The Economist says good riddance to George W. Bush
The Economist pulled no punches in saying good riddance to George W. Bush. Consider the headline to this article:”The frat boy ships out.” The article has relatively few good things to say about the Bush Administration, especially when it comes to lack of fiscal restraint, but also the lack of smarts:
A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity” . . .
Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently . . .
The invasion of Iraq was like much else in the Bush years—an initial triumph that contained the seeds of disaster.
Category: American Culture, ignorance, Politics
About the Author (Author Profile)
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on consumer law litigation and appellate practice. He is also a working musician and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich and his wife, Anne Jay, live in the Shaw Neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, where they are raising their two extraordinary daughters.- Rachel Maddow says good riddance to Bush’s good-bye
- The accomplishments of President George W. Bush
- George W. Bush: The Bible is probably not literally true.
- Dennis Kucinich files 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush
- President Bush: 1) Good things just happen; 2) We don’t need to know whether fossil fuels cause global warming.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
} – 
