is owned by both of those, however, has no ethical core whatsoever, and he will be cursed by all when the "Even Greater Recession" rolls around and is easily attributed to his abdication of leadership to the cronies.

> There is no defensible set of priorities and principles by which invading Iraq can be supported as not "stupid"

I like how the word "defensible" here makes this entire claim take on subjective meaning instead of being readily testable. It is quite easy to find a set of priorities, principles, and (I would add) core values that makes GWB's actions make perfect sense in the context of the time and without hindsight bias. But whether such a position is "defensible" is up to your own prejudices.

Thanks; glad you like it! I've already offered the example of, "It is our priority for the Pentagon to spend more money." If it's "quite easy" to come up with a more defensible priority or principle, why don't you give it a try? If I had to come up with something to support both of the disastrous decisions that bookended his administration, it might be something like, "Listen credulously to the self-interested crooks that Dad told me to hire," but I'm sure you can do better than that!

I have no interest in engaging in political conversation where not all participants are interested in having their mind changed.

I don't believe that; it's a roundabout way of saying that you have no interest in political conversation at all. Yet here you are.

Frankly "stupid" is putting it lightly. Read Bush by Jean Edward Smith which just came out a few months ago.

> Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.

His closing statement since I don't have the quote handy is basically invading Iraq was the single worst foreign policy decision in the history of the United States.

I think it is safe to say Bush made many stupid decisions, but that is what happens when you rely on ideology moreso than facts.

http://a.co/eyCit1B

McCain depended on family connections rather than money.

Legacy admit, 5th from the bottom of his class, still got into flight school, got shot down+captured, got into the Senate. Really, where's the success in this guy?

If I recall, he lost his first race for public office because his opponent criticized him for being too academic, which prompted him to change his image.

That's when he adopted the speech patterns that made coastal people think he's stupid. He was born in Connecticut, was raised by East coast old money parents, went to prep schools, then to Yale and Harvard. You don't end up sounding like a rancher with that upbringing, at least not accidentally.

I don't doubt W. is a smart man, but I seriously doubt this:

> One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”

Some presidents delegate more to trusted subordinates(Reagan), preferring to pick a knowledgeable person. Some have a more collegial atmosphere and take on things directly.(Clinton) [[Politics of the Presidency, 6th edition]]

I think that's a valid question to ask without meaning "how smart is Bush". For example, many decisions were made about the Iraq war, such as de-baathification of the country. Bremer ordered this, but did bush know and or order it, or did he trust Bremer to make the right call? This is important to interpreting and judging his presidency. And instead of answering that (important) question, he assumes that the student is asking if the president is dumb. He doesn't even let the student answer if that was a correct interpretation!

I read this is a higher-level overview of the situation, and not a direct transcript from the classroom.

I wouldn't assume that this was asked in isolation, or that there was no follow-up. Also, it really only serves as a framing device for the rest of the article, its not particularly material to the meat of the story. Unless, of course, you want to argue that nobody thought George Bush was a dummy which I know to be personally untrue.

To lend additional credence to this article, GWB in 2006 alone read 95 books that year:

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/01/george-w-bushs-reading-...

That comes out to about two books per week. If you look at that list, I wouldn't call any of those books light reading. Considering his job at the time and how he loves outdoor activities, calling him a fast reader would only begin to describe it. I would call it a stretch to say he's half as stupid as a lot of people like to think

Schwarzenegger works on keeping his accent. Bobby Jindal is definitely capable of speaking without his southern accent. George W Bush, likely, is capable of not acting the way he does. But all three realize the benefits of their image.

The focus on his intelligence is a distraction. He's a war criminal. Who cares how smart he is.

This is like discussing something written by Leni Riefenstahl titled "Hitler was a better artist than you."

I know several people who speak English as a second language who are more articulate than Bush in English. I don't care, I refuse to believe that he is some secret genius. I am confident if he were born to a poor family, that he would have risen to the average or lower expectations of those around him.

The only accurate quote in the whole article: "my job involved juggling a lot of balls"

He was cupping them as well, and he clearly still is. It's easy for someone to seem smart when a team of people feed him talking points all day, and you're a huge admirer of him as the author seems to be (which is why he made the not very obvious stretch from the student's question of Bush's level of involvement to his level of intelligence).

