JUST WIN, BABY :

Trying to Piece Together a Puzzling Presidency: Scholars Praise Bush Staffing, Fault Public Message (David S. Broder, September 3, 2002, Washington Post)

The people who teach and study the presidency find George W. Bush a puzzlement.

More than 20 of them wrestled with his personality and performance on panels at the Labor Day weekend convention of the American Political Science Association. Their provisional assessments ranged from simpleton to the strength and purposefulness of Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan.

"Simplistic, one-dimensional, lacking the analytical and intellectual skills the office needs, a Dan Quayle in sheep's clothing," said Michael A.
Genovese of Loyola Marymount University. "Emotionally secure, well-organized, staffed by able, competent and experienced people, not visionary but clear and specific in his goals, a political natural," insisted Fred I. Greenstein of Princeton University.

The political science profession has a distinctly liberal cast and, as Stanley A. Renshon of the City University of New York acknowledged, "In the left-of-center intellectual world, we put emphasis on cognitive complexity. Bush is not deep, but he has essential insights and he is strategic." [...]

George C. Edwards III of Texas A&M observed that Bush "has a self-confidence that has served him very well" not only in creating a sense of mandates for his tax cuts and education reforms, despite an election standoff, but also in his response to the terrorist attack. "That gave him an opportunity to build a new relationship with the American people, and he seized it," Edwards said. "There was no more talk of a stature gap after that."

He can't explain it but he just keeps winning victory after victory, the latest being Fast Track Trade Authority, which Bill Clinton could teach a seminar on but not get through Congress. If you're secure in yourself, victory is sufficient. If you're insecure, you need nitwits like these folks to think you're smart. The former makes you an effective president. The latter gets you a high ranking when professors poll each other. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2002 4:13 PM