Asymmetrical Information

(A couple unrelated comments:)

The linked author writes:

By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student.

While I don't disagree with the author's general point that Bush was/is certainly not an idiot, I'm very skeptical of this particular claim: I've never heard anyone say this before, and Bush really doesn't seem like a poker player. Poker players tend toward the antisocial -- Nixon was a card shark during his WWII service in the Navy. I know a few MBA students and my general sense is that poker is not that popular among MBA students generally, except maybe among the finance dorks.

Side note: being really good at poker is a marker of a certain kind of intelligence, but it has a lot more to do with pattern recall and quick computation than grand strategy. Being really good at poker has more glamour than being a top Scrabble player, but they aren't all that different.

William Radigan writes:

Pilots need to be decisive, confident, realistic, calm and able to make rapid decisions with incomplete and conflicting data. These are a subset of the qualities of the best CEO's ...

Not at all the same. Pilots make split-second decisions. CEOs do not. The closest analogy in the business world I can think of is trading commodities in a pit, although that's a more maths-intensive sort of thing.

"There are people who've pulled themselves up by their bootstraps who hold high public office. McCain is one of them."

From Wikipedia (I was in a hurry):
"McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, the son and grandson of prominent Navy admirals (John S. McCain, Sr. and John S. McCain, Jr.). He followed in their footsteps (somewhat reluctantly) and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958."

I like McCain, so don't get me wrong, but I doubt he pulled real hard on those boot straps to get into the Naval Academy.

Clinton, on the other hand, is bona fide poor white trash.

Jim English
Chicago

But I did read it Jane.

That's why I wrote that without his family connections I didn't think he would have gotten in.

The article doesn't address that. It only talks about what Bush is supposed to have done once he got inside.

Bush got into Yale because he was a legacy (affirmative action, in other words) and managed to coast by only with Cs.

How many students like that do you think HBS accepts in this day and age?

I have no idea how well Bush did at HBS. I suspect that if he were a good student we would have know about that. The author doesn't know that either. He's just guessing.

Getting into a top business school like HBS is a LOT more difficult today than it was in the 1970s. A lot more people want to get in and the general level has increased, at least on the academic side. One can always debate whether that results in better executives.

GT, getting C's at Yale in the 60's wasn't like getting them now -- it was an average grade. And business schools in this day and age do accept average students from Yale. The other point is ludicrous -- when Bush was admitted to Yale, almost everyone was a legacy. It was not the meritocratic machine it has become.

godlesscapitalist, you had my attention up until this:

"Once you get in (via connections/legacy preferences) you have to screw up REALLY badly in order to not get a degree."

You must not be familiar with the graduate school - at least Business grad school - admissions and matriculation process. I was heavily involved with the MBA program at a major school - not Ivy League, but a top 30 business school - and the admissions process was grueling, and connections had nothing to do with it. Additionally, a decent portion of the class - 10-20% didn't make it to the second year.

Bush is not particularly articulate, and this conveys an impression of mental vacancy. What's interesting to me is that the same people who think Bush is stupid also think he's evil. I guess if somebody's going to be evil, I'd rather have them be evil and stupid, rather than evil and smart.

Poker players tend toward the antisocial.
I know a number of top tournament poker players (i.e. appear in World Poker Tour ads, final table/winners of World Series events) as well as some full-time pros and antisocial is the last term I'd use for them.

I rather thought the greasiness of the fringe loons in the "Bush = Dumb" camp had long been evident by the inconsistency in how they use the charge -- namely, he's dumb except when he's being ascribed with performing Goldbergian acts of dishohnesty that, frankly, only a genius could have possibly concocted and successfully executed.

That in turn doesn't leave much room for simply acknowledging that he's an average guy that has played more of his cards well than not, except then we get whining about him being too average -- like this:

Me, I'd actually prefer a president who is smarter than me. He might be able to see things coming that I can't. He might understand complex realities that I don't grasp.

Right now, we don't have that kind of president. We have a guy who prefers simplistic platitudes to sophisticated speeches. A guy who thinks that if he just repeats certain catchphrases often enough, they will be true.

And here I thought the media were the ones repeating catchphrases in hopes of making them come true. Well, it boils down to this: You can have a savvy president who enjoys sophisticated waffling on the definition of "is" or you can have a comparably savvy president who enjoys simplistic platitudes, but the people genuinely smarter than you are usually not in politics for a reason -- they have better opportunities in the private sector.

" The other point is ludicrous -- when Bush was admitted to Yale, almost everyone was a legacy. It was not the meritocratic machine it has become."

Not really; it means that the above claims about Bush being among the "smartest people", because he got into Yale, aren't sufficient to show such.

Jane,

Are you saying 'C' average students get accepted at HBS?

They must have some really good offsets, some other major accomplishment. What did George have?

Other than his family I mean.

People, look at the man, listen to him. He's barely able to get a sentence out w/o screwing up. He is not a bright man.

While it is fair to point out that Bush got into Yale undergrad because he was a legacy, it is neither fair nor accurate to say that he got into Harvard Business School for similar reasons.

The Bush family has longstanding ties to Yale (GWB's grandfather was a Senator from CT, after all), but no special ties to Harvard, and certainly none to HBS. Bush got into HBS on the merits, which isn't surprising, given that he seems reasonably bright (as per his SAT scores) and had an average undergrad record at an Ivy League university. Could he get in today? probably not. But neither could at least 75% of the graduates of HBS from his era. HBS is so hard to get into now because it gets applicants from all over the world. Candidates compete against the best and brightest aspiring b-school students from China, India, Brazil, Europe etc.

Also, is it the contention of those mocking Bush's status as a legacy admit to Yale to also suggest that Franklin Roosevent and John Kennedy could have been admitted to the post-legacy meritocratic Harvard of today? If so, please excuse me while I go out back to giggle.

B students do get accepted at HBS. I got accepted at Chicago with a college GPA below 3.0, and a major--English lit--not guaranteed to inspire confidence in my analytical abilities. With grade compression, a B average is now at least the equivalent of a C average before affirmative action and Vietnam.

This whole argument is completely stupid. I'm not interested in determining the precise magnitude of Bush's intellectual abilities -- I'm not arguing that he's a misunderstood genius. I'm arguing 1) that he's a moderately bright guy from a good family, which is pretty well borne out by his resume and 2) that the ability to present well on television, write pretty English, or get a PhD does not reflect much about your ability to run the presidency. That doesn't mean that Bush is a good president; I'm just pointing out that I think the metrics that are generally applied to him by the press and academia have more to do with what makes a good journalist or professor than what makes a good leader, and that they are not even adequate measures of intelligence. My current colleagues would make lousy investment bankers, and my former classmates would make lousy journalists, and probably few of either group would make good politicians, much less presidents. I think it's nice that we have lots of different kinds of people who are good at lots of different kinds of jobs, and I'm more interested in what they did when they got there than how they got in the door.

Oh, and GT, most business schools don't have grades, or meaningful grades. (My beloved alma mater, with its rigid 3.25 curve, is a notable exception among the top ten.) Even at a school like Chicago, where grades are assigned, they are whole grades, meaning that they fall into a narrow outstanding band (A), a broad acceptable band (B), and a narrow unacceptable band (C,D,F). Business school GPAs just don't tell you much, even if they're available, which they generally aren't. It might have been different when he was there, of course, but I don't think so; Chicago instituted the curve in response to slack grading more than 20 years ago.

