Bush Smarter than Kerry?
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| Fri, 08-06-2004 - 8:57pm |
'THE KERRY BRAIN
http://dbsoxblog.blogspot.com/#109162538493538368
Something’s been bothering me about John Kerry. I just don’t think he’s that smart.
One of the axiomatic dynamics of this presidential race has been that Bush is a dolt while Kerry is highly intelligent. But if Kerry is so bright, where has he been hiding his allegedly fearsome intellect? Does “I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it†sound like the workings of a brilliant mind? And yet the Adam Nagourneys of the world continue to insist that Kerry is remarkably “complex†with an uncanny sense for nuance. But I’ve come to a conclusion: He’s not particularly smart.
Let’s take a look at his academic record for illustration. As a control for our study, let’s use another party who for the purposes of this analysis we’ll call George W. Bush. As we all know, Ivy League admission back in the 60’s and 70’s was highly political. If you had the right connections, your ticket was all but punched. Thus, Kerry and Bush had no trouble gaining admission to Yale. Both hailed from the same prestigious prep school and had a surfeit of family “pull.â€
At Yale, Bush was a famously indifferent student. Once out of Yale, Bush was an even more famously indifferent national guardsman. And yet a few years after emerging from New Haven, Bush gained admission to Harvard Business School, no doubt thanks to family connections and an academic performance that though quite unimpressive suggested that he would be able to handle the work at HBS.
Now the allegedly big-brained Kerry graduated Yale a couple of years before Bush. Kerry, unlike the President, is not a famously dunderheaded student; he was supposed to be blessed with his preternatural sense for nuance in the crib. After graduating Yale, Kerry burnished his resume by being a war hero first and a media star second. So after this impressive performance, where did he go to law school? Boston College.
(None of what follows is intended as a slight towards Boston College or its law school. B.C. is a wonderful institution that has produced many wonderful graduates including Michael Adams and Doug Flutie.)
If you’re not from Boston, you might be unaware of the following truth: No one here, in spite of Boston College’s undeniable strengths, would eschew an invitation to attend Harvard Law School to attend B.C. It’s simply not done. Thus we can reasonably infer that Kerry did not get in to Harvard Law.
And that’s remarkable. Given his family connections and his post graduate work both in the war and later protesting it, his admission should have been a given. The only thing that would explain Kerry not getting into Harvard would be that he performed dreadfully at Yale. Indeed, he would have had to perform at a level that would have raised the prospect that he couldn’t handle the work at Harvard. His efforts were probably so weak, they could even be described as sub-Bushian.
The reason this matters is because a key subtext for the Kerry campaign is that he’s smarter than the incumbent. The Senator, with his ear for subtlety and his eye for complexity would have seen through intelligence errors that fooled the rest of the world. Or so his campaign would have you believe.
I’ve scrutinized Kerry’s record searching for evidence of his purportedly giant intellect. I’ve found none. His academic biography includes no Latin words like “laude†or “magna.†Who knows? Maybe Kerry’s just being modest and doesn’t want to boast about decades old accomplishments. But I doubt it.
Of course, the Kerry campaign could prove me wrong by releasing transcripts of his time at Yale and Boston College. What about it, Kerry campaign – care to weigh in on this?
(Correction: Bush and Kerry did not go to the same prep school. One went to St. Paul, the other to Andover. I can't keep straight who went to which - sorry.)'
Renee ~~~

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Scenes From a Presidential Roadshow, Raw and Uncut
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: August 9, 2004
WASHINGTON
Maybe it was the moment last week when President Bush chomped down on a raw ear of corn at an Iowa farmers' market that the absurdity in any American presidential campaign became clear.
"Oh, yeah, you don't even need to cook it," the president said assuredly, husk in hand, as the cameras recorded every bite. "It's really, really good."
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On television or in newspapers, campaigns appear to have a grown-up coherence: articles and broadcasts about the day's events are organized around specific themes, like the loss of jobs in Ohio, or about something newsworthy the candidates said.
But to travel with Mr. Bush through three days and five states last week was to join a sometimes loopy roadshow, with Mr. Bush as the lead performer. From a speech at a Knights of Columbus convention in Dallas to a stroll through soybean fields in southern Minnesota to a campaign rally four blocks away from Senator John Kerry in Davenport, Iowa , the president seemed increasingly loose.
