Re: And why. . .? (long)

mpresley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Not wanting to turn this into a full blown political discussion, I will
> nevertheless comment about perceptions.  One of the mistakes of the left
is
> their superficial understanding of GWB.  On TV he is apt to come across as
> a buffoon, but to think that this is his actual political persona is
> wrongheaded.  What I am going to write next may sound incredulous to many,
> but W is a political genius.  He is currently pursuing a very dangerous
> path, and whether he can pull the whole thing off is a big question.  But
> he is no idiot.

<Lurker mode disengaged>

Please define the term "political genius". My definition is "oxymoron"


> No one grows up in and makes their way to the top of Texas politics
without
> a cunning wit and a ruthless streak.

Perhaps. But it doesn't require genius to be cunning and ruthless. Surely
those attributes are a prerequisite to becoming a successful politician.
You'll also find serial killers possess them ,too. But I don't hear many
people talking of  a "serial-killing genius"

>In this Bush is very much like LBJ.
> To the general public Johnson came across as a kind of nice old
grandfather
> figure.  To those who knew him, and to his enemies, he was one mean son of
> a gun.

Bush's meanness and his "son-of-a-gun-ness" is no guarantee of genius,
political or otherwise.[*] I'm sure there's a glut of even meaner sons of
guns in U.S. politics just waiting to fill GWB's kick-ass shoes and spend
billions on furthering the pentagon's vision of the  "warfare of the future"
whilst leading the "free world" into even deeper shit than it's already in.
(Any old fool can do that - remember Ronald Reagan? Star Wars? The Evil
Empire? Trickle down? genius???)

 However, it's going to take a real genius to stop the hatred and inevitable
reprisals that, due to  mean ol' sun-of-a-gun GWB's rootin'-tootin' foreign
policies, will most certainly be coming to a drive-in near you. Or if you're
unlucky enough, shipped to your door in a body bag as proof of President
Bush's unique brand of mean, cunningly witty "genius".

 [*] By all accounts Wagner could be a bit mean and cunning. . .I guess that
makes him a politicl genius, too. No? Maybe GWB would be better off writing
operas, then.

--
Chernobog