The most valuable skill that any CEO has is the ability to recognize others' skill and talent, and it is a damned difficult skill to learn. Most people who bitch generically about CEO compensation (as opposed to recognizing the real problem of excessive pay for mediocre performance), have no conception of how bone-numbingly hard it is, and how rare the ability is, to take over a large, dysfunctional, bureaucracy, get the elephant headed in the right direction, and keep it on course. True, a company with decades of success behind it can often coast for a while with inept leadership, but the music stops eventually, and if the right person doesn't find the CEO chair, well, go try to buy something at Montgomery Wards. Of course, trying to pick the people who are up to that task is a rather inexact science as well.

Jane,

Sometimes I wonder why you comment here. You think its fun perhaps? I don't know. But it seems to me some of the people in this thread did not read the article, and then did not read any of your comments either. Maybe some of these folks trying to convince us that the Pres is a dunce aren't as bright as they think they are, reading comprehension being a core intellectual skill and all.

But Jane I agree with most of your points about Bush. I agree with your point 1) and 2) in your latest response.

No Bush is not dumb. But he is incredibly lacking in any intellectual curiosity. Many people are. Although you have to wonder, how many people managed to go to college in the '60s and have no view at all of the Vietnam War? You can be pro, you can be con, but it's hard to imagine someone with no opinion at all. It's hard to imagine someone in college today with no opinion at all on the Iraq war and that is MUCH less controversial than Vietnam was.

And I agree that verbal ability and and how you appear on TV don't tell us if a president is good or not.

What I DON'T agree with is that Bush's HBS degree tells us much. He got there due to his family connections. He had no other pluses. He was not a good student and had not excelled in anything at the time.

Good for him. He is socially smart and has used his connections well. Other wealthy scions have done a lot less.

What amazes me is the sheer number of people who are apparently completely dependent on how "articulate" someone is, as a gauge of intelligence.

While it's true that a moron will probably never be able to deliver a 10-minute impromptu speech on the origins Hammurabi's Code and impress the Toastmasters, the inability to do this is not in any way a sign of low intelligence or lacking ability. Simply put, some people are just not naturally good speakers, and have trouble putting their ideas into words. This makes them neither stupid nor useless, and I've encountered no shortage of people who were brilliant performers yet utterly incapable of laying out their thoughts barring much time and much effort.

Frankly, any time I hear this "Bush is dumb because he talks funny" crap, I far more inclined to draw conclusions about the analytical abilities of the speaker, than of Bush. Those conclusions vary, but partisan, superficial, and shallow are pretty safe bets.

Meanwhile over at Big Arm Woman's site there's a lovely quotation from the a member of the REAL intelligentsia -- philosophy professors:

http://www.bigarmwoman.com/archives/000373.html

I'm a college professor. My colleagues are frequently caught saying about nice alumni who have (1) made millions and (2) been grateful enough to give $250,000 or so to us "well, he wasn't very smart" when what they mean is "I never inspired him to work nearly that hard at anthropology."

Lot's of this "how smart are they" boils down to motivation. If my students put in nearly the energy at reading that *I* put into it at 18-20 my life would be a dream -- but then I'm the odd kind of person who actually wanted to go to graduate school in the humanities.

Meanwhile over at Big Arm Woman's site there's a lovely quotation from the a member of the REAL intelligentsia -- philosophy professors:

http://www.bigarmwoman.com/archives/000373.html

I'm a college professor. My colleagues are frequently caught saying about nice alumni who have (1) made millions and (2) been grateful enough to give $250,000 or so to us "well, he wasn't very smart" when what they mean is "I never inspired him to work nearly that hard at anthropology."

Lot's of this "how smart are they" boils down to motivation. If my students put in nearly the energy at reading that *I* put into it at 18-20 my life would be a dream -- but then I'm the odd kind of person who actually wanted to go to graduate school in the humanities.

GT writes:

No Bush is not dumb. But he is incredibly lacking in any intellectual curiosity.

Not to be a knee-jerk Bush defender here, but satisfy my own curiosity... how do you know this, GT? How much have you personally observed Bush?

Many people are.

Same question. What's your basis here? How do you measure "intellectual curiosity," however you define it? While I'm at it, is this "intellectual curiosity" a necessary (or even good) quality in a President? Why?

Although you have to wonder, how many people managed to go to college in the '60s and have no view at all of the Vietnam War? You can be pro, you can be con, but it's hard to imagine someone with no opinion at all.

I have no trouble imagining it. There are some controversial issues of our day on which my opinions are either not very strong, or I simply have none at all. One particularly divisive issue of our time I have zero opinion on -- the most radical extreme on either end of the spectrum can prevail, and I don't care. I've given it some thought, but failed to come to an opinion, because I just can't bring myself to care. I am sick of partisans on both sides, and will avoid or quickly leave any discussion on the topic, lest I should spend any more of my life on a subject that interests me about as much as what John Tesch had for dinner last night.

Regarding Bush as poker player - did anyone notice during the Russert interview Bush casually dropped the phrase "Let's review the bidding"? That's cardsharp talk.

Regarding the poker playing, guess what Bill Gates and Paul Allen spent most of their time doing at Harvard.

" What I DON'T agree with is that Bush's HBS degree tells us much. He got there due to his family connections. He had no other pluses. He was not a good student and had not excelled in anything at the time."

There appears to be zero evidence to back up the above. By the time Bush applied to HBS he was a Yale grad, an officer and a fighter pilot. He was not exactly lacking in accomplishments.

Further, the claims about Bush's business career are baloney. True, he made a spectacularly poorly timed entrance into the Texas oil business, but by all accounts his work with the Texas Rangers was brilliant. He took a second division, money losing, mom and pop baseball team and transformed it. He and his partners made millions thanks to his management.

One more thing, Bush is the only President to hold a Master's Degree. The only other post-grad degrees among Presidents are law degrees (Nixon, Ford, Clinton--one appointed president and two impeached).

For E. Nough, an illustration of what "intellectual curiosity" looks like (from Accidental Empires by "Robert X. Cringely"):

"When 3Com Corp. was developing the first circuit card that would allow personal computers to communicate over Ethernet computer networks, the lead commando was Ron Crane, a brilliant, if erratic, engineer. The very future of 3Com depended on his finishing the Ethernet card in time, since the company was rapidly going broke and additional venture capital funding was tied to successful completion of the card. No Ethernet card, no money; no money, no company. In the middle of this high-pressure assignment, Crane just stopped working on the Ethernet card, leaving it unfinished on his workbench, and compulsively turned to finding a way to measure the sound reflectivity of his office ceiling tiles. That's the way it is sometimes when commandos get bored. Nobody else was prepared to take over Crane's job, so all his co-workers at 3Com could think to do in this moment of crisis was to wait for the end of his research, hoping that it would go well."

Be careful what you ask for, GT.

I wonder if any of the people casting aspersions on Bush's intelligence have ever met a fighter pilot? I have. (9 years in the Air Force - as a groundling.) Fighter pilots are not dumb. You do not fly high-performance jets by the seat of your pants. They may respond to the same control input very differently depending on speed, attitude, and engine settings - and old ones like the F102 are worse than the newer ones. So pilots memorize masses of data about how their particular airplane model handles in many different situations, and must instantly find and apply the correct rule for each particular situation.

Note that this is something quite different from deep thinking. You don't have time for deep thinking at the controls of the airplane. Fighter pilots may or may not be capable of thinking long and deeply when the situation calls for it, but for sure they are capable of making decisions when a decision is needed.

Paul,

I think it's safe to say that no research program is dependent on Dubya's intellect.

Patrick,

Yep. No evidence at all. It must have been his A grades at Yale and his stellar record in the National Guard that cinched it for him.

Bush made one great business decision and that was to be born a Bush.

