"George W. Bush is Smarter than YOU".--(Disturbing Article, Stanford Professor)

[ROFL_GUY]

the author . He teaches at Stanford Business School, and was an economic advisor to Bush for over six years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Hennessey
Hennessey holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Political Science from Stanford University as well as a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.[1]

One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”

The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely.

I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you.”

More silence.

I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension, laugh, and admit I was joking.

I did not. A few shifted in their seats, then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago, here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.

President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.

In addition to his analytical speed, what most impressed me were his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were rehashing things we had told him long ago.

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.

On one particularly thorny policy issue on which his advisors had strong and deep disagreements, over the course of two weeks we (his senior advisors) held a series of three 90-minute meetings with the President. Shortly after the third meeting we asked for his OK to do a fourth. He said, “How about rather than doing another meeting on this, I instead tell you now what each person will say.” He then ran through half a dozen of his advisors by name and precisely detailed each one’s arguments and pointed out their flaws. (Needless to say there was no fourth meeting.)

So, how did Bush earn the reputation of being such a dummy?

Every prominent politician has a public caricature, one drawn initially by late-night comedy joke writers and shaped heavily by the press and one’s political opponents. The caricature of President Bush is that of a good ol’ boy from Texas who is principled and tough, but just not that bright.

That caricature was reinforced by several factors:
•The press and his opponents highlighted President Bush’s occasional stumbles when giving a speech. President Obama’s similar verbal miscues are ignored. Ask yourself: if every public statement you made were recorded and all your verbal fumbles were tweeted, how smart would you sound? Do you ever use the wrong word or phrase, or just botch a sentence for no good reason? I know I do.

•President Bush intentionally aimed his public image at average Americans rather than at Cambridge or Upper East Side elites. Mitt Romney’s campaign was predicated on “I am smart enough to fix a broken economy,” while George W. Bush’s campaigns stressed his values, character, and principles rather than boasting about his intellect. He never talked about graduating from Yale and Harvard Business School, and he liked to lower expectations by pretending he was just an average guy. Example: “My National Security Advisor Condi Rice is a Stanford professor, while I’m a C student. And look who’s President. ”

•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 Texan.

•President Bush enjoys interacting with the men and women of our armed forces and with elite athletes. He loves to clear brush on his ranch. He loved interacting with the U.S. Olympic Team. He doesn’t windsurf off Nantucket, he rides a 100K mountain bike ride outside of Waco with wounded warriors. He is an intense, competitive athlete and a “guy’s guy.” His hobbies and habits reinforce a caricature of a [dumb] jock, in contrast to cultural sophisticates who enjoy antiquing and opera. This reinforces the other biases against him.

The author's challenge to us is reasonable

ask you simply to consider the possibility that I’m right, that he is smarter than you.

If you can, find someone who has interacted directly with him outside the public spotlight. Ask that person about President Bush’s intellect. I am confident you will hear what I heard dozens of times from CEOs after they met with him: “Gosh, I had no idea he was that smart.”

At a minimum I hope you will test your own assumptions and thinking about our former President. I offer a few questions to help that process.

Upon what do you base your view of President Bush’s intellect? How much is it shaped by the conventional wisdom about him? How much by verbal miscues highlighted by the press?
Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he’s from Texas or because of his accent? Because he’s an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?
This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent.” Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?
And finally, if you base your view of President Bush’s intellect on a public image and caricature shaped by late night comedians, op-ed writers, TV pundits, and Twitter, is that a smart thing for you to do?

http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

 

[Rarely-Wrong Liggins]

I've said many times that Bush was not a stupid man. That "oh shucks" persona lulled his opponents into a false sense of security because they underestimated the man. He understood the average American and politician preferred the "cowboy" approach to the professor approach. The average American doesn't understand the details and he used that to his advantage time and time again.

 

[BlvdBrawler]

I've said many times that Bush was not a stupid man. That "oh shucks" persona lulled his opponents into a false sense of security because they underestimated the man. He understood the average American and politician preferred the "cowboy" approach to the professor approach. The average American doesn't understand the details and he used that to his advantage time and time again.

Pretty much.

 

[Kalik]

I really aint had no qualms with Bush ... I was eating good during them years

 

[iamstr8fire]

I've never disillusioned myself enough to think he was a stupid man. All this article talks about is his memory though. You can have a ridiculous memory and not be the brightest bulb in the box. The fact of the matter is he made a bunch of questionable decisions as the POTUS. Him having a photographic memory doesn't change that.

 

[ROFL_GUY]

hes very "CUNNING"


W. being interviewed by an international journalist.. he drops the "act" but the "cunning" is in full effect

 

[Fillerguy]

It doesnt take much to impress you guys.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

He was smarter than the average person, but he's intellectually dumb on a scale of Presidents. I can't think of a President in the last 100 years or so that wasn't significantly smarter than him.

 

[Broke Wave]

I really aint had no qualms with Bush ... I was eating good during them years

fukk off

 

[Kalik]

I can't vote anyways breh... Im on green card status.

Doesn't matter who in office, I gotta eat by myself. Can't get no welfare... Presidents dont matter to me. Obama my man, tho. Smashin Bey an all

 

[Meta Reign]

He was smarter than the average person, but he intellectually dumb on a scale of Presidents. I can't think of a President in the last 100 years or so that wasn't significantly smarter than him.

Because you know the intellectual capabilities of every president over the last 100 years.

Smarter than the average person but dumb on a scale of presidents? The post right here reveals so much about you. You sure know how to put some pres-puccie on a pedestal. Sh!ts disgusting.

 

[True Blue Moon]

People did start ODing on the Bush is dumb jokes. I used to hate my US History class because of all the white kids' "nucular" jokes.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

Because you know the intellectual capabilities of every president over the last 100 years.

Smarter than the average person but dumb on a scale of presidents? The post right here reveals so much about you. You sure know how to put some pres-puccie on a pedestal. Sh!ts diagusting.

Go stalk Ron Paul with a stack of business cards and a shoe shinebox fakkit.

 

[Meta Reign]

Go stalk Ron Paul with a stack if business cards and a shoe shinebox fakkit.

Right after you exfoliate with Obama's baby batter, you faqgot.

 

[ROFL_GUY]

It doesnt take much to impress you guys.

you fell for the scam


why does it seem that nobody here has considered the fact that it was a concious decision to 'dumb-down' his appearance to the public?
Politics is all about perception, and G.W.B. comes from Texas. He is incredibly well educated, and comes from an extremely prestigious, privileged and wealthy family.
Considering that a number of Republican voters are none of these things, he tried to mould his public persona into something they could relate to.