Bush as Rocket Scientist

Watching a recent panel discussion among New York Times columnists via the Web, I saw the execrable David Brooks huffing and puffing about his intimate access to the "inner circle" of the Bush Administration, much to the annoyance and disdain of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, the other two panelists. I don't usually say much about the personal appearance of other people, reasoning that we all have our crosses to bear, but there was something disgusting about the pudgy little Mr. Brooks sitting there in his tan suit with black shoes, grinning his smug little snaggle-tooth smile, his white sidewall haircut -- all of which must make the Bushies, with their rough frat boy humor, viciously savage him when he's not around.

But he does seem to be around. He carries the BushCo's water at the Old Gray Lady, writing irritatingly "evenhanded" columns that nevertheless wind up as full-throated defenses of every Bush insanity that comes at us with sickening regularity, and they have rewarded him by making him seem like a "serious" journalist with the inside scoop, and he's not going to give that up. He attempts to take the "social sciences" seriously, arguing with a "rigor" usually reserved for physics and mathematics (so he may think), but one thing I've noticed is that his columns are so incoherent, the arguments so diffuse, that you can read one sentence at a time and realize, as you go, that none of the sentences adheres to the one before or just after it. It is simply a series of ponderous, not to say sententious, declarations about....something. Iraq, or the tendency of Mexican illegal immigrants to buy children's furniture in greater abundance than Anglos (an actual example), and none of it ever leads anywhere. One is reminded of the great exchange between Sir Thomas More and Richard in "A Man for All Seasons." "More: It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales, Richard?" For the sake of his little nook at the NY Times, his piece of Wales, Brooks has bartered his soul, and the withering disdain of Maureen Dowd, as she listened to Brooks tell his little story about going to a U-2 concert with someone on the Bush staff (Maureen looked as if she'd just swallowed a bad oyster), told me she shares this Faustian view.

But that's not really the point of this post. Brooks, as such, isn't interesting enough. He's another hack doing Bush's dirty work. The panel at one point turned its focus on Bush's intelligence. They all agreed he's actually smarter than he often appears in public. Thank God for that. What if he were actually stupider? Brooks, in his rigorous, quantifying way, said that Bush in private was about "20 points" smarter than he seems in public.

The natural question thus arises (although not addressed by the panel): What is y, where y = x + 20? I put the matter algebraically to show Brooks I'm a real numbers man myself. I also know you can't solve that equation without positing a value for x. So I'll posit one. In public, Bush comes off as a guy with an IQ of about 100, the center of the bell curve distribution. Some learned analysts who have attempted to estimate the IQs of U.S. Presidents have considered the syntax used, the papers written and published, and other (admittedly subjective) criteria to place the Presidents on some sort of continuum, and have ranged the IQs from the really smart (Nixon, Carter, Clinton) to the fairly smart (Kennedy, Johnson) to the not very smart at all (Bush the Elder, Reagan). Bringing up the rear in this analysis was L'il Georgie, who was pegged at 97, not flattering at all. But perhaps the data were forced? And anyway, George Junior has never published anything, probably including blue book exams at Yale and Harvard.

So I'll give Bush 3 points more and then agree that he's got an IQ in the range of 117 to 120, giving the serious cognitive metrics guys their due. I also think this comports with results he apparently achieved on the SAT and Texas Air Guard tests, and is also consistent with the tougher Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT) his score on which has perhaps understandably been kept confidential, since he failed to get into the University of Texas Law School despite his father's ownership of the state. A guy like Clinton, on the other hand, with a nice, normal Southern White Trash upbringing (about which I personally know quite a bit - not his, mine) got into Yale undergraduate and Georgetown Law all on his own merits. I just threw that in.

So Bush isn't dumb. He's somewhat above average. That's what he hates about himself, and why he's so pretentious, arrogant and delusional. He needs to believe, against all evidence, that he's actually brilliant, but in some iconoclastic, ethereal way that maybe only he understands. The thing is, he's not. He is somewhat better than a mediocrity. The question thus settled then leads to another one: is somewhat better than a mediocrity actually good enough to be President of the United States?

We might compare it to other fields, such as brain surgery, rocket science or law. If you needed difficult neurosurgery, say removal of a tiny tumor on the pituitary gland requiring entry through the nose and impinging dangerously on the optic nerves, would you be content with a neurosurgeon who told you his IQ was 117, that he'd graduated near the bottom of his class in med school, and spent the first 40 years of his life drinking? Inhale that anesthesia? How about if you were an astronaut sitting atop a Saturn rocket and the director of mission control was someone who had (in some nepotistic way) achieved a PhD in astrophysics, but whose IQ was 120? Count down to zero? You're on trial for a capital offense (killing a blastocyst with a .45, e.g.), and your lawyer tells you he graduated in the bottom 3rd of the class, he has an IQ of 118, but don't worry, we'll get through this thing? Sign the retainer?

The answers are likely to be (1) no, (2) all systems no go, and (3) you're fucking kidding me, right? A rational response in each instance. And why? Because these pros just aren't smart enough for what's involved, that's why. They're not fixing a faulty flush mechanism on your toilet, they're dealing with your survival. Suppose something goes wrong during the procedure, the orbit, the trial? You want someone who can improvise, think outside the box, come up with something quick that works. You want someone really, really smart, don't you. Otherwise, supposing this man is President, the second plane could hit the second tower, and he just sits there, stupefied, without a clue as to how to react. If you began to bleed profusely during your brain surgery, you don't want the neurosurgeon to grab his copy of "My Pet Goat" while he tries to figure out how to stop your imminent exsanguination. If the heat shield burns off your reentry vehicle, you don't want some clown who screams "bring it on" to your spacecraft as you atomize on hitting the atmosphere. If the prosecution elicits surprise testimony during your penalty phase, you don't want your lawyer to start complaining about what "hard work" being an attorney is.

Bush is a so-so guy trying to hold down a job that is one of the most complex and demanding in the world. The results are predictable. Everyone can see it. Thanks, Mr. Brooks, for providing a starting point, and have fun in Wales.