Oh, and Patrick not to go offtopic but since you are here. I know you read David Warsh. So I'm sure you haven't missed his review of the CA energy crisis where David tells us that our dear friend Krugman got it right and "It may even have been the most important scoop of all". In fact Warsh tells us that Krugman did more in his 9 columns dedicated to the topic than most newspapers. Funny, huh? And some right wingers STILL don't get it.

Then again even Andrew Sullivan is sounding positively shrill these days. Why he's telling us today what Krugman has been saying for years.

Ok, back on topic.

It must really kill these people that Bush is president. I suspect that many of them are smart people who have not succeeded in life; perhaps Bush is just the most convenient target for their venting over all those other successful morons that cause them such angst.

So let's stipulate that he really is a moron. He won as governor of Texas, then he won the republican nomination, then he got elected president. Oh, and he won the mid-terms. Perhaps the problem here is democracy itself? If so, then why not come out and say it.

At a certain point, you have to wonder at a political movement that keeps on telling us that their opponents are venal or stupid yet continue to lose elections to these wicked morons.

GT writes,

I think it's safe to say that no research program is dependent on Dubya's intellect.

Nope; only the running of the world's wealthiest, most powerful nation, and a foreign policy with global repercussions. And while I don't agree with him on everything, I think he's done a pretty good job thus far.

I will note for the record that you still haven't presented any evidence of his lack of intellectual curiosity. I mean, seriously -- cut the derision, and back up your useless sarcasm: what's your definition of "intellectual curiosity," why does Bush need it, and what makes you think he doesn't have it? (And please don't insult yourself and everyone else here by bringing up his grades. There's more to intelligence than test-taking and speechifying, and I for one believe Bush has demonstrated his quite aptly.)

Also, all your links are useless, though I'll write that off to bad comment-munging on MT's part.

Gazzer makes an amusing point. It's worth pointing out that even if you take the "Bush is a dumb son of privilege" crowd at their word, you still end up with him tying Al "smart-son-of-privilege" Gore for the Presidency. And this, in spite of all those A-list high-IQ articulate folks, from Bill Clinton to Martin Sheen to all those uber-smart academic types who were pulling for Gore. The Shrub beat them all.

No wonder they can't get over it.

Brian,

Just to pick a nit,

The phrase "review the bidding" relates to bridge, not poker.

As someone who's more center-right than not, I really wouldn't care if Bush was dumb if his policies were good. Example: I like tax cuts.

If his policies were questionable and I was trying to make up my mind on them, I don't think he'd be able to convince me. Example: Iraq's WMD. Very unconvincing on Meet the Press.

If his policies were partisan and I opposed them, his intelligence would also not be much of an issue. No matter how articulate, I doubt he'd bring me over to his side on stem cells or abortion.

But when his policies are just confusingly bad, his stupidity exacerbates the issue...because then you think "Jesus, there's no one at the wheel here!".

Examples of confusingly bad Bush policies:

1. AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS AND OPEN BORDERS. This is just about the most splutter-inducingly retarded decision by a president that I've ever seen. For both national security and economic reasons the decision to amnesty millions of illegal aliens and admit millions more guest workers seems to be based solely on the fact that Bush's sister-in-law was an illegal immigrant. Why are we fingerprinting legal visitors while amnestying millions of queue-jumpers guilty of felony immigration violations? The mind reels.

2. GEORGE TENET RETAINING HIS JOB. After 9/11 *and* no WMD in Iraq, why the hell does Tenet still have his job?

3. OUT-OF-CONTROL NON-DEFENSE DISCRETIONARY SPENDING. Does Bush have any idea how profligate he's being?

Thing is, I'd *love* to hear people whining about how Bush was stupid and evil for deregulating and oppressing the poor (as they whined about Reagan's government cuts). But we've gotten Sarbanes-Oxley under his watch. We've gotten massive increases in spending. We've got an illegal aliens amnesty coming up. We've got a twice-wrong CIA guy still in charge. And we've got a bizarre plan to go to Mars in the middle of record deficits.

So yeah, I do think that there's nobody home. These are *confusingly bad* policies. They're not crazy like a fox - they're stupid, primarily left wing policies (massive spending and alien amnesties) that are alienating his base and *not* mollifying the unsatisfiable left.

Bush had a lousy record as a businessman and CEO too, so the "he has CEO-type intelligence" argument doesn't get us very far either.

In my experience, MBAs like most professional master's degree programs I am familiar with are about as intellectually demanding as mid level undergrad courses. A lot of them are about socializing people to a particular professional culture.

My Dad, a very clever man, was in the year below GWB at Harvard Biz School. According to Pops, the man was not stupid.

Godless,

It appears to me that Bush is simply trying to be all things to all people, or more accurately, something for everyone. For conservatives and policy hawks, we've got Iraq and the general disregard of the UN. For liberals and the senior lobby: prescription benefits. For Latinos and immigrant-rights people: the amnesty program. It really looks to me like is trying to cover all the major groups.

I disagree with Bush on much, and his policies are certainly not what I want -- but I think that's the point: it's not everything that anyone wants, but everyone benefits in some way from it, and may be afraid to lose it. Sorta like the phrase compassionate conservatism, it gives a little to everyone: some people will like conservatism, and others compassionate. I'm guessing Bush doesn't want to be put in a position where there's a major voting bloc to whom he has promised and delivered nothing. I don't know if such a strategy will succeed (it sounds doubtful to me), but it's not altogether vacuous, either.

Krugman is rarely right in his non academic writings. THe best example is when he predicted in 1995 that the economy would not grow very much and was bad mouthing the Clinton policies. Well, The economy took off like a rocket probably quite independent to the Clinton policies of the time and leading into a huge bubble.

There are many other examples where Krugman blew it so left the Krugster out of this. No credibility outside of being a vaunted economics professor, whatever that means.

Since most tests of IQ and academic achievement have been kind to me, I can say with some authority that they do not measure all the facets of intelligence necessary to assure success. Furthermore, we always need to be careful not to become so self-centered that make make ourselves the gold standard for all things. President Bush may not have the gifts that impress the academic world, but he has the personal qualities that have enabled him to succeed in most of the things he did. In his college days he perfected the social skills that somehow eluded the Gores and Kerrys of the world. As a fighter pilot he had to develop both physical and mental stamina and make quick but sound decisions. To turn the Texas Rangers around, he had to work incredibly hard to meet his goals, so I don't begrudge him the money he made on that deal. People forget that the governor of Texas is one of the weakest of all executives in the United States, and had he not been able to work with people, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything at all. Another sign of intelligence is the high-powered cabinet he's been able to assemble, quite a refreshing change from the mediocre and corrupt Clinton Administration. I don't always agree with Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, but marvel at the fact that President Bush can get them and Colin Powell to work as a team. But the crowning touch comes not through any action on his part. The liberal opposition deludes itself into thinking that Bush is the "village idiot," but he continues to outsmart them politically.

Our Presidents have had varying degrees of education: Abraham Lincoln was largely self-taught; Andrew Johnson didn't even learn how to read until he reached adulthood; Wilson was the only one with a Ph.D.; and George W. Bush is the first one to earn an M.B.A.

Krugman is rarely right in his non academic writings. THe best example is when he predicted in 1995 that the economy would not grow very much and was bad mouthing the Clinton policies. Well, The economy took off like a rocket probably quite independent to the Clinton policies of the time and leading into a huge bubble.

There are many other examples where Krugman blew it so left the Krugster out of this. No credibility outside of being a vaunted economics professor, whatever that means.

E.Nough -

You and I probably agree on quite a lot (from what I remember of you over at LGF, before it went totally over the bend).

