I suspect the experiences, and attendant political lessons, of George Bush Sr. had a direct influence on the way George Bush Jr. presented himself.
Bush I was often criticized as intellectual, elitist, nerdy, aloof, and "Ivy League." He was trounced in his reelection campaign by Bill Clinton, the ultimate charismatic -- a brilliant guy who was adept at hiding his formidable intellect behind a folksy manner and a slow, Southern drawl.
Bush II took great pains to present himself as a man of the people, a Texan (he was born in Connecticut), and a guy's guy. Whether this was a reflection of his true character, or a political affectation, doesn't really matter; the distinction has been lost to the sands of time. It's probably some combination of the two. (Affectations, carried out over the long haul, have a tendency to shape actual character).
Boogie Man really was an incredible documentary.
And while sometimes those public projections are correct, other times they're carefully orchestrated pr masterpieces.
Without giving too much away, our company has chosen to go quietly along, trying to attract the right attention that'll get us noticed by our customers, without alerting our (actual) competitors[0].
GW Bush connected more effectively with the middle class than Romney, and that might have been his best weapon in a fight against another likable candidate.
Whether you'd like to admit it or not, public narrative effects business / presidential / fundraising / customer acquisition outcomes. If you're the one in control, everyone else can be a pawn in your game.
[0]: I'm sure our current close competitors are acutely aware of us, but they're not the ones I fear. Our game is much longer than the current space we occupy (getting social media on tv) and so keeping our head down and just impressing customers is the best way to get us to the goal. Raising money, especially from places like YC or the kind of investors everyone wants, would put a target on our back. So instead we just lay low, and get all the flexibility we need to try out a bunch of different business models.
The article states:
"And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls, I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration, on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both."
Important criticisms of his presidency are not about his lambdacisms or rhotacisms. The criticisms of his presidency are not that he couldn't make decisions but that the decisions that he made were wrong, harmful, or showed a stubbornness to consider the fact that he was wrong. His presidency was marked by decisions to ignore nonpartisan reports contrary to the party line: when a international terrorism report that had been published annually for 19 years said that terror was increasing, not decreasing, his administration cancelled the reports. [2]
[1] http://siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/co...
[2] http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2002243262_terror16...
On the other hand, it's hard to get around the Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales debacles, both of which involved comically bad judgement calls.
While this may have polled well, these type of false personas should have no place in politics. The President is not an actor playing a role -- we should demand candidates whom are genuine and present their true self so we know who we're voting for.
I highly doubt that Obama is the same in private as his public persona - from everything I've heard, he's very much the intellectual, introverted college-professor type in private, and the gregarious "audacity of hope" person is a mask he puts on for public events.
I'd certainly believe that Bush is smart, but is the author really complaining that people judged him based on what they saw of his public persona rather than how he behaved in private meetings in the Oval Office that they had no way of knowing about? Had Bush's public face been more like what the author claims he saw in private, I doubt there would be any such stereotype about Bush.
Basically, is anyone surprised or appalled that it turns out that perception matters at least as much as substance?
Then ask: Could I have gotten in into Yale with that SAT? Could I have gotten into HBS with that resume?
The challenging things about all these accounts is that not only in public did he seem like an idiot but the decisions that he made in office were similarly inept.
To cite a few: - Spending increases while incurring tax cuts - The Iraq War + the willful deceiving of the public - The lack of remorse of any decision made in office
Malcolm Gladwell cites that (in life) the people who really excel aren't just the ones who are the most intelligent but the ones who posses other factors as well which make them a success. Perhaps this provides some of the explanation for the discrepancy between the personal accounts and the actions of his administration.
> - Spending increases while incurring tax cuts
Regardless of whether you agree politically, this was intentional. The strategy is called "starve the beast" and the goal is to strategically force austerity cuts. As a bonus, you force it to happen when a democrat is in office. And guess what? It appears to have worked (somewhat).
> - The Iraq War + the willful deceiving of the public
It wasn't willful. There were intelligence reports of WMDs. Colin powell got quite pissed about it really. Truth of the matter is that some messed up stuff happened in the intelligence community and Colin was lead to believe there was a real threat in Iraq. How much Bush was involved in the whole deal is unclear. Also, Hussain did try to kill his dad, so it may have been slightly personal.
