In defense of my assessment of GWB's intelligence

I have been challenged by an e-mailer to defend my oft-repeated (okay, occasional and inconsistent) claim that George W. Bush is not dumb, and indeed my sometime and equally mysterious assertion that he is of above-average intelligence. I can understand the question. Listening to Barack Obama's masterful speech today to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), I was impressed again at how strange it is to listen to an American politician who is not only comfortable speaking English but can risk forays into foreign languages. (Indeed, by the end of the speech I think his Jewish listeners might have been convinced that he was educated in a yeshiva and not in the rumored madrassah, and that his middle name is Heschel, not Hossein.) I would probably pay pretty good money to listen to Bush attempt "tikkun olam" (repair of the world), for example, which Barry handled perfectly. With L'il George, I'm sure it would come out "tickin' all 'em."

Which points out W's major difficulty, of course. He can't talk real good. Verbally he's subpar. It would be fatuous to deny it, although Bush would say it's "fat-you-us." So he sounds like an idiot, but I maintain (maybe delusionally) that he's not. He's clever. I base this on a few observations.

First, he's still President. When one considers how many serious infractions of the United States Code and the Constitution have occurred under his direction while he's been in office, this is no small achievement. Any one of his misprisions of office would have thrown a lesser conniver out on his can. Consider:

(1) It is now commonly accepted that he misrepresented the state of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, systematically and deliberately, declaring himself and sending his reps out to sell the tale that Saddam was absolutely lousy with anthrax, ricin, nukes, nerve gas, you name it. Huge stockpiles of ghastly stuff. Upon arrival in Baghdad 140,000 American weapons inspectors were unable to find a single thing. Not only did Bush not pause in his crusade, he escalated the war. And nothing happened to him.

(2) Bush's closest circle of advisors were involved in a conspiracy to reveal the identity of an American covert operative, Valerie Plame, a felony. The chances of Bush not having direct, personal, and contemporaneous knowledge of the involvement of Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove in talking to reporters about her work at the CIA are approximately .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%. He promised to get to the bottom of the leak, to fire those involved, to clean house. When it became public knowledge that his own lieutenants were among the leakers, nothing happened. He then set aside the one conviction resulting from the conspiracy and still nothing happened to him. He escaped unscathed.

(3) Bush freely admits that his administration violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), another felony, because they preferred their own methods to compliance with the law. Nothing has happened to him.

(4) Bush freely admits that his administration uses "enhanced interrogation techniques" which we and the rest of the civilized world know are torture and violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and which constitute war crimes under the United States Code (felonies). Nothing has happened to Bush.

(5) Bush's closest advisors, including Harriet Miers, Karl Rove and Joshua Bolten, have been subpoenaed to testify before Congressional committees. They say they don't feel like it. Nothing happens.

Of course, this is a partial list. While all this has gone on, Bush has appeared at many press conferences, press "availabilities," and in other public situations where he has taken questions about all these subjects. He answers them, sort of, out in broad daylight. With truly scary facts working against him, Bush almost never says anything which makes his situation worse. Indeed, often he will invoke the war on terror or Congressional inertia to make the case that he's only breaking the law because he can't get any help in his lonely quest to make America safe. Which brings up his other gift, his ability to bully Congress into giving him what he wants: exonerations, hundreds of billions for his wars, whatever, all while working with the lowest approval ratings of a modern president.

It's worth noting that Bush's SAT scores in math were good, in verbal aptitude not so much. So he is adroit with what you might call symbolic logic, just so long as the language of such logic isn't in word form. I have thought that this may be a paradoxical source of strength. A President like Clinton, for example, was so verbal, so prolix in his expatiation on the topic at hand that he inevitably got himself into deep trouble. He just said too much in too many complex (though well-crafted) sentences, which, when reviewed later, contained too many contradictions. Bush sometimes runs on, but always within the confines of that meager vocabulary. He repeats, over and over again, certain thunderously obvious conclusions in that same dreary language. "Evil-doers who lurk." "Killers." "New democracy in Iraq." "World's a better place without Saddam." "Keep Iran from acquiring the know-how to build a bomb." "Before 9/11..." "After 9/11..." "9/11." "Let taxpayers keep their own hard-earned money." It's hard for Bush to stray away from his "message" because the words don't allow it. He has a general, clear sense of where he's trying to go, and he doesn't care if it sounds like page 3 of a Dick & Jane primer. Granted, it doesn't sound much like an intelligent man speaking, but you try it sometime. Commit all those felonies, all that deception, all those unconstitutional actions right out in the open, then conduct a press conference where you don't take the 5th and see how long you last.

A dubious skill, I admit, but a skill nonetheless. One that a "moron," as Bill Maher habitually calls him, could never pull off.