The problem here is that as a "compassionate conservative" Bush is basically a Christian socialist. He's socially conservative and fiscally liberal.

Given that I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative, I don't like this. I want hard-headed rationalism, not this stuff, which seems to be based on pure emotion and/or pandering. I mean, how else to explain the combination of amnesties and airport fingerprinting? That's just a mawkish "Hispanics good" and "furriners bad" attitude that

a) forgets that islamists have snuck over the southern border (google Kourani)
b) forgets that plenty of foreign businessmen and tourists are inconvenienced
c) forgets that we are dealing with suicide terrorists. what are we going to do, match the severed finger when they blow themselves up?
d) omits the ridiculously bad eco

I mean, these are decisions that piss everyone off and gain nothing. Another example - steel tariffs. Pissed everyone off - both domestic auto companies and the Euros - and gained nothing, because they were repealed well before the election.

Eh, I'm ranting. I guess that I don't even think this is a case of brilliant Clintonesque triangulation. Bush is pissing off his base AND the left already hates him. He gains nothing. And the chimerical Hispanic vote isn't going to compensate for it. Besides, most legal Hispanics aren't too enthused about further waves of immigrant labor to bring down their prices (though MALDEF and La Raza are licking their chops)...so this is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

E.Nough -

You and I probably agree on quite a lot (from what I remember of you over at LGF, before it went totally over the bend).

The problem here is that as a "compassionate conservative" Bush is basically a Christian socialist. He's socially conservative and fiscally liberal.

Given that I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative, I don't like this. I want hard-headed rationalism, not this stuff, which seems to be based on pure emotion and/or pandering. I mean, how else to explain the combination of amnesties and airport fingerprinting? That's just a mawkish, self-contradictory mixture of a fuzzy "Hispanics good" and a paranoid "furriners bad" attitude that

a) forgets that islamists have snuck over the southern border (google Kourani)
b) forgets that plenty of foreign businessmen and tourists are inconvenienced
c) forgets that we are dealing with suicide terrorists. what are we going to do, match the severed finger when they blow themselves up?
d) omits the ridiculously bad eco

I mean, these are decisions that piss everyone off and gain nothing. Another example - steel tariffs. Pissed everyone off - both domestic auto companies and the Euros - and gained nothing, because they were repealed well before the election.

Eh, I'm ranting. I guess that I don't even think this is a case of brilliant Clintonesque triangulation. Bush is pissing off his base AND the left already hates him. He gains nothing. And the chimerical Hispanic vote isn't going to compensate for it. Besides, most legal Hispanics aren't too enthused about further waves of immigrant labor to bring down their prices (though MALDEF and La Raza are licking their chops)...so this is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

E.Nough -

You and I probably agree on quite a lot (from what I remember of you over at LGF, before it went totally over the bend).

The problem here is that as a "compassionate conservative" Bush is basically a Christian socialist. He's socially conservative and fiscally liberal.

Given that I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative, I don't like this. I want hard-headed rationalism, not this stuff, which seems to be based on pure emotion and/or pandering. I mean, how else to explain the combination of amnesties and airport fingerprinting? That's just a mawkish, self-contradictory mixture of a fuzzy "Hispanics good" and a paranoid "furriners bad" attitude that

a) forgets that islamists have snuck over the southern border (google Kourani)
b) forgets that plenty of foreign businessmen and tourists are inconvenienced
c) forgets that we are dealing with suicide terrorists. what are we going to do, match the severed finger when they blow themselves up?
d) omits the ridiculously bad economics of allowing mass unskilled immigration while rendering quick travel for businessmen impossible

I mean, these are decisions that piss everyone off and gain nothing. Another example - steel tariffs. Pissed everyone off - both domestic auto companies and the Euros - and gained nothing, because they were repealed well before the election.

Eh, I'm ranting. I guess that I don't even think this is a case of brilliant Clintonesque triangulation. Bush is pissing off his base AND the left already hates him. He gains nothing. And the chimerical Hispanic vote isn't going to compensate for it. Besides, most legal Hispanics aren't too enthused about further waves of immigrant labor to bring down their prices (though MALDEF and La Raza are licking their chops)...so this is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

E.Nough -

You and I probably agree on quite a lot (from what I remember of you over at LGF, before it went totally over the bend).

The problem here is that as a "compassionate conservative" Bush is basically a Christian socialist. He's socially conservative and fiscally liberal.

Given that I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative, I don't like this. I want hard-headed rationalism, not this stuff, which seems to be based on pure emotion and/or pandering. I mean, how else to explain the combination of amnesties and airport fingerprinting? That's just a mawkish, self-contradictory mixture of a fuzzy "Hispanics good" and a paranoid "furriners bad" attitude that

a) forgets that islamists have snuck over the southern border (google Kourani)
b) forgets that plenty of foreign businessmen and tourists are inconvenienced
c) forgets that we are dealing with suicide terrorists. what are we going to do, match the severed finger when they blow themselves up?
d) omits the ridiculously bad economics of allowing mass unskilled immigration while rendering quick travel for businessmen impossible

I mean, these are decisions that piss everyone off and gain nothing. Another example - steel tariffs. Pissed everyone off - both domestic auto companies and the Euros - and gained nothing, because they were repealed well before the election.

Eh, I'm ranting. I guess that I don't even think this is a case of brilliant Clintonesque triangulation. Bush is pissing off his base AND the left already hates him. He gains nothing. And the chimerical Hispanic vote isn't going to compensate for it. Besides, most legal Hispanics aren't too enthused about further waves of immigrant labor to bring down their prices (though MALDEF and La Raza are licking their chops)...so this is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

"It must really kill these people that Bush is president."

-- gazzer

Well, it's killed somewhere around 14,000 people so far.

Bernard, you wrote, " The undisputed fact is that Bush was a failure as a businessman."

So was Truman.
---

And for others, just because one is intelligent, doesn't mean one is smart. Lord knows I've read enough blather from people with many initials after their names who are actually clueless about the real world. And I wager some in the blogosphere have, too. Must be a flyover state thing.

You're gonna have to speak louder, Orbitron. I can't hear you over the racket of the miniature violin.

A lot of folks are using Bush's inarticulateness as evidence of mental defect. Failing to take into account differences in culture that may be present. The fact that the multicultural left makes such an assumption based solely on a superfluous and irrelevant trait, I find disturbing.

No, lets cut through all the crap. What they are really saying is that the left is smarter than Bush, smarter than the rest of us and therefore THEY should be the ones running the country instead of you stupid peasants.

As for the base, look guys, there are still folks that want to kill us, each and every one of us. The "smart" Democrats have offered what as a plan? Go to France and the UN and beg permission to defend ourselves? Wait until we have the smoking gun before removing the next threat? You know when guns smoke right? After they've been fired.

I see a bunch of stuff that Bush is doing that upsets me as well. But I also see that we are at war with some pretty nasty bloodthirsty folks who cannot be detered. I also see an American electorate that was pretty evenly split last election, and we really cannot afford such an indecisive election this time around. We got a lot of folks, Iraqis especially, who are scared we are going to abandon them. And see that happening if one of these "smart" Democrats get elected.

Ben is right. I clipped this from Andrew Sullivan after having seen it reported last night by Brit Hume:

'At Duke, one professor, responding to criticism of the overwhelmingly leftist cast of the faculty, proffered this explanation:

"We try to hire the best, smartest people available," Brandon said of his philosophy hires. "If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire. Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia. Players in the NBA tend to be taller than average. There is a good reason for this. Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average. There is a good reason for this too."'

Face it, Liberals are smarter than you and me and the sooner we realize and accept this the better off we will ALL be!

