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IS AMERICA READY FOR AN INTELLIGENT LEADER?
By Robert Bridge
Moscow News, Russia
Oct 18 2007
I am not exactly sure when the tradition began, but we Americans have
a natural fondness for folksy, down-to-earth, unsophisticated men to
lead us to wherever the hell we are going. Our commander-in-chief
should be a man of the people, unpretentious, preferably male and
chummy. We want to feel that it would be almost natural to toss back
beers with him at the bar while discussing last night's college
football game. A Ulysses S. Grant type of guy: whisky, whiskers,
cigars, the full nine yards. A real man's man.
Americans like straight talk, like the terse verse of a used-car
salesmen, or a loaded John Wayne with the safety off. Unlike the
loquacious Brits, our Atlantic cousins, Americans don't care to
have their tongues twisted around a verbose vernacular. Oh, drat it
tarnations, I'll just spit it out: Americans like stupid presidents.
Yessir we do. Yee-haw! Why? Well, whenever our semi-literate
politicians are forced to speak extemporaneously, they remind us that
had we too been born rich and indifferent to our college grades, we too
could have been blotching speeches at the podium during major summits.
It seems that America's romance with power dolts began with the late
Ronald Reagan (rest in peace, sir, together with America's national
healthcare), the former Hollywood star who could smile and wave to a
crowd in such a manner that the stock market would instantly rocket
50 percent. Even the Soviets, not to mention the Berlin Wall, fell
for Reagan's guffaw and silly Star-Wars-may-the force-be-with-you
wisecracks.
Reagan paved the way for a whole lineup of court jesters, starting
with his vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush, whose Curriculum
Vitae includes U.S. Intelligence Overlord (it's politically suspicious
for Russian presidents to feature the underworld on their resume,
you see, but perfectly alright if you are a righteous U.S.
citizen), Skull and Bones secret society member, complete with secret
handshake, secret initiation rites, and probably even secret decoder
rings, and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity president.
If anybody had any doubts what sort of future president H.W. would
make, they were offered a peek preview when 'the Gipper' went under
for an operation to have polyps removed from his posterior. Bush the
Elder wasted no time jumping into the presidential briefs and spent
his eight hours as the most powerful man on the planet returning
volleys on the tennis court. Better than bombing some third world
country for eight hours, I suppose.
Although George H.W. Bush may not have been outwardly stupid per se,
he was nevertheless detached from the American heartland to such
a degree that during one disastrous photo op to a supermarket he
expressed amazement that his cashier was employing laser technology
against an innocent jar of Grey Poupon (My God, men, arrest these
women, they're all armed!). Forget the economy; it's the hi-tech
price checker, stupid!
Moving right along and none too soon, America eventually got the
president it deserved with William Jefferson Clinton. Slick Willy, the
42nd president of the United States, who is said to be able to solve
The New York Times Sunday Crossword with non-erasable ink when not
engaged in other extracurricular affairs, was certainly not stupid. But
just because you are not stupid does not necessarily mean that you are
capable of making prudent decisions at regular intervals. After all,
even the lowest breed of dog can learn cool tricks. And the one trick
that Clinton mastered - besides how to hold a telephone conversation
with the Senate while teaching a young female intern the ropes -
was how to profess to being a Democrat ('New Democrat' to be exact)
while behaving no better than a full-blown rabid Republican.
It has been crudely estimated that in the eight years that Clinton
played charades in the White House, he was only really a Democrat for
the last 42.5 minutes of his reign. This is roughly the time it took
for Wild Bill to ram through thousands of pages of before-the-buzzer
legislation to protect 95 million acres of endangered wildlife,
increase the minimum wage, pardon convicted cronies (on his last day
in office, Clinton issued 141 pardons and 36 commutations) and bomb
a Sudanese pill plant the day before a verdict was to be handed down
regarding obstruction of justice charges in the Monica Lewinsky case.
In the end, Clinton's last-minute moves only sparked a nasty reaction
from the Republicans, who immediately reversed much of this legislation
once they came to power. Can this sort of behavior be described as
intelligent leadership? You be the judge.
But the Clinton era, despite the liberal White House sleepovers and
sleep arounds, seems like a Gilded Age when compared to what was
hurling down the sewer pipe at 600 miles per hour.
