President George W Bush is an extremely clever person. Common sense does not support this statement. We have all seen the President on television losing election debates to John Kerry, being unable to say ‘nuclear proliferation’ and losing his place in his notes.
The common sense approach would say: ‘I see Bush making a fool of himself. Therefore Bush is stupid.’ But common sense is the ability to link two concepts together. It is also the inability to link more than two concepts together. Common sense has, in the past, given us some wonderful two-concept logic.
The earth looks much bigger than the sun. Therefore the sun goes around the earth.
Men have the most power in society. Therefore men are more intelligent than women.
Metal is more dense than air. Therefore metal machines will never fly.
There are thousands of examples. Some of them are useful. None of them contribute to our understanding of the world. When we look at Mr Bush mumbling and grinning, the immediate impression is that here is an unintelligent man, out of his depth in the world of real problems and international complexities.
When we see our own Prime Minister, we are aware that behind the way he presents himself are such things as image consultants and speechwriters. The way he dresses, his body language, his hairstyle, the characteristic pauses in his speeches are all determined by advisors who have studied exactly what will appeal to the British electorate. He is an actor presenting an image determined by a team.
The nature of democracy forces David Cameron to do the same. The charade of Mr Cameron riding his bike to work only to be followed later by a chauffeur-driven vehicle bringing his work was not something that he initiated. In order to win as many votes as possible, political leaders need to convince people that they are the sort of person by whom they would like to be led.
In a way, shouting at Mr Blair for sending troops to Iraq or tutting at Mr Cameron for environmental hypocrisy is like seeing a soap actor and punching him in the face because he did nasty things in last night’s episode. A political leader’s public face is not the same thing as the person. This brings us back to George W Bush.
Mr Bush is the figurehead of the most profitable conglomerate in the history of the world. Behind the Presidency is the vast wealth represented by members of the Republican party, their companies, their allies and their financial interests. I don’t know the exact reason that the United States invaded Iraq. It appears that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Nor did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction.
However, there were power, votes and money involved. A measured time before the 2004 elections, President Bush appeared on an aircraft carrier in front of the slogan ‘Mission Accomplished’. His approval rating soared. He was seen as decisive. He had done something about the terrorists.
Whatever damage was to be done by the war, Mr Bush needed it. Democracy does not demand that the winner is popular most of the time. He just has to get enough votes on that day every four years when the people draw their crosses on a piece of paper. Starting a project that will benefit millions but will take 20 years to show the results may not be to the advantage of any politician. The voters will see expenditure and no results on polling day. Better to make a grand gesture at the right time, even if it benefits nobody.
Everyone over 18 gets the vote in a democracy. Everyone. There is no test to see if you understand the issues before they give you your form and send you in to decide the future of the country. It is not what politicians say that determine how you get their message. It’s how you hear it. Those people who decide what is on television and radio or in the newspapers are the ones who give us the information on which we base our voting preferences.
The Sun is the newspaper with by far the greatest circulation in the UK. The Sun has exerted an enormous influence that on past elections. Politicians need to tread carefully to win the approval of The Sun’s owners and editors if they want a chance in the next election.
And who reads The Sun? If you have ever read the political coverage in this paper you will know that its readers are not those who know or generally care what is going on. Tiny articles, the main points underlined, sensationalist headlines, all overshadowed by the allure of Page 3. And this is the major source of information for the great heartland of British voters.
It is similar in the US. The coastal university cities vote resolutely against Bush. Anywhere with a significant intellectual presence votes Democrat. Most people who know a reasonable amount about politics or issues don’t vote Republican unless they have money invested in the great Bush conglomerate. It’s the great mass who votes for him. These are the people who read their equivalent of The Sun, who want to be entertained, who want to be represented by someone like them. Not someone who speaks in sentences that they can’t understand.
Bush is like them. I don’t know who he really is but the genius of his image is that he’s the good ol’ boy that everyone can relate to. Yes, Bush seems to make a fool of himself. If you look closely, you can see that he spends a lot of effort drawing attention to his foolish acts.
When Bush addressed this year’s graduating class at Yale University, the part of his speech that was reported everywhere was the message about being able to become President with a C average. At the National Press Club dinner, the Bush team hired a lookalike comedian to stand next to the President and make fun of his most famous mistakes. Bush even mispronounced ‘nuclear proliferation’ as his script said. I laughed. Why shouldn’t I? I was being entertained by the world’s highest paid actor and comedian. Look at it on Youtube.
George Bush is not going to be deterred from his process of gathering the most votes possible by people thinking that he is stupid. There is too much wealth and power riding on his act. The fact that people around the world laugh at him is not something that bothers him. He is far too clever to be influenced by people who can have no effect on his ambitions. He could certainly act in a way that would show his real intelligence. But then he would lose his appeal to middle America. He would be just another politician using fancy words to confuse them. He would no longer be one of them.
In 1988 Dustin Hoffman, one of the great actors of the time, appeared in the film Rain Man as an autistic man. His Academy Award-winning performance was many people’s first exposure to autism. Believing that George W Bush is stupid is similar to believing that Dustin Hoffman is autistic because you have seen Rain Man. It is like punching that soap actor who beat his wife on TV last night. It is like thinking that Princess Diana was a saint. It is like believing that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is common sense.
Categories: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 6th, 2014 at 1:11 am
I just finished reading Interface by Neal Stephenson which describes a “nearer than we’d like to think” future view of a US presidential campaign.
The book conveys a deep resentment for the current state of, not necessarily politics, but the process of advertising and marketing in order to gain more votes than the competition, in complete separation to actual policy or anything that really matters.
It was published in 1994 and set in 1996 which, I think, lends credence to the my opinion that the author’s view is that the situation described in the book is essentially the present rather than the future.
April 1st, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Hi Daniel,
This is a reply to a post you did way back in January. I wasn’t very organised then.
We’ve just been through an election campaign here. At one stage, what is called the Deep State was exposed. This is the real power in Turkey – a conglomeration of the military, the rich, the politicians and the ‘terrorists’ who decide what is going to happen. Examples of the whole apparatus have surfaced on Youtube and Twitter. They were promptly blocked by the government. The net result was a 5% drop in votes for the ruling party. People don’t really care.