Under the heading "Comments, a little too late".

Re: MBA grading. This may be slightly less true at Harvard because of their huge endowment, but one the main jobs of B-Schools is to keep as many students as possible, since most of them are full-pay students (No, I'm not talking about your specific experience). If, in a class of 300 first-year MBAs, 10% of the class leaves at the end of the first year, at $15,000 a pop, that is $450,000 in lost revenue. And the marginal cost of keeping one extra student is relatively small. An academic institution is not in the business of turning away money, at least not usually.

People go to business school for lots of reasons, from lots of different backgrounds. I have a BA and MA in music history (Go Maroons!), along with my Top-20 MBA. Previous life experience is a bad predictor of success or failure in B-school, just as B-school experience is not a predictor of post-MBA success or failure. Some of my classmates really didn't need the training, they needed the degree as their "union card" for a higher salary. Given the economy before and after our time there, they were most likely making more money before they went back to school. To others, like me, almost every topic was new, and though I wasn't the best student, I probably learned more than the high-performers. And for most classes we were graded on a bell curve anyway (more than 2-sigma above the mean meant an A, etc.) So your grade was not an absolute indicator of anything.

Well then, what does that say about GWB? The same thing that it says about any of us. Every experience is what you make it, and if Bush, whatever his intelligence, parlayed the life cards that he was dealt into the Presidency, fine. If the majority of people in the majority of states with the plurality of electoral votes thought that that was a drawback, then maybe Bush wouldn't have been elected. Back when the political parties were much more machine-like than they are now, I bet some more stupid people were elected into powerful offices in this country.

There's something deeply funny about members of a party whose most successful President was famously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as "a second-rate intellect, but a first-rate temperament" climbing all over each other to call GWB an idiot. Not to mention the decades long pattern of that same party denigrating the intellect of Republican presidential nominees--including the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII--only to get their asses royally and repeatedly kicked by the alleged mental defectives. One wonders how their self-esteem can take it.

Ian Callum:

"Bush is not particularly articulate, and this conveys an impression of mental vacancy. What's interesting to me is that the same people who think Bush is stupid also think he's evil. I guess if somebody's going to be evil, I'd rather have them be evil and stupid, rather than evil and smart."

I have yet to finish reading the string of posts here but wanted to address this particular post. Ian, of course Bush is stupid and evil. If her were smart and evil then we wouldn't actually know he was evil.

I actually don't feel that way. I don't think he's stupid or evil. I just think he's not particularly bright, he's somewhat lazy, he has no moral convictions and he cosistantly chooses paths that are wrong. He's more interested in doing thing which are good for his friends now then doing things which will benefit this country later. He is an indifferent president.

Although my personal bias (and it's a bit self-congratulatory of me to say), but I still consider Carter the most intellegent President we've ever had. Despite it not being a formal degree, the Navy Nuclear program for officers is far more difficult than almost any Master's program. Having good through the program myself and getting an MBA, I can say this from personal experience. There are plenty of Harvard MBAs that have been through this program which I think can back up this claim.

This also proves that intellegence level does not corollate to performance as a President or a leader of any kind.

Godless, his discretionary spending (and massive entitlement expansion) may be reprehensible, but it is not confusing. He is spending money to appeal to as many interest groups as possible. Ditto the amnesty, which is aimed at breaking away as many latino votes as possible from the Dems. Steel tariffs were enacted because a) they were very popular in the four key swing states Bush really needs to carry (Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and I forget the fourth), and because they had no reasonable possibility of being let stand by the WTO. The things you are identifying as proof that he is irrational seem, to this daughter of a lobbyist, to be proof that he's a pretty smart politician.

Now, many libertarian small government types would like less smart politician, more hard-headed budget hawk. But that's a different question from Bush's intelligence.

The difference between FDR, HST, etc., and W is not so much IQ as FDR, HST, etc, were adults with a certain amount of wisdom and compassion. That is the real difference. Bush acts like a teenager. No offence to teenagers as they have potential.

The difference between FDR, HST, etc., and W is not so much IQ as FDR, HST, etc, were adults with a certain amount of wisdom and compassion. That is the real difference. Bush acts like a teenager. No offence to teenagers as they have potential.

Strange that so little has been said about GWB's success as a poker player (if he was indeed successful as the article claims).
To me it says even more than his success at HBS. (Well, maybe not more, but a lot). Maybe you can be dumb and graduate, but you can't be dumb and beat all those smart MBA students at poker.

Maybe the abilities you need at poker - ability to "read" your adversaries, cool headedness, fast decision making, startegical thinking - these things are more relevant to beeing a good president than the ability and patience to read a lot of stuff and memorize it, and pass examinations at school.

Remarkable also how little the comentariat had to say about this. What's the matter guys ? Don't you play poker ?

Nobody's mentioned that Bush was rejected by the U of T Law School, and HBS was his fallback.

HBS, I'm sure, wouldn't have admitted Bush if they didn't think they'd be able to profit in the long run and boost their endowment by admitting the scion of a wealthy family with connections in politics, finance, and oil.

Bush's "C"s at Yale probably weren't all earned. There's no way Yale would risk failing him. That'd go against the logic of legacy admissions, which is to boost alumni contributions by admitting underperforming kids.

I've never seen any indication of how Bush performed at HBS. His performance in his business career sucked rather badly, which doesn't suggest he did very well.

Is Bush dumb? I dunno. He probably has ADD. (I say this as someone who was diagnosed with it just prior to my senior year of college.) He may have had a certain raw intelligence which got him the 1206 on his SATs (I got a 1280 in 1988/89).

But the brain is like any other organ. Use it or lose it. 30 years of disuse isn't going to be good for a brain that had potential. 30 years of disuse combined with alcohol abuse isn't good either.

Jacob: I don't play poker, because my face gives way too much away, but I still know a few things about it. Two significant differences between playing poker and being President: The Pres. doesn't often get face to face with the foreign leaders he is making decisions about, so ability to bluff and to read "tells" might not be so useful. And real-world situations are often much more complex than the odds in a poker game. Being a good poker player doesn't tell you whether or not the guy is going to have an oversimplified view of reality. (I think W does - but he's still better connected to reality than all the surviving Democratic candidates.)

markm writes: "Fighter pilots are not dumb."

No, but we know that Bush scored the absolute lowest permissible score on the pilot aptitude test. (25, I think).

So this isn't a good line of argument.

Megan, you puzzled me when you included Michigan in your list of the industrial states where Bush hoped to gain votes by the steel tariff. We do have iron mines in the Upper Peninsula, but there aren't very many voters up there. Half the population is down in the corner of the state by Detroit, where the main business is turning steel into cars. Raising the price of steel sure isn't going to help the economy there, or anywhere in Michigan besides the iron-mining counties.

(This tariff applied only to steel stock, not finished goods, right? I know there are already heavy tariffs on imported cars, but I don't think Bush increased them at all.)

Or are you assuming that the empty-headed union dingalings that cast most of the votes down there don't understand their own economic interests? That might be correct.

Top business schools do ocassionally admit students with average grades, but only if there are other compelling reasons to do so.

Many of these schools look for something like "leadership potential." These schools are willing to overlook average grades if a high standardized test score indicates a lot of raw intelligence and/or the persons background shows a clear history of leadership and accomplishment in other areas (i.e. won a gold medal, silver star, started a successful company, etc...).

Bush certainly had average grades, but he did not have either a compelling test score or any accomplisments of note. Bottomline, he was admitted because of his family name.

Second, as they say, the hardest part of Business School is getting in. Graduating proves only that you payed your tuition, weren't caught cheating, stealing, etc... and that you at least showed up for the scheduled exams.