It's like we've all been fooled, and more than once. Shame on... shame on... you?

That was funny, but then again, he went to Harvard, so perhaps all that folksy crap was a zelig-like adoption of the mannerisms the peasants like. I mean, it worked - he became president.

I hope you're joking (in which case funny) but he directly addresses this in the article.

I don't think he is stupid, but he certainly cultivated an "average guy" persona that had a disdain for expert/elite opinion. It also doesn't excuse the (bad) decisions he made in office on a variety of issues.

> cultivated an "average guy" persona that had a disdain for expert/elite opinion

I think you need to untwist these opinions a bit.

Firstly, "cultivating" implies that his "average guy" activities were an act. From all accounts, it sounds like he has continued his activities after leaving public life (something I am eminently grateful to him for). I really don't think they were or are an act.

I would also say that "expert" and "elitist" are two very different things. Considering expert opinions does not sound like something he didn't do.

> doesn't excuse the (bad) decisions he made

I really can't agree more, but its the reasons why he made those decisions that I find important. Previously I just felt like he was an idiot, and therefore made stupid decisions. Now, I've basically come to the opinion that while I disagree with him on serious issues (for fucks sake, why did you invade Iraq!) he didn't do it from a malicious point of view or because he was an idiot. He was merely wrong, with terribly catastrophic results.

This article is rhetorical slight of hand, written by a man who directly benefits if history takes a kinder view of the GW Bush administration.

The author asserts that GW Bush is smarter than [the typical reader]. Howard Gardner describes nine different types of intelligence. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligenc... ) Is GW Bush smarter than me in every metric? I am skeptical. Is he smarter in only some out of nine categories? If so, the the statement "is smarter than you" is missing a dependent clause.

The article relies on anecdotal evidence from biased sources. People who were invited into the administration based on loyalty and ideology all think that GW Bush is super smart? That is both unsurprising and unconvincing.

The author slams the cultural biases of the coastal elites, while indulging in his own.

"He is an intense, competitive athlete and a “guy’s guy.” His hobbies and habits reinforce a caricature of a dumb jock, in contrast to cultural sophisticates who enjoy antiquing and opera. This reinforces the other biases against him."

Bush 41 was an athlete. GW was a cheerleader. I understand that the whole point of this essay is to rewrite history but know your limits, man.

I readily concede that a group comprised entirely of smart individuals can make bad plans, or execute a good plan so badly that the outcome is the opposite of what they intended. If your best intentions regularly have calamitous results, does that matter when judging your intelligence? I would argue that it does. If you declare Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to be existential threats; let North Korea get The Bomb; dramatically strengthen the regional influence of Iran; and turn Iraq into a hellscape whose only export is terrorism, does your alleged intellectual superiority provide any solace?

The author mentions an anti-Texas bias. Having spent decades in close proximity to Texans, I would like to make an observation. There are Texans, and there are Texan Secessionists. I have found the former group to be open, generous, hospitable people more often than not, and frequent contributors to art and culture. The latter group never miss an opportunity to remind you, "Texas can secede if we want. It's in our constitution. We were a Republic before we were a state."

Want to understand the term "Ugly American?" Spend a couple of years listening to Texans act like they're doing you a favor by not seceding.

Why was this flagged?

I believe its because the higher beings at HN decided to implement a ban of political content.

The ban on political content was just for last week only (and it ended early, in fact). Though arguably, pure politics posts, that have no tech angle, have always been described as "off-topic" in the guidelines.

I don't care how smart he is when is actions were profoundly stupid.

Which actions, and what were the results of those actions?

Invading Iraq resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands civilians. Destabilizing the Middle East.

Starting that war might have advanced some of his goals.

Depending on them, it might seem or have seemed clever.

I think it is dangerous to confuse “clever” and “evil”.

Christopher Hitchens also thought invading Iraq was a good idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I keep seeing that more and more from people on the left, particularly in contexts where it doesn't make sense. Like this one. You can't believe, at the same time, that Bush was stupid because he invaded Iraq and Hitchens was very intelligent even though he supported the invasion.

That's not whataboutism.

"attempts to discredit the opponent's position by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with that position, without directly refuting or disproving the opponent's initial argument."