> - The lack of remorse of any decision made in office
Remorse for what? Politics is politics. There's blood on everyone's hands. For example, policy changes made during the Bush Sr and Clinton administrations appear to have contributed significantly to the housing crash in 2009. Regardless, even if he isn't remorseful, that doesn't make him dumb. Heartless maybe, but not dumb.
Disclaimer: I'm not a republican. I think democrats and republicans alike spend too much time playing politics these days and not enough actually trying to fix things. I also think the worlds problems can be solved without war. The one thing I did like about Bush is that he appears to have really wanted to reduce the size of government, which appeals to my (mostly) libertarian beliefs.
As liberal who grew up in New York and has lived in Boston since, I completely ate up the Bush as dunce narrative a few years ago. Ironically because it doesn't necessarily paint him as a genius, W by Oliver Stone framed arguments that changed some of my opinions about President Bush. His father's actions, his being born again which helped end his drinking and his staff in the white house very much influenced him, and probably contributed to some of the biases.
His verbal gaffes are well known, even if they are overblown by the press. He sometimes spoke with a drawl. He was prone to making facial expressions that looked like confusion, even when that probably wasn't the cause. He embraced the whole Texas cattle rancher/farmer image with the cowboy hats. I think his sense of humor seemed a little pedestrian to some.
None of things really have much to do with intelligence other than it's not typically how we envision intelligent people.
2) It's "bears," not "bares".
I've been spelling that wrong forever. Thanks.
I regularly find myself catching others off-guard professionally when I exert my intellect, because they tend to have me pegged as an easy-going So-Cal / Southerner. However, from my experience, liberals and self-appointed intellectuals share all the same personality and reasoning flaws as their counterparts.
People are people and differ mostly in the person they choose to project, not in their inherent abilities. Both are honest about different portions of themselves.
You can't judge a book by its cover, but that's where first impressions tend to come from.
I actually supported the Iraq War, believe it or not, no matter whether there were WMD's (I'm of a slightly interventionist bent when it comes to foreign policy) - but Bush's handling of that war and the War in Afghanistan was absolutely dreadful.
Don't get me started on economic policy or Katrina.
2. As someone pointed out, this judgment of intelligence based on speech doesn't just apply to southerners, it applies to foreigners as well.
Of course, it was all an image manufactured by his staff... but so was his "character" during his speeches on other topics. I wish you all had gotten a bit more of the former.
Also stop for a moment and think about your former and present bosses, how smart do you think they are, do you like or hate them, do you often defend them? I think it says a lot that Hennessey felt compelled to defend Bush.
Edit: on further inspection, a request for the file 404s. Reading the docs, there doesn't appear to be any recourse.
I find that people are often quite at ease with judging, if not pre-judging a person's intelligence on the most minimal impressions, appearance, accent, a single opinion or remark.
Personally, I'm so used to facing certain assumptions that they no longer bother me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Presidential_IQ_hoax#IQ_es...
As a southerner living in New York City, this rang especially true. I grew up around brilliant people who the "intelligent elite" discounted simply because they weren't born in the proper region. It's such an arrogant and sad stance to take.
Growing up, the kid who couldn't put together a sentence in English class probably also had difficulty with other subjects. This can prime you to associate a lack of language skills with a lack of general intelligence; however, in the adult world there are plenty of examples of people who are perfectly competent in their field but struggle with English as a method of communication.
"The caricature of President Bush is that of a good ol’ boy from Texas who is principled and tough, but just not that bright."
Whether genuine or not, that was the caricature he cultivated and embraced, further distancing himself from the "elite" in the minds of most Americans. Whether a voter found this to be charming or not went a long way to how those voters cast their ballot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#Childhood_to_mid...
Also impressive how fast these guys appear from under their rocks when they're called upon.
Not necessarily. Dick Cheney had financial interests in Halliburton, which benefited greatly thanks to the Iraq War. I imagine Bush had much the same (or if not him directly, then family), which would make the Iraq war a brilliant move for his pocketbook.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/200...