Now is George Bush dumb? No. But he's not smart enough to get admitted to a top business school on his own either. He's simply average. And in this time of national peril, I don't think that's good enough. It's a complicated and dangerous world, and we need someone with a few more active brain cells in command.

Decon, bottom line, you have no way of knowing that. We don't know why he was admitted. I was a technology consultant at a small firm in New York and I got into Chicago with middling grades in a not-particularly-difficult major. And believe me, no one let me in because of the Vast Galt Fortune. Maybe he gave a great interview. Maybe he gave the Dean a bottle of scotch. I have no idea. But he wasn't a legacy at HBS, which has a large number of prominent children trying to get into it every year, and his father wasn't even particularly well known at the time. Speculation, given teh absence of information, is nasty gossip, not "bottom line" fact.

The fourth state you were looking for is West Virginia, but as has been said, Michigan was angered by the tariffs. And I think steel consumers are more important than steel manufacturers in Ohio, where more than 100,000 jobs were lost between 1998 and 2003 (It's 2nd after Michigan in job losses in that time period) and the tariffs were considered a misfire.

Steel tariffs were a zero-sum game for protectionist and a total loss for free traders. As a political tactic, it was stupid. Rove was mistaken to get Bush involved in it.

No one has yet mentioned something I suspect may drive Bush's perceived lack of intellect: his possible intent to shape how he is perceived. Even if he were brilliant, I could imagine that success in Texas politics might depend on affecting a "just folks" persona (a la LBJ). Given the anti-intellectual streak in American society, that image would be useful in national politics as well, since a leader's effectiveness (i.e., his ability to mobilize people to follow his ideas) depends on his ability to connect with his constituents on an intellectual, emotional, and cultural level, especially subliminally. (Hence the characterization of Reagan as "The Great Communicator" for his ability to do just that. Conversely, William F. Buckley would probably not do well in Texas politics, nor in national politics, for that matter.)

Even Kerry recently attempted to portray himself as "just folks" in the South when he was quoted as saying that "that dog won't hunt." He probably didn't pick up that expression at his Swiss boarding school, or at Yale, and probably doesn't use it much on Beacon Hill, but he trotted it out once he crossed the Mason-Dixon line to try to connect with Southerners (who evidently were polite enough not to laugh).

In connection with image-shaping, a Time magazine commentator during the 2000 election campaign made the apposite observation that Gore was not as bright as he affected to be, nor Bush as dull. At any rate, if Bush really were that dull, he should be easy for the Democrats to outwit, and we're still waiting for that to happen.

EQ vrs. IQ. Sometimes I wish I had more of both. I could never make the calls GWB has had to make and I thank god every day that his EQ is in the oval office instead of the Clinton/Gore braintrust.

Decon,

"But he's not smart enough to get admitted to a top business school on his own either."

Are you so devoid of shame that you would say that about somebody, anybody, without citing some evidence to back it up. In order to know this you would have to have inside information into the admission process of HSB in 1968. Can you present any such evidence? Good Luck.

Decon is not alone in his lack of shame. Do people not read what they write? If they do, are they so stupid or intellectually dishonest to make these types of claims based on such little information. I suppose the "He talks funny" line of argument only reveals an ignorance of what defines intelligence as opposed to any intellectual dishonesty, but I would think that people who seem to enjoy writing in an open forum would be better educated. I guess not.

Is he dumb? I don't know. I have never met him.

Jim English
Chicago

MQ,

MBA classes are similar to mid-level undergrad courses? Really? In one quarter, I learned as much accounting as undergrads do in about three *semesters*. And that was in an accounting class everyone had to take, as my concentration is in marketing management. Business undergrads take spreadsheet modeling and decision analysis? Spend most of stats class on regression analysis? Write 50-page business plans from scratch in one quarter? Do enough research on a company that it can be sold to them for $50,000? Give me a break. There's no comparison...

Is Bush dumb? I dunno. He probably has ADD. (I say this as someone who was diagnosed with it just prior to my senior year of college.)

ffffttt...maybe he does, I'm not a clinical psychologist, but ADD assertions based on external observation are as liable to be bunk as accurate IMO (especially when directed at a person we only see pictured in publicity settings). If diagnoses had been as aggressive 10-20 years ago as they are now, I would have likely been handed the ADHD label around second grade or so, seeing as I was a fidgety, high-energy kid who frequently lived through imagination, and was more easily distracted by random artistic opportunities than math books. Having completed engineering school and a graduate social sciences curriculum without the aid of drugs, I can safely assert that some people are simply easily distracted and have lots of energy. And I rather suspect the same thing applies for some "apparent" AD-no H-D cases.

Bernard Yomtov
RE: "The undisputed fact is that Bush was a
failure as a businessman."

Many of the most successful business men and politicians in the history of the world has a string of failures before acheiving recoginition and success.

The very nature of the high level of office or success that they strive for requires putting themselves out there and taking risks in a way that almost guarantees failure(s) prior to success. It's their perserverance, belief an leadership ability (inspiring others to rally around and support a guy that here-to-fore has not made it big in the endevour they are pursuing) that are the hallmarks of the type of EQ and not IQ that it takes to be a great president or great businessman. Had Bush decided not to go into politics he would have eventually become a business success because he has these qualities. We just don't see that tragectory in the business arena (rising time and again from the ashes of failure to go on make it big) because he took what he had learned (through failure and some moderate success) in business and applied it with enormous success in politics.

Jane, I don't thinkt he concern is with "dumbness". The concern is with a lack of curiousity, of being engaged with the details and reflection on the consequences of the decisions.

Intellectually, following a MBA course is (a) at best, an introduction to a range of subjects you haven't grappled with before, resulting in a minor change of worldview and a box of useful tools (b) an admission ticket to meet the recruiters and alumni that get you into the club of higher earners. It's not a degree that requires deep thought - it's for dilettantes and journeymen.

If anything, the attitude of "hype the quick fix outta here in three years" that is too familiar from MBA types is pretty characteristic of this administration.

Tom: The concern is with a lack of curiousity [sic], of being engaged with the details and reflection on the consequences of the decisions.

Engagement with details and extensive reflection (and retrospection generally) are desirable in seminars but tolerable in top executives only to a small degree. Such executives need to make decisions faster and more surely than painstaking analysis and attendant hand-wringing would ever permit, shrug off their inevitable mistakes, and be prepared to make the next decision.

My model would be someone in a batting cage; while he analyzed why he fouled off one pitch three more would be hurtling in his direction.

Tom: The concern is with a lack of curiousity [sic], of being engaged with the details and reflection on the consequences of the decisions.

Engagement with details and extensive reflection (and retrospection generally) are desirable in seminars but tolerable in top executives only to a small degree. Such executives need to make decisions faster and more surely than painstaking analysis and attendant hand-wringing would ever permit, shrug off their inevitable mistakes, and be prepared to make the next decision.

My model would be someone in a batting cage; while he analyzed why he fouled off one pitch three more would be hurtling in his direction.

Per Mr. Lifson, "Successful executives develop a style which is true to their own nature, and which builds on their strengths".

Add one corollary in an increasingly competitive business world, "Self-criticism must be incorporated to limit the excesses of personal arrogance".(G. Owen)

President Bush has proven that he can alter his strategies (not principles, mind you) as needed. This will allow him to take advantage of a fickle body politic and utilize the advantages of incumbency (flag, money, bully pulpit) to hold on to the office in November.

"Bernard, you wrote, " The undisputed fact is that Bush was a failure as a businessman."

