I read an article in the Washington Post this morning entitled "Pundits Renounce The President". The first two paragraphs are pretty powerful:
For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"
But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."
The article goes on to report on how various pundits such as George Will and Thomas Friedman are abandoning support of Bush and then concludes by referring to Scarborough again:
Few have struck a nerve more than Scarborough, who questioned the president's intelligence on his show, "Scarborough Country." He showed a montage of clips of Bush's famously inarticulate verbal miscues and then explored with guests John Fund and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. whether Bush is smart enough to be president.
While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."
"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."
Now what really irritates me is the fact that he didn't say this during the last presidential election campaign. Anybody could see that Bush is an idiot by watching the debates. So now the conservatives are concerned. Too little, too late, chums. Unless, of course, some of these same pundits throw their support behind Democrats in November. I'm not holding my breath.
It is ridiculuous to expect your political opponent to do your work. The Democrats may not be idiots but they act like they have no ideas. No definite position on anything, no vision for the future, no hope for the present. If they win the election it will be by default, because the Republicans did not show up.
ReplyDeleteAh, another drive-by comment from "Anonymous".
ReplyDeleteIf the pundits (who supported the Republicans last time but who NOW think Bush is stupid) DON'T support the Democrats, they are irresponsible hypocrites.
If you think the Democrats have no vision or ideas, it's because the right-wing media has painted them that way. Plenty of Democrats have excellent ideas but they are not getting adequately reported. Hillary Clinton's manifesto on energy knocked my socks off. Al Gore is trying to save the planet for God's sake. If that's not vision, I don't know what is. My quarrel with the Democrats is that, until recently, they haven't been standing up to the administration (the last two Supreme Court appointments being a case in point) and that they aren't SCREAMING about fraudulent electronic voting. But don't fault them for lack of vision. Vision is what Democrats DO.