The Stupid Party No Longer - George W. Bush re-evaluated

Women's Quarterly, Spring, 2001 by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

Wladyslaw Pleszczynski chortles over the media's learning disability.

IT'S BECOME the conventional wisdom: George W. Bush isn't the numskull his political opponents tried to make him out to be throughout last year's campaign. We have it on their own word, so it must be official. Who today recalls Paul Begala's anti-Bush tract, "Is Our Children Learning?" or pays attention to Jacob Weisberg's "Bushisms of the Day"? Even before Bush won plaudits for his handling of the China affair, the New York Times editorially declaimed: "Let us give George W. Bush credit for something beyond efficiency, beyond assembling a skilled staff, and beyond being smarter than Saturday Night Live gives him credit for. Mr. Bush has demonstrated that he takes the presidency seriously."

Meanwhile, in an open letter to a former president who did not take the presidency seriously, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen confessed that the "Marc Rich episode" is "a pie in the face of anyone who ever defended" Bill Clinton. "You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid." Nine years it took Cohen to figure out he's been used? Democrat after Democrat these days is breaking out with similar symptoms of slow-learner disability. At this rate the GOP may never again be known as the stupid party.

It was fun while it lasted. Sure, there are still some incorrigibles around who call Bush a "moron" (Martin Sheen) or write that "I may have erred when I called Bush dumb. He's not dumb, he's just not paying attention. He thinks he won!" (Tony Kornheiser--before the latest figures from Florida showed Bush had won) or claim that Bush confuses "retroactive" with "radioactive" (Bill Maher). But Bush just isn't living up to liberal expectations.

Along with his wife he's given the presidency an aura of royalty. In appearance, temperament, and demeanor he appears a natural, likable leader who does his duty smartly and competently--just like the Harvard MBA he happens to be. More interesting yet, as president he effortlessly stands out in contrast to his rogue predecessor. Forgotten is that Bush actually ran against Al Gore, and that it was Gore's intellectual pretensions that Bush could never match--as if anyone remotely human would ever want to.

Last November 6, the folks at Slate magazine compiled a remarkable document: Forty of its employees and contributors explained who they would vote for on election day. Thirty-two explained they were going with Gore. Not all had coherent reasons for doing so--"I think Gore is nearly as smart in the realm of governance as he is stupid in the realm of campaigning," Timothy Noah wrote--but when it came to why they opposed Bush, group-think and unanimity rolled into one.

One contributor warned that if Bush won we'd be "living in a country with a baboon president."

A copy editor wrote: "The thought of him trying to smirk his way through tense Mideast peace negotiations is too much to take."

"An unabashedly anti-choice, anti-gay, geographically, and mathematically challenged candidate whose attention span and grasp of detail rival that of a moderately alert ninth-grader," is how another copy editor described Bush.

"Contemplation is to Bush what spinach is to a spoiled child," an editorial assistant declared.

"Dubya, I fear, would not have the vaguest idea what to do with, or in, the Oval Office," said one contributor. "I have a bipartisan disdain for Dubya's candlepower, and it is quite clear the guy is lazy."

THOSE WERE THE DAYS when the smart set had Bush pegged. Since then he's gone on to unanticipated glory, while their fellow Gore has been relegated to off-the-record lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School. Gore's name was briefly floated as a candidate for the presidency of Harvard, but then it turned out he wasn't smart enough for that job. Somehow, in our society, know-it-alls always get the short end of the stick.

Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is editor of The American Spectator Online (www.spectator.org).