So was Truman. "

So what? The point of the cited article was that Bush is an excellent President in part because of all the wonderful skills he acquired at HBS. My objection (aside from not sharing Lifson's awe at Bush's performance) is that his business record suggests that he really didn't acquire a lot of business skills at HBS, or anywhere else. Since Truman didn't have an MBA I'm not sure what your point is.

"And real-world situations are often much more complex than the odds in a poker game."

No doubt about that.
Another thing you need at poker is concentration, presence of mind, beeing practical and straight thinking.

I woudn't say that beeing a good poker player is qualification enough for the presidency, but add to it an MBA, a great ambition, a solid family...

Jim:
"Is he dumb? I don't know. I have never met him."

There are many persons I never met, but am convinced they are dumb, based on their deeds, speeches or writings.

But the question isn't whether GWB is dumb. I don't mind him beeing dumb, as long as he does the right things. What matters is what he does. He has enough of a record to be judged by it.

That "dumb" claim is just an ugly smear, that serves no purpose except as a reflection on the accuser.

Bernard, Bush's oil business failed, as far as I know, for the same reason all the other Texas oil firms failed in the mid eighties -- because the price of oil dropped precipitously due to OPEC cheating, making a previously lucrative business unprofitable. It wasn't bad business judgement; it was a catastrophic change in circumstances. Jack Welch couldn't have made wildcatting profitable in that environment. And the team he managed seems to have done pretty well, as did he and his partners.

I'm not arguing he's a business genius, mind you. I'm just saying that I see no evidence of catastrophic failure, either. The fact is, I have desperately little interest in plumbing the early lives of our politicians -- I don't know or care what Clinton was doing in Little Rock, etc. etc. But teh skills he imputes to Bush are not, so far as I can tell, falsified by his business record.

A few things are clear to me:

- The brouhaha about GWB's supposed lack of general intelligence is pointless. My understanding is that GWB's IQ probably isn't any lower than Kennedy's was. He's not brilliant, but he's not "too stupid to be President", for this particular definition of "stupid". More to the point, extremely high IQ may be a bad thing for a President -- Nixon comes to mind.

- So what is GWB's problem? He does not have a coherent view of America's long-term interest, and doesn't care to develop such a view; thus, his decisions are based on emotional instincts or perceptions of political expedience. Too often, these instincts or perceptions are misguided; witness the amnesty proposal. I think he's smart enough to know better, but he's too intellectually lazy to study such details for himself. (To a certain extent, he may not be able to help it -- his years of alcoholism may have predisposed his brain to operate in such a manner. This doesn't make me any happier to know that he is President, though.)

- GWB is not infinitely bad. In particular, I am not sure if a Gore Presidency would have been much better. I do not know yet how I will vote in November.

"Don't ask what people say, but why they say what they say."

Why then are the Democrats so keen to push this issue/nonissue? I believe there are two reasons. First, Gore is probably smarter than
Bush in an academic sense and Clinton is surely much smarter. Thus it gave them an issue to push at election time. Much as combat experience during Vietnam is suddenly of paramount importance--brought to us by the same people who spat on all people in uniform back in the '70's. But let's ignore the hypocrisy.

Second, as Milton Friedman pointed out some time back in a very trenchant essay, the halls of American academia are currently filled
with people who chose graduate school in order to evade the draft, a group of people whose formative years were filled
with anti-American anti-war "activism", i.e., propaganda. Those beliefs have persisted and become established in their minds and embellished through the succeeding 30 years without abatement.

Professors believe themselves mentally superior to all non-professors
because everyone else is, after all, someone who dropped out of school aren't they? Much as college graduates are on the whole brighter than those who completed only high school, and people with graduate degrees are brighter than those who have only undergraduate degrees, the professors believe that the mirror on the wall is telling them that they are the brightest of all. The primary
motivation of an academic is to prove how smart he or she is. But how "smart" one is is a very fluid and unquantifiable thing
in the end. Are the philosophers smarter than the chemists? Are the English professors smarter than the art professors? There is no objective decision criterion. This means that
professors are very insecure about their intelligence. Situations of great insecurity lead to intense interest in fashion, which
in the case of academics means intense concern with fashionable ideas.
All this has led to a curious inversion in America academia, accurately
expressed by that Duke professor quoted above, to wit, that the
only objective criterion available to prove who is "smart"
has become the perceived adherence to "politically correct"
ideology. Anyone who does not so adhere is prima facie stupid and unworthy to be present at the academic temples. Only
the very very brightest professors, leaders in their discipline, are able to resist this social pressure.

Finally, it is important to recognize that there is a universal tendency in human experience to believe that the particular field of endeavor which one happens to occupy is *the* field of importance, leading us all to believe that other people's expertise or experience is not particularly relevant to the world. For a Krugman, being a successful fighter pilot could not possibly have any bearing on being a good president because that experience is completely irrelevant to what really matters (namely, being an expert on arcane details of economic theory).

Occam's Beard writes: "At any rate, if Bush really were that dull, he should be easy for the Democrats to outwit, and we're still waiting for that to happen."

Er, not quite. Politics is a team sport, not a one-on-one intellectual battle.

The Democrats need to outwit Bush, Rove, and their other colleagues, not just Bush himself.

there is a ridiculous amount of bickering here about the same things. the basic points to understand are:

intelligence does not matter as long as you make the right decisions

you can not prove gwb is unintelligent based on his lack of articulateness and his average grades (ill use the most common cliche to better illustrate this: einstein failed math)

being smart does not make you a good president. good decisions and intuition make you a good president

ill use the most common cliche to better illustrate this: einstein failed math

As far as I know that's just an urban legend, IIRC Einstein's only obvious academic weakness were a few low marks in French.

You (Jane Galt) wrote in "How dumb is our president?":
>There's an assumption among the humanities types I run with that
>lacking the particular things that make you good at being a journalist,
>a professor, or an analyst, such as interest in academic research and
>discussions, good research skills, a good prose style and a quick
>tongue, are what make you good at any important job, and especially a
>president's job. But Jimmy Carter had a PhD and he was a hopeless
>ditherer. Harry Truman was not particularly bright, and he desegregated
>the damn military. Leadership is not an academic excercise.

The word "lacking" in the first sentence above makes the first
sentence above rather paradoxical. It appears to me that you have
accidentally formed a chimerical combination of two sentences,
roughly
'There's an assumption among the humanities types I run with that
/lacking/ the particular things that make you good at being a
journalist ... means you are dumb as a post ... unfit to be president
of the local Rotary Club ... can get drunk on Orange Crush ...'
and
'There's an assumption among the humanities types I run with that
the particular things that make you good at being a
journalist ... are what make you good at any important job,
and especially a president's job.'

Of course, you also wrote of yourself:
"I'm ... insufficiently detail-oriented ..." :-)

I skimmed the comments section a few minutes ago, and I didn't
notice that any of the 90+ people crowing over the intellectual
superiority of liberals over George W. Bush, the importance of
reading comprehension, etc. showed any obvious sign of noticing
this chimera.

I don't know whether this means that:
1. Most 'liberals' with excellent reading skills have better things
to do than post proofreading comments to this blog.
2. Many 'liberals' are excellent at looking at something
(e.g. an essay) and seeing what they already expect,
rather than noticing strange, surprising discrepancies.
3. (2) above, but for human beings in general, not just 'liberals'.
4. Many human beings have inadequate reading comprehension skills.
5. Many 'liberals'' ability and drive to suck up are even stronger
than their ability and drive to find fault. Sucking-up
interferes with fault-finding (to a person's face, anyway)
and therefore interferes with recognizing and commenting on
chimerical sentences.
6. To err is human...Jane Galt errs...maybe 'conservatives' are
human beings too?
7. Jane Galt, unlike some 'liberals', has some awareness
of her own faults and shortcomings. :-)

For whatever it's worth, I have long enjoyed reading
Jane Galt's writing; my gratis nitpicky proofreading is
provided primarily because of my respect for and
enjoyment of her writing. Gems are worth
polishing; sow's ears are not.

