Paul Thomas: Bush's brightest tactic may be convincing us he's dumb

COMMENT


Calling George W. Bush dumb can no longer be regarded as a bold and piercing insight, on a par with pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Bush's stupidity has attained the status of conventional wisdom, notwithstanding that some of those belabouring the point probably see themselves as being out there at the cutting edge of contemporary thought.

Far be it from me to intrude on their fantasy world but conventional wisdom needs to be questioned: what is it about Bush that encourages the assumption of dumbness, and dumb compared to whom?

The trouble with having a famous father is that all your achievements can be directly or indirectly credited to him. According to this reading of the rise and rise of George W, he only got to be a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world because Daddy's cronies in the Texas oil industry and the Republican Party needed a frontman to serve and protect their interests.

Of course money-making, especially of the entrepreneurial and somewhat mysterious variety, may owe more to low cunning and sharp practice than intelligence.

Not surprisingly given its theoretical basis and utopian vision, the political left has never found much to admire in the business community's rough empiricism and callous opportunism. A former Labour Minister of Finance liked to say that he hadn't had much to do with the boys from his school who ended up in business because he'd been in the top class.

Most of his constituents probably took the view that, to paraphrase the song, if being rich is dumb, I don't want to be bright.

Bush's inarticulateness certainly contributes to the impression of dull-wittedness although Ronald Reagan and Brian Tamaki are, in their different ways, examples of public figures whose gift of the gab wasn't and isn't seen as persuasive evidence of high intelligence.

His acceptance speech at the Republican Party convention was pure snake oil but then his Democratic opponent's corresponding effort with its preposterous beginning - "My name's John Kerry" (long pause, slow salute) "and I'm reporting for duty" - was hardly the Gettysburg Address.

There's the suspicion that Bush couldn't name the head of government of many of the states represented at the United Nations. But who could and what would it prove anyway, apart from the fact that he could do all right for himself on the quiz show circuit?

He appears unburdened by intellectual curiosity and his tastes, such as they are, seem determinedly low-brow. We know that Helen Clark prefers curling up with a novel to going to a rugby match but what of the Leader of the Opposition? According to a recent magazine profile, Don Brash doesn't read novels and likes listening to Neil Diamond and Gray Bartlett.

Brash gets called a lot of things but dumb isn't one of them. That's because he has a PhD, was the Governor of the Reserve Bank and looks like a grown-up version of the swot who sat at the front of the class with his hand permanently up and who wouldn't let you copy his homework.

And then there's Bush's record as President, seemingly one unilateral and divisive decision after another, culminating in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Right now that's not looking like a smart move; with each passing day the quagmire comparisons with Vietnam seem less alarmist.

It was John F. Kennedy, another Daddy's Boy, who embroiled America in Vietnam on the basis of a doctrine which held that the generalised threat to the homeland justified pre-emptive foreign interventions. JFK was assassinated before he could be called to account for Vietnam, and much else besides, but his errors and excesses are usually attributed to hubris rather than stupidity.

No other world leader would have invaded Iraq because no other world leader has the means to do so. One shudders to think what some of them would do if they did have the American military apparatus at their disposal.

Some people call Bush dumb because they don't understand what he's doing and don't think he does, either. Some call him dumb because he believes rather too fervently in God.

It all brings to mind a line from the movie The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Maybe Bush has encouraged the perception in the hope that it will cause his opponents and America's enemies to "misunderestimate" him. Maybe he's not as dumb as he looks.