Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

George W. Bush is smarter than you

keithhennessey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#51

Post by derefr »

kamakazizuru wrote: post #23
metadept wrote: post #21

The more relevant question, especially in the context of startup success, is whether George W. Bush is wiser, more forward-thinking, or oriented toward better goals than you. Intelligence is only useful when you're directing it toward the right tasks and your end goals are genuinely beneficial.

what is a "better" goal. The whole point of the article is that things are not black or white - and what you consider right and beneficial may not be the same for someone else :)

In a president specifically, I imagine a "better" goal is one more aligned with the will of the people (even if not specifically in the long-term interest of the people.)

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#52

Post by ecommercematt »

ceph_ wrote: post #27
benihana wrote: post #9

> There is a bias in much of the mainstream press and commentariat that people from outside of NY-BOS-WAS-CHI-SEA-SF-LA are less intelligent, or at least well educated. Many public commenters harbor an anti-Texas (and anti-Southern, and anti-Midwestern) intellectual bias. They mistakenly treat John Kerry as smarter than George Bush because John Kerry talks like an Ivy League professor while George Bush talks like a T…

Bush was born and raised in CT an hour outside of NYC. The image of him being a Texan was cultivated in the same way as much of his persona.

"Bush attended public schools in Midland, Texas until the family moved to Houston after he completed seventh grade. He then went to The Kinkaid School, a prep school in Houston, for two years."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#Childhood_to_mid...

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#53

Post by deelowe »

volandovengo wrote: post #36

There are similar accounts on quora citing that bush is extremely intelligent. 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 Gl…

Actually there are reasonable explanations for these:

> - 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.

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#54

Post by ams6110 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #30

I have never met George W Bush so I can't say how smart he is. But you can look at his SAT scores ( http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard32300.html ) before Yale, and his resume before he went to Harvard Business School. Then ask: Could I have gotten in into Yale with that SAT? Could I have gotten into HBS with that resume?

And what about Obama's SAT scores and other academic history... oh that's right, he's never released them.

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#55

Post by shirkey »

ceph_ wrote: post #27
benihana wrote: post #9

> There is a bias in much of the mainstream press and commentariat that people from outside of NY-BOS-WAS-CHI-SEA-SF-LA are less intelligent, or at least well educated. Many public commenters harbor an anti-Texas (and anti-Southern, and anti-Midwestern) intellectual bias. They mistakenly treat John Kerry as smarter than George Bush because John Kerry talks like an Ivy League professor while George Bush talks like a T…

Bush was born and raised in CT an hour outside of NYC. The image of him being a Texan was cultivated in the same way as much of his persona.

...just as every politician learns to create a persona.

"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.

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#56

Post by a_p »

In 2010, the Sienna Presidential poll — which is very well respected — ranked George W. Bush as the 42 most intelligent president (only Harding ranked lower). [1, pdf file]. 14 of the 19 categories have W. in the bottom 5. These categories are: Communication ability, Court Appointments, Handling of U.S Economy, Ability to Compromise, Executive Appointments, Overall Ability, Imagination, Domestic Accomplishments, Integrity, Executive Ability, Foreign Policy Accomplishments, Leadership Ability, Intelligence, and Avoid Crucial Mistakes. The 4 categories that he is not in the bottom 5 of are: Background (he is the 7th worst), Party Leadership, Luck, and "Willing to Take Risks". Luck is the only category in which he is in the second quartile.

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...

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#58

Post by tptacek »

If any of this resonates with you, I'd also highly recommend _Angler_, Barton Gellman's account of the vice presidency of Dick Cheney. It's hard to overstate how far-reaching and insidious Cheney's efforts were during the first Bush term; he more or less co-opted intelligence efforts, and ran what at times amounted to a shadow presidency with his staff and Donald Rumsfeld.

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.

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#59

Post by volandovengo »

deelowe wrote: post #53
volandovengo wrote: post #36

There are similar accounts on quora citing that bush is extremely intelligent. 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 Gl…

Actually there are reasonable explanations for these: > - 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 dece…

Thanks for breaking these things down. I don't really agree with them but I appreciate how a different reading on things could conclude that an intelligent person could have made those decisions.

Re: George W. Bush is smarter than you

#60

Post by rainsford »

While the author seems to blame his political opponents for the perception of GWB as unintelligent, a more balanced analysis should probably also consider what Bush and the Republicans did to further that idea. When you use words like "elite" and "intellectual" (and "windsurfing" for some reason...) as pejoratives and go to great lengths to avoid publicly highlighting your intelligence and playing up how average you are...you probably shouldn't be surprised if people don't consider you a great thinker.

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?

Post reply on HN