By the way, please accept my compliments on
"Can we put an expiration date on candidate history?"

A commenter wrote:
>The difference between FDR, HST, etc., and W is not so much IQ
>as FDR, HST, etc, were adults with a certain amount of wisdom
>and compassion. That is the real difference. Bush acts like a
>teenager. No offence to teenagers as they have potential.

When I was a teenager, I would have had sufficient wit, wisdom,
and compassion to resent this as an unwarranted slur and
senseless age discrimination. What your willingness to
make such generalizations says about the kind of teenager
you were (and the kind of adult you are today) I shall leave
to the reader to judge.

Jon H: Er, not quite. Politics is a team sport, not a one-on-one intellectual battle.

The Democrats need to outwit Bush, Rove, and their other colleagues, not just Bush himself.

Quite right. If the man is a gibbering idiot but consistently surrounds himself with stellar performers whom no opponents – domestic or foreign – can outmaneuver, he has produced an effective Administration and has earned re-election, for my money.

Jane --

First, of course it's the case that I don't KNOW that George was admitted because of his family name. My bottom line assesment however, based on his average grades, his not terribly impressive test score, and his complete lack of accomplishment in other arenas, were the stated basis of my assesment. I might also have pointed to the many other instances in his life when he benefited from being the son of a Senator and President to buttress this conclusion. Given all this "special treatment" seems like a plausible, and in my view the most likely, reason GWB was admitted to HBS.

You however, choose to take his acceptance into, and graduation from, HBS as an "academic accomplishment" and evidence of his intelligence. How you wish to interpret reality is your choice, but there are many other plausible explanations, and the one you have chosen seems to be one of the least plausible.

I am willing to remain agnostic on the question of Bush's intelligence. I'm not willing to pretend that his admission to HBS provides reasonable evidence that he is in fact a man of high intelligence.

As further evidence that people of middling accomplishment can get into a top business school you cite your own acceptance to Chicago.

The data point is useful, but mitigated by at least three factors. First, Chicago is not Harvard. It is a good school, but hardly as difficult to get into as Harvard. Second, Chicago is one of those schools that is known for deemphasizing the importance of undergraduate grades. And third, I'm willing to bet that you chose Chicago, and they chose you, in large part because of your free market ideology.

None of these factors favoring your admission to Chicaga are applicable to GWB's admission to Harvard.

Jim -- I didn't say of "somebody" or "anybody" that they weren't smart enough to get admitted into business school on their own. I said it about our President, George W. Bush. Moreover, I clearly implied that not only was he not smart enough, he didn't have sufficient leadership potential either.

Also I did provide supporting arguments which I will not repeat here. You can read them above if you wish.

And finally, the ones who should be ashamed are those who loudly proclaim the most charitable interpretations of everything the President has ever said or done while launching ad hominem attacks at anyone who dares to suggest an alternative explanation.

You can attack me all you want. The evidence is on my side. What else could I expect you to do? Carry on.

Decon:

1) Chicago now is harder to get into than Harvard was in 1968

2) I chose Chicago because it was the best school I got into. Chicago chose me because . . . well, I don't know, but it wasn't because of my free market ideology, which was revealed by nothing in my applications

3) I'm not touting the fact that he got into HBS as an academic accomplishment; I'm touting the fact that he got out of it as a sign that he has mastered some not-un-difficult academic material. Personally, I don't care whether he got in through connections or not, but it strikes me, in the Harvard of the late 60's, as pretty unlikely, and you have absolutely no evidence that it is so, which makes your "bottom line" certitude pretty mean-spirited.

I don't doubt that Chicago today is harder to get into than HBS was in 1968 (1973 is the relevant year, but point taken).

However, this simply undercuts your larger point which is that acceptance into, and graduation from, HBS is a clear signal of Bush's intelligence and accomplishment.

Additionally, if your case rests on Bush's graduation, rather than his admission, you are on very shaky ground. Getting in is the hard part. Comparing the percentage of applicants admitted with the percentage of enrollees graduating makes this abundantly clear. A plethora of anecdotal evidence could be wheeled into to support this contention as well.

Finally, if you regard my skepticism as mean-spirited so be it. I call it like I see it, and Bush has a long history of benefiting from his daddy's good name and connections. This is not an isolated, or contrary, incident.

Of course, Bush could clear all of this up by releasing his application materials. :-) It might give us some indication of what he was doing in Alabama, er Texas, er Alabama.

Indeed, I seem to recall reading a Business Week article some time ago where Dumbya's time in the Guard and his stint in the Houston non-profit were cited as the evidence of the "leadership potential" and "accomplishments" on which he sold himself in his application to HBS.

What he told the UT Law school (which rejected him) I haven't a clue. I would like to know though.

orbitron (n): A dense, nonmetallic substance found in nonintellectual exercise equipment.

"You're gonna have to speak louder, Orbitron. I can't hear you over the racket of the miniature violin.
Posted by anony-mouse at February 11, 2004 03:26 AM"

anony-mouse, do you really think it is appropriate to make light of the thousands of deaths our war with Iraq has caused? Guess that kid who lost his arms is a laff riot, huh?

Jane,

Bush's oil business failed, as far as I know, for the same reason all the other Texas oil firms failed in the mid eighties -- because the price of oil dropped precipitously..

Simply not true. By 1986, when oil prices crashed, Bush was already well-established as a chronic failure who got rescued repeatedly because of his family connections. He was even unable to make money in the early 80's when prices were peaking.

And he was rescued in 1986 by Harken, which is a whole other thread.

Yes, he made money in baseball, in part because he got a very generous real estate deal from the City of Arlington and in part because he got in on generous terms.

You really should fact-check out those RNC press releases more carefully.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush073099.htm

"orbitron (n): A dense, nonmetallic substance found in nonintellectual exercise equipment.

Posted by Slartibartfast at February 13, 2004 12:32 PM"

Slartibartfast, I think you're a poopyhead too.

That's nice. Unrequited contempt is so unsatisfying.

anony-mouse, do you really think it is appropriate to make light of the thousands of deaths our war with Iraq has caused? Guess that kid who lost his arms is a laff riot, huh?

Nice cheap swing, buddy, but your aim was so bad I believe you may have racked yourself instead. What you fail to consider in making such a shallow argument is that the same kid under Saddam's continued rule might have had his arms and legs ripped off to feed the Hussein family dogs; his sister raped and killed by state agents; his father fed into a plastic shredder; etc. No doubt you would have come to his aid in THAT case with the power of a sympathy card and your most sincere condolences, but now that the tyrant is in chains and the majority of Iraq is a much freer and more civil place to live, the poor guy is only another political tool for your ilk to throw in the face of those with differing views. Except your throwing arm is weak and deformed from spending too much time performing verbal proctology, so the argument didn't travel too far.

It's long past time for one of two things to happen, Orbitron. Either you (a) have valid, assertion-defense styled answers to these concerns but haven't bothered to share them yet, and need to do so that the process of reasoned debate may continued unmolested, or else (b) you should think about closing your mouth before it makes you (and potentially by unfortunate association, others who ostensibly share your political positions) look any more foolish.

Or at minimum, go find yourself a miniature philharmonic where the denizens will find your vapid style of fiddling to be more compelling.

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