In response to my You Tube link my old sparring partner Vic sent me this email:
I suggest that you consider the comparison of Kerry’s and Bush’s academic records, at http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles
/2005/06/07/yalegrades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_
student?mode=PF.ÂFurther, I suggest that a person can be intelligent and inarticulate, and can be intelligent and lack “intellectual curiosity”, and can be intelligent despite a lackluster academic record.
I would agree with you that Kerry puts words together better than does Bush. However, I would still rather listen to Bush than to Kerry (although I prefer to not listen to either of them), and I would still vote for Bush instead of for Kerry.
Are you going to seriously suggest that Harvard and Yale graduate idiots — or even admit them?
Vic
This was my reply:
Well Vic,
I’d say that just a because someone graduated from Harvard or Yale doesn’t guarantee that they can’t exceed the Peter’s Principle. You remember that one don’t you – about exceeding your level of incompetence. If ever there was a place where curiosity would have been helpful it would have been in the Oval Office during and after the attack on the World Trade Towers. Â
Bush seems to have deferred to his elders Rumsfeld and Cheney. Too bad they were so rigid and Bush so supine in dealing with them. They were older. They knew more. Bush trusted them. A more intellectually curious President might have put them on the spot about their big plans and seen some of the flaws that I kept reading about in the run up to the Iraq invasion. Even when word got out about problems after the invasion Bush’s supporters were like Bush in his dealings with Cheney and Rumsfeld. They didn’t show any doubt. They didn’t ask questions. They simply believed.
In retrospect, if I had to make a choice again between Kerry and Bush (I’d rather not) I’d prefer Bush won so we would realize who it was that mucked things up so badly. Funny, but that’s what I thought back in 2004 too and so did Pat Buchanan who is my political opposite. Kerry would have been crucified by the Republicans for being as luckless as Bush has been. Only for the first year of Bush’s second term did the Republican Congressman kept their mouths shut tightly about their President …..until their own reelections came into view.
Of Course, I didn’t vote for Bush in 04 because even though he deserved to be saddled with a second year [term] I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote for him like I did reluctantly in 2000. My first choice in 2000 was John McCain but he fathered a black child in South Carolina with the help of Bush’s supporters.
Perhaps that was a harbinger of things to come.
Harry
