William Buckley on Bush

Well. it helps to have Daddy's lawyers and Daddy's money and Daddy's Saudi pals to cover for you until you're 40. Sweetheart ballclub deals don't hurt, either.

 

W could lose a one-team race until he was handed the Ranger deal . . . which Harold Stassen couldn't have fumbled . . .

 

That Bush -- intellectually incurious, publicly inarticulate and underwhelmingly dynamic --could serve two terms as president dovetails perfectly with the dumbing-down of U.S. culture in general. Bush is to society what sodoku is to crossword puzzles.

 

Bush got elected primarily because he sounded like ``one of us.'' He wasn't some intellectual, just a regular guy (at least, that's the perception of much of the general public and that's the image he cultivated, even if it isn't the truth). The campaign was that he was one of us, while Gore and Kerry were ivory tower intellectuals who couldn't relate to regular people. It'll be interesting to see if anyone tries that strategy again in 2008 or if Bush's record has made people wonder if it might be better to have an intellectual than a ``regular guy'' in the White House.

 

"One of us?" How men in Cleveland who work with their hands voted for Bush is one of the great mysteries of our time.

 

"Oh . . . look . . . men, kissing . . . " :

 

Our fuckface secretary of state Ken Blackwell made sure a lot of those men didn't get a chance to vote.

 

Care to provide proof other than the throughly-discredited rantings of RFK, Jr.?

 

RFKJR is never going to be president of anything, but I'd rather give him the time of day than dirtbag Diebold.

 

Not quote "thoroughly discredited," Your Holiness.
And Greg Palast still stands pretty much unrebutted, as far as I know.

 

Can I just say that I don't want my president to be an "average guy." I want my president to be better than that. Much better than that. He's going to be in control of a massive weapons system and military, he's going to present a face to the rest of the world and he's going to wield an enormous amount of power. So I don't think there's anything wrong with holding my president to a higher educational standard.

If people are going to use the higher moral standard they used against Clinton, then they need to apply that same concept, this time in terms of education, intelligence and appearance, to the Shrub.

I'd much rather have my president be able to speak coherently than worry about what he did to an intern.

 

I assume you're holding up the Salon.com piece as the Bible on this topic.

Not in the mood for a pissing match about Ohio 2004 right now, but I'll say this: Sometimes, the self-proclaimed fact-checkers need a little -- or in some cases, a lot -- of fact-checking of their own.