Sounds exactly like whataboutism.

Look, Bush knew confidential information that no one outside the government could and still made those decisions.

Stop trying to deflect this with some unrelated person who wasn't in the government, had no security clearance, and had nothing to do with the invasion. It's simply irrelevant.

>Sounds exactly like whataboutism.

Nope. This is simple inductive reasoning.

> Look, Bush knew confidential information that no one outside the government could and still made those decisions.

Yes, and they were probably reasonable decisions, given what he knew at the time.

>Stop trying to deflect this with some unrelated person who wasn't in the government, had no security clearance, and had nothing to do with the invasion. It's simply irrelevant.

It would be irrelevant if people who also don't have information no one outside the government could are using the Iraq war to draw conclusions about Bush's intelligence.

The phrase "resulting in" does an awful lot of work in that claim. Who actually killed hundreds of thousands of civilians?

Who's to say the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died in Syria over the past few years might not have been saved if the Western powers had taken more action? Does that make their leaders "profoundly stupid"?

Hindsight is always 20/20.

  The Iraq War.
  Giving up on Bin Laden.
  Zero-down mortgage initiative.
  ...

Really, what did Bush do right?

He did a pretty damned good job cheerleading and holding things together immediately after 9/11.

Not really.

But I'm supposed to give He Who Is Smarter Than You some credit for holding things together after He Who Is Smarter Than You didn't notice the Bin Laden is determined to attack inside the US memo? And then he gave up on Bin Laden altogether? Similarly, he blew off the Katrina briefing but pronounced that Michael Brown did a heckofa job.

No.

Launching an initiative to combat AIDS in Africa that has saved millions of lives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-geor...

Economic recovery following the 2000 stock market crash.

The non-recession recession? Please.

One thing He Who Is Smarter Than You Are didn't have was a Congress intent on making him a one term President at the cost of the country. And now we have Republicans openly gleeful about Russia hacking the US. Dana Rohrabacher if you're looking for a name.

Really, if you're a Republican please don't call yourself a patriot.

> Really, if you're a Republican please don't call yourself a patriot.

Please consider giving people who disagree with you the benefit of the doubt that they actually arrived at their positions upon careful reflection, just with a different set of principles and priorities.

Republicans voted for Donald Trump. He is a true reflection of your principles and priorities arrived upon after careful reflection.

You have left no doubt for which a benefit could be given.

And I suppose no rational person ever could have a justifiable reason(s) for supporting the candidate Donald Trump? How predictable (and dull).

I'm not questioning your rationality. I'm questioning your values.

What I'm saying is that this statement:

> republicans voted for Donald Trump. He is a true reflection of your principles and priorities arrived upon after careful reflection.

Is a meaningless tautology in the context of the comment it is replying to. Republicans who voted for trump (which doesn't include me btw, you had made an assumption) probably see nothing wrong with him representing their values and principles in the context of the election.

You haven't actually provided an argument about values. Rather you've just said "isn't it obvious" when in fact, it is not to someone who doesn't share your exact views.

I didn't say that you voted for Trump. That would be rude. I said he is a true reflection of your principles and values. As for my argument about values, I've always found that it's better to judge values empirically.

Straight from the article:

This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent.” Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?

I think a hard problem for centrists only, is coming to terms with the possibility that even flaming ideologues can arrive at their conclusions for well considered reasons.

In my life I've encountered plenty of political ideologues willing to (at least notionally) concede the value of finding a middle ground.

But ask a centrist if partisan opinions are sometimes not the result of biases or assumptions, but of a person successfully tracking truth, and they crash to desktop.

But he didn't get high grades, so why speculate that he would? We know he didn't, and grades are not necessarily an indication of intelligence.

It is extremely notable that the words "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" only appear once each in this article.

The proverb goes: Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

If GWB was actually brilliant, he must have cultivated this façade to hide malicious, self-serving intent. Via the endless wars he started, he grew his family's oil wealth and enriched his VP through government contracts with Halliburton and Blackwater at the expense of global stability and the United States.

This professor does us a service. It's easy to write off an idiot, not so easy to write off someone that intends to actively harm your country for self-serving purposes. Maybe in some just world he and his cabinet would be tried for the war crimes they committed.

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