It's not news that current political debate is becoming increasingly polarized. Blind opposition among theinterlocutors has come to displace communication, so much so that rarely will one side concede anything to the other. Thus when conservatives point out the liberal bias of the elite media outlets, liberals flatly deny the charge rather than doing what would make more sense, namely, conceding the bias but celebrating it, or else pointing out that conservatives have their own somewhat less elite outlets such as AM Talk Radio and Fox News Network to balance things out. But just try to get the New York Times to admit reportorial (as opposed to editorial) bias!
Conservatives, however, make a similar mistake. They blindly oppose when they ought to concede. Thus when a liberal says or implies that G. W. Bush is unintelligent, as Ralph Nader did on C-Span (5 January 2004), conservatives should simply concede the point. Isn’t it clear that Bush lacks the sort of verbal intelligence so prized by journalists, lawyers like Nader, and academicians? This is as clear to me, a conservative, as it is that the elite media outlets tilt to the Left. To flatly deny either of these propositions is to display a pigheaded partisanship that reflects poorly on one’s probity.
So there is a clear sense in which Bush is ‘stupid’: he is ‘stupid’ in the way that intellectuals are ‘smart.’ He lacks verbal facility, he doesn’t read (high-brow) books, his off-the-cuff analyses are painfully shallow and pedestrian: “Terrorists hate freedom.” Like most regular-guy types, his mind lacks subtlety. He is a bit like Reagan: he is rooted in sound principles and holds correct views, but he cannot defend them intellectually, at least not very well. Having made this concession, however, conservatives should go on to say that Bush displays attributes far more important to the job of president in an age of terrorism than verbal intelligence, namely, moral clarity, courage, perseverance, and decency, and perhaps most important, an unflinching grasp of present historical realities. He understands the threat of militant Islam, and is willing to take the steps necessary to combat it.
Conservatives could also point out that intelligence is not exhausted by the verbal variety. Sometimes what is needed is not an intellectual defense of views, but a physical defense of one’s very existence. Sometimes what is needed is a man of action rather than a thinker whose capacity for action is undermined by excessive reflection and oversubtle analysis.
After all, the job description includes Commander-in-chief, not Intellectual-in-chief.
I'd like to defend Reagan from the (tacit) charge that he could not defend his principles. Have you read Reagan's letters? Here, for example, is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Richard Nixon in 1960:Or consider this, from a handwritten draft of a note to Brezhnev, written just after Reagan got out of the hospital in April 1981 after surviving the assassination attempt:
Notwithstanding a concerted propaganda campaign designed to persuade us otherwise, Reagan was a widely read man who thought through many important issues very carefully indeed. He was more than merely articulate. We forget this to our cost, and in forgetting it we do a disservice to a great man. I do not believe that we will see his like again.
I'm glad you posted the second letter in particular. It gives the lie to the oft-made leftist charge that the USA is imperialistic.
Even though I agree that RR was a great president, and certainly much better at defending his principles than Bush the Younger, or Bush the Elder for that matter, he still fell short. I recall a State of the Union address he gave in which he claimed that biological science has now proven that the (human) fetus is a human being! The naivete shocked me at the time, the incapacity to see what the abortion issue is about.
You make the fairest comments i have encountered anywhere with respect to the faults and the good qualities of GW Bush.
Except perhaps we need to hark back to 2002 when Mr.Bush's administration took much obstructionary action against Mr.Hans Blix who it turns out was only trying to do his job honourably.
Blix &Co. were subjected to the kind of pressure they would normally have been shielded from were there a stronger and more effectual person seated as head of the UN rather than the disaster that goes by the name of Kofi Annan.
The point is that Mr.Bush's administration conducted itself as dishonourably as it did all the while massing troops and equipment in the Gulf. The invasion was pre-decided and forced through by Neocon strategists in accordance with their own ideology.
Had there been a President seated in the WH with more sublety of mind, a better ability to analyse men and movements, he would not have been taken in as he obviously has been. The Neocons have co-opted Bush the same as they co-opted the Christian Right by carefully showing their side which most closely resembles "sound principles" and "correct views".
The fight against militant Islam will need more than what Bush and neocon ideology can provide.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.