By the time he did a 90-minute turn as a kind of talk show host (his description) for an "Ask President Bush" session in Columbus, Ohio, the nation's chief executive was either so merry or so tired that he did not even bother to hide the fact that the event was classic political stagecraft and that the voters arrayed before the television cameras were invited guests with prepared endorsements of administration policies.
"I've asked some citizens to come and help me make my points," Mr. Bush began.
So when Linda Wagner, a registered nurse and the director of employee education at the OhioHealth hospital network, failed to mention in her testimonial that people who go back to school for job training end up with higher salaries, a point the Bush campaign wanted to emphasize, the president helped her along.
"I don't know if, Linda, you're in a position to say this, but most people who go back to school for the new jobs end up making more money," Mr. Bush said.
"Absolutely," Ms. Wagner replied.
Mr. Bush grinned to the crowd, signaling his success with Ms. Wagner. "Yes, she was," he told them, in an exaggerated aside. "That's good."
Later, when Phil Derrow, the president and chief executive officer of the Ohio Transmission Corporation, told Mr. Bush that his company made pumps and compressors and basically sold air to its customers, Mr. Bush rejoined: "You and I are in the same business. Is it hot air, by any chance?"
With his microphone in hand, pacing a stage set up like a boxing ring in the middle of a crowd of 2,500, Mr. Bush also found time to digress, to free-associate and to wander down presidential cul-de-sacs.
"I'll tell you an interesting story, and it's one that touched my heart," Mr. Bush began. "Seven people came to the Oval Office, seven Iraqi men. Walking in that Oval Office, by the way, is a pretty interesting experience." Outside the office, Mr. Bush said, people who are upset with him say things like, "When I get in, I'm going to tell him what-for." But once they enter the Oval Office, he said, they are overwhelmed, and all they can say is, "You're looking good, Mr. President."
It was in Iowa that the roadshow reached its high - or low - in political black humor when three Davenport banks were robbed while Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry had the city's entire police department otherwise engaged. ("I just want to assure you that both President Bush and I have very firm alibis," Mr. Kerry said afterward.)
It was also in Davenport that Charlie Brooke, the Republican mayor, became the only member of the G.O.P. to publicly veer from the roadshow's script. Chatting with reporters in LeClaire Park along the banks of the Mississippi shortly before the president's motorcade roared up, Mr. Brooke said that he had not made up his mind about voting for Mr. Bush because he did not like Vice President Dick Cheney.
"I don't think he's really representative of the country," Mr. Brooke said, adding that he would prefer Senator John McCain of Arizona as the vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket.
After Mr. Bush's Davenport speech, his motorcade zoomed toward the nearby town of Bettendorf, where it stopped at a small farmers' market. The president hopped out of his limousine, strode over to Ken Thomsen's corn stand and bought some half-dozen ears with cash from his pocket. Then he peeled back one of the husks and bit into a raw ear.
With the image recorded by a half-dozen photographers, Mr. Bush lingered for a few minutes against the backdrop of local color, hopped back into his limousine, jetted to Minneapolis, then boarded Marine One for a 30-minute helicopter ride to Mark and Shirley Katzenmeyer's farm in southern Minnesota. He landed in a clover field, made a speech announcing a conservation program to protect wetlands and wildlife, and was soon back in the sky.
Less than 24 hours later, the roadshow was in Ohio as the talk show host encouraged his listeners to speak up with queries for "Ask President Bush."
"Go ahead, yell it out," the president said. "If I don't like the question, I'll reinvent it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/politics/campaign/09letter.html
Here is the part of the transcript covering that topic..
KING: Where were you?
KERRY: I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting -- we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.
HEINZ KERRY: You walked out with John McCain, didn't you?
KERRY: Yes.
KING: You and what?
HEINZ KERRY: He and John walked out together.
KING: He and John McCain walked out -- what did you think?
Did you think...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: I knew instantaneously...
KING: Clinton said he though bin Laden.
KERRY: I knew instantaneously with the first. I'm a pilot, and I looked at the weather, and it's what we call in pilot lingo CAVU, ceiling and visibility unlimited. And I knew that that plane did not fly into that building accidentally, as people were speculating. It just doesn't happen, could not, under those circumstances. So I knew it was deliberate, whether it was suicide, whether it was something -- I couldn't tell. When the second plane hit, it was obvious to the world.
