Bush and Friends

During Bill O'Reilly's second Presidential interview, both men paused to wonder why intellectuals (or, in their words "Professors") don't like Bush. Neither could come up with a reason. hmmmh.

It's actually not that difficult to figure out, though. This morning, a prime example happened when Ditzy Chick was interviewing James Rubin on FOX. The subject was intelligence on Iraqi WMD and what Bush's response was to that. E.D. constantly repeated the notion that 'everyone' believed Saddam had WMD before the war, and it was only Bush who was courageous enough to do something about it. Leaving aside the fact that not everyone believed that Saddam had WMD before the war (this writer included), this unilateral action required multiple leaps of logic to be on board with the President. These leaps of logic were never filled in by the President, and it is one of the many reasons why "professors" aren't all that into Bush.

Whether as a regular person or as President, every course of action one undertakes should go through a series of logical arguments as to whether or not it is logical given the information at hand. Bush rarely leads us through this sort of logical progression; neither for the Iraq war, nor for most other policies ("clear skies" and "healthy forests" are two easy examples in which this administration disregarded science on what should be scientific issues). All we heard was public ridicule of long-term allies and accusations of treason against Americans who were not yet convinced, not a logical argument about why we needed to do this. The logical gap that the administration took us through was when the argument for war jumped from what we believed Saddam might have based on our best guess to this notion that the only available alternative was pre-emptive aggression. Also, there was painfully little describing how this pre-emptive war would help our cause in fighting extremist Islam after the war was over. I believe that rational folks here in the U.S. and in the leadership of closely allied countries did ask these questions, and decided that they could not support the war due to the gap in the logical argument between point A (some evidence suggests Saddam has WMD) and point B (we need a war regardless of how Iraq and the Middle East will look like afterwards)

These sorts of gaps in logic, based on faith that the President is a regular guy because he stumbles over his own words while speaking in public may work in Wyoming or Montana, but why is it difficult to figure out why they won't work with "Professors?" The logical gaps and leaps of faith are dangerous because they make it tempting for more logic-minded folks to speculate on the "real" reasons why the administration embarked on this course of action (was it for oil, was it to dominate the region, were we duped by Iran via Chalabi?). It is this need to second-guess the administration's real motives behind an action that makes it so ineffective, and therefore we need someone else at the top.

Update: Atrios, referencing the Daily Show, notes that it really shouldn't be that "impressive" that Bush didn't get the questions in advance! A comment from the link nails it: " You mean like any other world leader does on a regular basis? Ugh...we have dumbed down so much that to think our president can answer questions about his own job is preposterous."