In 2000, the tectonic plates of U.S. politics suddenly shifted,
the rainforests belched sulfur, and a whole new species of political
carnivore known as Neoconservative S. Crewus acquired the ability to
stand upright on two legs and even make speeches. As history and nasty
fate would have it, these fine young cannibals, under the tortured
leadership of George W. Bush, found themselves wielding the club of
superpower on 9/11/2001. Since then, and never before in the history
of politics - American or otherwise - has the world experienced a
more blatant display of brutal and unreserved Stupidity. Indeed,
the level of stupidity is so off-the-charts stupid that they can
only be described as acts of premeditated stupidity, underwritten by
America's supposed preference for stupid leaders.
As for being gosh-golly-gee-did-I-destroy-another-village stupid,
it is the perfect defense for unforgivably stupid political behavior.
How can we admonish a man, after all, who has nothing more than the
stupid pretensions of launching democracy into the Middle East from a
stupid aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf? Gee whiz, he might have
failed, but that's only because he is such an incredibly stupid guy.
All is forgiven. Allah forgives you!
A group of pimply teenagers in the basement of an Internet cafe in
Akron, Ohio could have micro-managed the War on Terror with fewer
mishaps than the Bush administration, which has violated every
military mantra ever written. What is the surest way to create a more
formidable enemy? Simple: Treat their prisoners of war as barbaric as
possible. Been there, done that in the sensory-deprived no-man's land
of Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib Summer Love-in, and the not-so-secret
torture facilities in former Warsaw Bloc freedom pits.
Bush's medieval motto: Torture only hurts if you are guilty.
Today, vendettas only promise to worsen between the warring tribes
now that it has been disclosed that corporate mercenaries on the
ground in Iraq gunned down two Armenian Christian women in Baghdad.
This comes on the heels of the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad's Nisour
Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by personnel from Blackwater USA,
a trigger-happy security agency that already has a long bloody history
of deadly screw-up's in Iraq.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. And that is just the tip of the stupid iceberg
in this stupid reign of error.
Is there an intelligent leader on the horizon to restore America's
basement-level standings? Personally, I believe the only man for the
task is 'former president' Al Gore, as much as the man annoys me to
tears. What if Gore had won the 2000 presidential elections... ?
Well, the world will never know, and the historians have no patience
for 'What if' scenarios. But it seems certain that had Gore been
elected (oops, sorry, he was) the U.S. would not be losing its global
standing, not to mention allies, by fighting yet another unwinnable
and unnecessary war.
Given Gore's recent nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting
climate change, America could be leading the fight against the real
enemy of global warming, instead of the shadow of an enemy of our
own stupid design.
Is America ready for an intelligent leader?
By Robert Bridge
Moscow News, Russia
Oct 18 2007
I am not exactly sure when the tradition began, but we Americans have
a natural fondness for folksy, down-to-earth, unsophisticated men to
lead us to wherever the hell we are going. Our commander-in-chief
should be a man of the people, unpretentious, preferably male and
chummy. We want to feel that it would be almost natural to toss back
beers with him at the bar while discussing last night's college
football game. A Ulysses S. Grant type of guy: whisky, whiskers,
cigars, the full nine yards. A real man's man.
Americans like straight talk, like the terse verse of a used-car
salesmen, or a loaded John Wayne with the safety off. Unlike the
loquacious Brits, our Atlantic cousins, Americans don't care to
have their tongues twisted around a verbose vernacular. Oh, drat it
tarnations, I'll just spit it out: Americans like stupid presidents.
Yessir we do. Yee-haw! Why? Well, whenever our semi-literate
politicians are forced to speak extemporaneously, they remind us that
had we too been born rich and indifferent to our college grades, we too
could have been blotching speeches at the podium during major summits.
It seems that America's romance with power dolts began with the late
Ronald Reagan (rest in peace, sir, together with America's national
healthcare), the former Hollywood star who could smile and wave to a
crowd in such a manner that the stock market would instantly rocket
50 percent. Even the Soviets, not to mention the Berlin Wall, fell
for Reagan's guffaw and silly Star-Wars-may-the force-be-with-you
wisecracks.
Reagan paved the way for a whole lineup of court jesters, starting
with his vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush, whose Curriculum
Vitae includes U.S. Intelligence Overlord (it's politically suspicious
for Russian presidents to feature the underworld on their resume,
you see, but perfectly alright if you are a righteous U.S.
citizen), Skull and Bones secret society member, complete with secret
handshake, secret initiation rites, and probably even secret decoder
rings, and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity president.
If anybody had any doubts what sort of future president H.W. would
make, they were offered a peek preview when 'the Gipper' went under
for an operation to have polyps removed from his posterior. Bush the
Elder wasted no time jumping into the presidential briefs and spent
his eight hours as the most powerful man on the planet returning
volleys on the tennis court. Better than bombing some third world
country for eight hours, I suppose.
