George Bush Essay, Research Paper

The two major party presidential candidates this election cycle are indeed a paradigm of paradox: on one hand is a man who knows little yet is likeable, on the other is one who can explain chloroflorocarbon formation while tackling environmental foreign policy in a debate. Which candidate is worthy of the vote?

The leading Presidential contender, according to dubious late-election cycle polls, is George W. Bush. Never in recent times, not even in the 1980 election involving Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, has such a lack of intellectual prowess been seen in a forrunning candidate. One could be empathetic to the desire of many to elect those best representing the “average Joe” while thumbing their nose to intellectual credulity. Quite a few people see George W. Bush in such a light. Yet they are wrong.

George W. Bush is not the “average Joe”. Worse, he is’nt even close to it, on either sides of the bar. In fact, he quite possibly represents two of the leading disqualifying personality traits for any job: stupidity and arrogance. Regardless of his obvious inability to pronounce multi-syllable words and lack of knowledge of world affairs, George W.’s willingness to attack intellectualism and intelligence is an insult to the American people. This is a man, under his own admission, whose “adult” life began at the tender age of forty. Firebranding anybody who talks back to him as “elitist”, he singlehandedly has dumbed America down to his own dim level of awareness. It is the year 2000, pretty amazing to find Presidential candidates touting their own stupidity in an election cycle, huh? No presidential candidate ever went broke betting on the anti-intellectualism of the American people.

It is important to realize that the likeableness of a Presidential candidate has very little to do with his ability to get the job done. While simplistic pundits continue to hype George W. Bush’s lack of intellectual cynicism, little attention is paid to the consequences: we really are becoming dumber. An important quality in a Presidential candidate includes thoroughness and decisiveness. Bush displays, if not has, neither. Thinking in scattered thoughts rather than patterned reason, Bush never fails to dispoint those looking to him for a display at least the hint of a logical argument. Quite simply, he believes by reasserting his own shortsighted beliefs and viewpoints he makes them true. Arrogance is not a desirable attribute in any job, let alone the Presidency of the United States.

The Presidency is not a job on the high school student council, nor should it be the prerequisite popularity contest inherent to such. It is not a job to be performed by an “everyday Joe” nor should it be desired by the average folk. Neither is it the job to be performed by a lazy, anti-intellectual spoiled son of privileged American royalty, who believes he is entitled to a job simply because his father had it before he. Never expected to display reason or logical thought, Bush is the epitomy of both mediocrity and intellectual laziness.

It is interesting to note that while Al Gore’s exaggerations are relentlessly admonished by the mainstream media, George W. Bush has been relatively safe to such criticism. The news media has not been exactly quick to point out George W.’s defects of intellect, lest be labeled part of the “liberal elite”. Granted, the media have been less than vigilant to substantively criticize Gore’s constant role playing as saviour of the “middle-class”. Superficial and spurilous, Gore himself fails to realize those who work themselves out of the middle class do so not because being in the middle class is so glamorous, but because it is not. Together, dumb and dumber lead each other, and America, on not an information superhighway, but a cobblestone yellow brick road towards a mythical Oz known to the masses as Washington, D.C.

The Presidency of the United States, at last glance, does not require a resume listing blatant arrogance nor stupidity and it should’nt. As a nation, character traits inherent to the Office of the Presidency include integrity, decisiveness, thoroughness, responsibility, all which are prerequisite to the most important: legitimacy. George W. Bush tramples on all of the above, and does so in an incredibly efficient self-serving manner. Does the Presidency deserve to be ridiculed and begotten by the public election of such a fool? I wonder what the other George W., over two hundred years past, would think. It is the year 2000. Time to wake up.

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