One of the things that fascinates me about America is that it is the only modern industrial country that will elect leaders on the basis of how unintelligent they are. In Europe, if you are perceived as dumb, that’s it for your political career; voters there, not unreasonably, expect that the leaders of their countries be smart enough to run the damn thing. It would be as disasterous as admitting to being an atheist would be in the US.
Here, being smart is liability. American anti-intellectualism runs very deep. I expect that a candidate for Congress to say something like, “Well, I don’t know much about fancy finance. I’m just a plain ol’-fashioned boy. That’s why I think I’d be a good Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.“
Thus, we have the President of the United States making claims about another country that are, first, not true, and are, second, based on quotes that were lifted from an undergraduate’s paper, and, lastly, with all that, his staff didn’t even get the quotes and their context right.
And, here in Bush’s America, that’s no big deal.
posted 10:10 | trackback