The Stupidity Strategy

Back in the heady days of the turn of the century, in the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, I remember looking at the person that the Republicans had produced to lead their ticket and breathing a sigh of relief. He was so obviously out of his depth, so clearly unsuited to be president of anything, much less the entire country, that I assumed Al Gore pretty much had it made. Michael Moore said it best while he was out on the stump, campaigning with Ralph Nader: “This lectern,” he said, pointing to the lectern, “has a better chance of getting elected than George W Bush.”

Alas, he was wrong. We were all horribly wrong. We underestimated the resolve of the Republican party faithful, the ruthlessness of the political operatives that Bush surrounded himself with, the willingness of voters to look the other way, the country’s deep partisan divide. One thing we didn’t underestimate, however, was Bush’s intelligence. That would be very hard to do. The man just isn’t very smart.

But not dumb either, I don’t think. I’ve reluctantly come to believe in his politically savvy: in his ability to effectively leverage a strident anti-intellectualism in his effort to capture the hearts and … hearts of the country. He used his doltish rep to good advantage in the campaign, emerging from debates that he clearly lost as a sort of winner because he managed to occasionally put together a complete sentence, and didn’t at any point collapse in tears onstage. “I may occasionally mangle a syll - a - ble or two,” he said during one of them, cracking that fratboy grin we’ve come to know so well. He’s gone on to mangle a lot more than syllables, of course. Our country’s environmental and labor policies, our relations with other countries, our economy, our standing in the world are in tatters, just three years after the apocalypse of his election. It takes more than blatant stupidity to accomplish such wanton destruction in so short a time. It takes targeted stupidity.

The whole Bush method reminds me of a stand-up routine I heard a long time ago. “Yeah, I’m kind of stupid,” said the comedian. “Always have been. But it’s really not that bad. Gets me out of a lot of jams. Whenever I really screw something up, and some guy looks and me as says ‘What are you, stupid?’, I just shrug and say, ‘Yeah.’” This is why the press corps doesn’t seem to talk much about Bush’s aphasic, content-free extemporaneous speeches, why they always give him a pass after his disastrous (and rare) press conferences, why they don’t highlight his studied, lazy disregard for good, non-ideological, fact-based policy. “Yeah, we know,” they say. “What’s new?”

Jacob Weisberg has written a wonderful column for Slate analyzing Bush’s dumbness strategy:

Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush’s old answer to hard questions was, “I don’t know and, who cares.” His new answer was, “Wait a second while I check with Jesus.” … This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man’s greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41’s accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq’s supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues. As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

One of the big buzzwords of the Bush presidency, and of his campaign for a second term, has been “steadfastness.” No wishy-washiness here, no agonized debate, sifting of facts, contemplation of possible repercussions. Just a strident forging forward, an admirable “resolve”. The secret to this kind of resolve, of course, is an unwillingness to contemplate alternatives, a surrender to blind ideology. It’s hard to deny the political soundness of this approach; it got Bush where he is today. The problem is, it got the country where it is today, too.