When frustrated by dishonesty, irony, gall, or some combination, ash gets it out of her system with a letter which practically wrote itself. One of those occasions produced exactly that:
Conservative elitist George Will once described Bill Clinton as “if not the worst president, the worst man to be president.” Regardless of one’s assessment of that declaration, I believe it is now time to designate George W. Bush “the dumbest man to be president.”
On Tuesday, September 17, 2002, Bush delivered a speech to a group of captive schoolchildren in Nashville, Tennessee, and it was quite a spectacle. Confining his “importance of education” lecture to what amounted to little more than patriotic propaganda, Mr. Bush prudently avoided touching upon the educational basics – you know, reading, writing, math, GRAMMAR – I could swear that all good conservatives emphasize to the exclusion of more “frivolous” subjects.
To the more mature observer of the event, broadcast live on all three cable news networks, it was glaring hypocrisy serving a dual purpose: to indoctrinate malleable young minds to Bush’s mindset while steering clear of the fundamentals – did I say grammar? – he apparently never learned in school. Who can forget, for instance, the tape played and replayed during his campaign of the impudent interviewer daring to quiz Bush on world leaders? Who cringes, as I do, every time an unscripted Mr. “It Seems Like to Me” struggles to string together a coherent sentence without “ums,” long pauses, and extraneous words? In a word, the sight and sound of this still not-ready-for-primetime, simple-minded, and inarticulate (if not unintelligible) politician sermonizing impressionable children was revolting.
Returning to Clinton (as Bush supporters tend to do whenever the fraud they were gullible and/or self-serving enough to vote for is challenged), call him what you will: corrupt, corruptible, sneaky, disingenuous, audacious, morally bankrupt. I concur. What cannot be disputed is that Clinton is self-made; Bush is anything but. Clinton, with no daddy and a dysfunctional childhood to say the least, managed to be elected president. Bush, with his daddy and his daddy’s daddy paving the way, managed to become president, barely, with much additional maneuvering. While Clinton may know no shame, Bush is too ignorant and obtuse to realize he’s not running the show. Clinton, born to any circumstances, would have been president. Bush, born to Clinton’s meager circumstances, might have become what he actually is: a cowboy.