Although George H.W. Bush may not have been outwardly stupid per se,
he was nevertheless detached from the American heartland to such
a degree that during one disastrous photo op to a supermarket he
expressed amazement that his cashier was employing laser technology
against an innocent jar of Grey Poupon (My God, men, arrest these
women, they're all armed!). Forget the economy; it's the hi-tech
price checker, stupid!
Moving right along and none too soon, America eventually got the
president it deserved with William Jefferson Clinton. Slick Willy, the
42nd president of the United States, who is said to be able to solve
The New York Times Sunday Crossword with non-erasable ink when not
engaged in other extracurricular affairs, was certainly not stupid. But
just because you are not stupid does not necessarily mean that you are
capable of making prudent decisions at regular intervals. After all,
even the lowest breed of dog can learn cool tricks. And the one trick
that Clinton mastered - besides how to hold a telephone conversation
with the Senate while teaching a young female intern the ropes -
was how to profess to being a Democrat ('New Democrat' to be exact)
while behaving no better than a full-blown rabid Republican.
It has been crudely estimated that in the eight years that Clinton
played charades in the White House, he was only really a Democrat for
the last 42.5 minutes of his reign. This is roughly the time it took
for Wild Bill to ram through thousands of pages of before-the-buzzer
legislation to protect 95 million acres of endangered wildlife,
increase the minimum wage, pardon convicted cronies (on his last day
in office, Clinton issued 141 pardons and 36 commutations) and bomb
a Sudanese pill plant the day before a verdict was to be handed down
regarding obstruction of justice charges in the Monica Lewinsky case.
In the end, Clinton's last-minute moves only sparked a nasty reaction
from the Republicans, who immediately reversed much of this legislation
once they came to power. Can this sort of behavior be described as
intelligent leadership? You be the judge.
But the Clinton era, despite the liberal White House sleepovers and
sleep arounds, seems like a Gilded Age when compared to what was
hurling down the sewer pipe at 600 miles per hour.
In 2000, the tectonic plates of U.S. politics suddenly shifted,
the rainforests belched sulfur, and a whole new species of political
carnivore known as Neoconservative S. Crewus acquired the ability to
stand upright on two legs and even make speeches. As history and nasty
fate would have it, these fine young cannibals, under the tortured
leadership of George W. Bush, found themselves wielding the club of
superpower on 9/11/2001. Since then, and never before in the history
of politics - American or otherwise - has the world experienced a
more blatant display of brutal and unreserved Stupidity. Indeed,
the level of stupidity is so off-the-charts stupid that they can
only be described as acts of premeditated stupidity, underwritten by
America's supposed preference for stupid leaders.
As for being gosh-golly-gee-did-I-destroy-another-village stupid,
it is the perfect defense for unforgivably stupid political behavior.
How can we admonish a man, after all, who has nothing more than the
stupid pretensions of launching democracy into the Middle East from a
stupid aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf? Gee whiz, he might have
failed, but that's only because he is such an incredibly stupid guy.
All is forgiven. Allah forgives you!
A group of pimply teenagers in the basement of an Internet cafe in
Akron, Ohio could have micro-managed the War on Terror with fewer
mishaps than the Bush administration, which has violated every
military mantra ever written. What is the surest way to create a more
formidable enemy? Simple: Treat their prisoners of war as barbaric as
possible. Been there, done that in the sensory-deprived no-man's land
of Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib Summer Love-in, and the not-so-secret
torture facilities in former Warsaw Bloc freedom pits.
Bush's medieval motto: Torture only hurts if you are guilty.
Today, vendettas only promise to worsen between the warring tribes
now that it has been disclosed that corporate mercenaries on the
ground in Iraq gunned down two Armenian Christian women in Baghdad.
This comes on the heels of the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad's Nisour
Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by personnel from Blackwater USA,
a trigger-happy security agency that already has a long bloody history
of deadly screw-up's in Iraq.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. And that is just the tip of the stupid iceberg
in this stupid reign of error.
Is there an intelligent leader on the horizon to restore America's
basement-level standings? Personally, I believe the only man for the
task is 'former president' Al Gore, as much as the man annoys me to
tears. What if Gore had won the 2000 presidential elections... ?
Well, the world will never know, and the historians have no patience
for 'What if' scenarios. But it seems certain that had Gore been
elected (oops, sorry, he was) the U.S. would not be losing its global
standing, not to mention allies, by fighting yet another unwinnable
and unnecessary war.
Given Gore's recent nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting
climate change, America could be leading the fight against the real
enemy of global warming, instead of the shadow of an enemy of our
own stupid design.
Is America ready for an intelligent leader?