And as we went out of the building, my immediately feeling was, we're at war. I mean, that was the sense, that we are under attack. People are attacking the United States of America and we needed to respond.
KING: Were you scared?
KERRY: No, I wasn't scared, I was angry. I was very angry.
Thanks for that answer. I can see how that would have made a huge difference in the unfolding of events. I can understand looking back and reviewing the chain of events. But when it comes down to nit picking 7 minutes, all I can say is that people are reaching to find fault. Such a shame.
<<"If something was in motion already, what was it & who initiated it? Clearly it wasn't Bush.">>... how do you know that "clearly it wasn't Bush"?
My view is that he should be asking questions, giving orders, making some phone calls himself.
<: ) There was a lot more to my post than that one statement. That was the conclusion, the result of a plan already in place and in motion. I could never be a politician, how frustrating to have your comments continually misquoted and/or taken out of text. Just shows ya how easy it is to spin something to reinforce a point, valid or not.
And still, I have yet to see anyone suggest just what the President was going to do in those 7 minutes, with the exception of ordering civilians plane(s) shot down. I don't know, but if at the point on the second plane hitting, it seems as though that was the realization that this was not an isolated incident and something much more. Was the President the one that was going to go on the fact finding and figure it all out? Collect all the information himself, or don't we have agencies, from the federal all the way down to the local levels that are specifically appointed to do that job? >
No, it's not your job to know, but, you are speculating that Bush did the wrong thing, so based on that I assumed that you had more information and knew, for fact, that things went undone in those 7 minutes. I guess I was wrong. You don't know that, you are choosing to 'know' that. Big difference. Thanks!
Thanks for that answer. I can see how that would have made a huge difference in the unfolding of events. I can understand looking back and reviewing the chain of events. But when it comes down to nit picking 7 minutes, all I can say is that people are reaching to find fault. Such a shame.>
My view is that he should be asking questions, giving orders, making some phone calls himself. "
No, my view is that I don't know that at that point in time there was much for the President to do. The second plane had just hit and he was told. Prior to that, besides John Kerry, I don't know that anyone KNEW that this was more than an errant plane, although it was quizical as to how a plane could go off course and hit one of the towers. My view is that what ever the senario of how and when it was appearant that this was an attack on the US, an action plan was set into place. Now, if you have proof that our government has no such plan, great, I'll have a problem with that. If you can tell me that there were no 'experts' sizing up the situation, that there is no emergency plan in place when a disaster hits, that for 7 minutes our police force, special agents, military, national guard, etc, were all sitting around waiting for the President to tell them what to do , then we've got much bigger problems.
I'm sure glad that our police and fire departments in our town can respond to an emergency without having to get marching orders from our mayor.
It is very easy, if you want to believe that President Bush is a dunce, to paint those 7 minutes as him being an idiot without a thought in his head or a plan of action. With the proper spin, 7 minutes can become an eternity. Michael Moore seems to have successfully, through artful technique, turned these 7 minutes into one of Kerry's talking points (so much for taking the high road he talked about pre and during the convention).
With the same artful technique, or simply a different frame of mind, one could portray the President as being restrained, and thoughtful. Not jumping to conclusion and acting on impulse BEFORE all the facts were in. After all, he was not going to be the one to gather those facts, and of course, it was not up to him to contact every agency with the information, they should be reporting it to him.
Just as in our hospital in the case of a mass casualty, we have a plan that is set in motion BEFORE we know exactly what is happening. We, those with the authority and expertise, make assessments and adjustments as more and more information comes in during a caotic situation. We do not need the CEO of the hospital, or the Director of Medicine to get the ball rolling. Why is it so unbelievable that as this began to unfold, there weren't already steps being taken and therefore, until enough information was gathered, there was nothing for the President to do? The only real possibility that has ever come up would have been to make the order to shoot down civilian planes, if someone can tell me that the plane that struck the Pentagon, and the plane that crashed in PA could have been shot down, and that the President could have or did have knowledge that those 2 planes carried highjackers, and that ordering the shoot down during those 7 minutes would have resulted in a successful mission, then I'll consider that the President didn't act properly. Until then, it's all speculation meant to discredit the President, with nothing to back up the allegations. So it's empty.
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