February 22, 2005
HOW CAN SUCH A MORON BE SO SMART?:
Bush Unplugged (LA Times, February 22, 2005)
The conversations — segments from a dozen tape recordings made by onetime Bush family political advisor Doug Wead and played first for the New York Times — display flashes of the sort of personality quirks that endear Bush to his supporters and frighten his critics.Bush tells Wead, "The Bible is pretty good about keeping your ego in check" and says he stays humble by reading it every day. Yet he casts himself in grandiose terms, boasting that his popularity will "change Texas politics forever" by catapulting coattail Republicans to success when he wins his second term as governor.
While campaigning in 2000, he says he favored John Ashcroft as a vice presidential running mate because the right-wing senator "wouldn't say ugly things about me," suggesting that then, as now, he saw loyalty as the preferred litmus test for political picks.
And he demonstrates a political savvy that suggests that college grades and the ability to find Latvia on a map aren't the only measures of brilliance. Bush understands — in the same way Bill Clinton did — that the American electorate is eager to embrace the underdog, the fallible, the redeemed, and he manages to turn his self-described "wild behavior" as a young man into a political asset.
That certainly is what frightens them--he understands this stuff so much better than they do. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2005 9:19 AM
"boasting that his popularity will 'change Texas politics forever'"
Hmmm... to me it ain't bragging if it's true.
Posted by: Rick T. at February 22, 2005 11:34 AMTwenty-five years ago the main battles in Texas politics was between Democratic moderates and liberals at anything below the Senate level, where John Tower held down one of the two seats. Today, the main battles in Texas politics are between Republican conservatives and moderates, and the Democrats control nothing above the House or state senate level, with most of that change happening during Bush's 1998 guberatorial re-election year. Hard to deny Bush's success based on that, and the odds are unless the Republicans do themselves in, it's not going to change any in the 2006 election.
They also know that his college grades were good enough to get him into Harvard Business School, and that he knows exactly where Latvia is. Clinton's got him a Rhodes Scholarship and into Yale Law School, for that matter.
It's still interesting to note that neither Teddy Kennedy nor John Kerry were able to get into Harvard Law School. New England snobbishness wasn't enough.
Steve:
They've got their prejudices...let's not give them a clue, too.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at February 22, 2005 7:45 PM