Must our leaders be smarter than us?

     

After today's column, posted below, an anonymous reader wrote this:

     What I willn't believe is that you gave George Bush credit for anything. You wrote a column (not sure how to look up) at the end of his Presidency saying exactly that there was nothing good from it. You would not even give him credit for addressing AIDS in Africa.  This is standard oppositional crap. The new guy is terrible (fascist, communist, child beater) the previous standard bearer was much better and believable. You can's stand Trump I get it. But don't pretend to make yourself better by pretending 8 years later you ever gave Bush credit.     

     Sigh. Part of what makes dumb people dumb is they don't get the whole past-is-accessible-to-us-today-and-can-be-checked thing. Normally, I tell people I'm busy enough reacting to what I actually write without also addressing whatever you imagine I wrote. But since this wanker is so completely wrong, I couldn't resist illustrating one of the many examples of how I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt that his ilk always denied Obama. People just assume others are as unfair and doctrinaire as they are. We're not. At least I'm not. This ran before Bush even took office.

     Those Jay Leno jokes practically write themselves.
     I was reading a news account of how scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have just produced the highest density matter ever created experimentally.
     "Scientists," begins my imaginary Leno, expectantly rubbing his hands together, bouncing on the balls of his feet and surveying the audience, "at the Brookhaven National Laboratory . . . have smashed the nuclei of gold atoms together . . . creating the densest material known to man . . . outside of George Bush's brain."
     OK, I didn't say it was a good Jay Leno joke.
     But the fact is, Bush will be president in a few days, and we can expect a constant stream of ridicule based on the perception that the 43rd president is not the sharpest tack in the box.
Even NBC's hushed, reverent, presidential, image-building interview with Tom Brokaw had to include Bush's reaction to a snippet of Leno bashing Bush (a better joke than mine: basically that the president-elect and his dog have begun playing catch with a Frisbee since Bush "was tired of losing at Scrabble.") Bush replied, quite cleverly, that he goes to bed at 9:45, though first-lady-to-be Laura, who seems to suffer from candor, said that, yes, indeed it does hurt.
     The perception of Bush as dumb persists, despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, he has not uttered anything particularly stupid. Unlike with Dan Quayle, there is no enormous body of gaffes and spoonerisms supporting this perception. Bush hasn't said anything famously dumb.
Oh, there was that pop quiz of 1999, when a Boston TV reporter (TV reporters being famous for their vast sweep of knowledge) asked Bush to name the leaders of Chechnya, India, Taiwan and Pakistan.
     Bush punted all four, and while the story lingered, it did not particularly damage him among the electorate, perhaps because Americans are famously self-absorbed, and not one in a hundred could name any of those leaders, never mind all four. I certainly couldn't and neither could you.
     What has damaged Bush's reputation, I believe, is not his calling Kosovars "Kosovarians" or his C average at Yale, but his facial expression. He just looks dumb, paradoxically, because of a certain intensity, as if he is listening hard, trying to decipher a language he only barely understands. It was that lost, cross-eyed expression, punctuated by his hey-I-got-that-one-right smirk, that almost handed the election to Al Gore, whose robotic, facts-on-file demeanor has practically made being smart into a liability.
     Frankly, being smart is a liability, in the sense that being smart often blinds you to factors that frequently trump intelligence (why do you think they call it "dumb luck"?)
     Being smart certainly was Bill Clinton's undoing — it emboldened him into striding toward the mistakes and misdeeds of his presidency, under the false impression that a bright boy like himself could always bluff his way out, as he had in the past. (He did, in a way, but at what greater cost?)
     When I polled my colleagues over exactly why George Bush is seen as dumb, one blurted out: "I don't want a drinking buddy, I want a leader who is smarter than me."
     I don't. God save us from smart people. I am never so optimistic about Bush's prospects as when people are calling him an idiot. I still freshly remember an earlier president whom the chattering classes — myself among them — worked themselves into a sweat dismissing as a simpleton and a fool, filling little gift books with his mistaken statements about trees causing pollution and such. That president was Ronald Reagan, and history has been kind to him. Maybe George Bush will surprise us.      
     I mean, how dumb could he really be? He got himself elected president.
                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 11, 2001

For once, Donald Trump and I agree about something...

Display, Smithsonian Museum of American History

     One of the many benefits of not being, ahem, crazy, is that you can find value in those who oppose you.
     Had the sane path been available to Donald Trump, he might have shrugged off Khazr Khan’s scathing, Constitution-waving takedown at the Democratic National Convention, saved his silver bullets for a target more worthy than grieving Gold Star parents, even those who criticize a certain reality TV star. He could have defied expectations by saying something gracious.
     Instead, Trump leaped with a snarl into the spiked pit the Democrats had dug for him, then wriggled there for days, howling.
     The rational gambit isn’t available to Trump. One of the top hundred reasons he should never be president is he can’t restraint himself, can’t prioritize and is deaf to both grace and nuance.
     Four reasons, I guess.
     I, on the other hand, like to give credit where due, just because I can. All part of being a fair and decent guy. As much as I disliked George W. Bush, he was certainly strong on ....
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Nekkid photos of the (would-be) First Lady!

     Nekkid pictures of the would-be First Lady!
     Well, why not?
     From the day Donald Trump descended down the escalator at Trump Tower, declared Mexicans rapists, more or less, and launched a presidential campaign like no other, the idea of having sunk below all usual standards of taste, restraint or expectation has gotten a lot of use, if not been completely worn to a nubbin.
     Each day brings some fresh shock to raise a tingle in our blown-out senses.
    On Sunday, it was the New York Post, splashing nude photographs of Melania Trump, taken from a 1995 photo shoot, across the front page, complete with stars to obscure the naughty bits.
     Then Monday, a second front page, with nude lesbian photos of Melania Trump (which makes one shudder to think what Tuesday might bring).
     This raises so many issues I hope you will forgive me if I just number and list them, in reverse significance.
     1. In a world measured by clicks, does taste really matter? You don't read the New York Post every day—it's tawdry, though not typically this tawdry. But you'll look at it now, to check out the goods on Melania Trump. Which is what journalism has become, apparently.
     2. The whole thing could be a ploy by the Trump campaign. The New York Post, remember, is his ally, prone to splashing unflattering shots of Hillary Clinton with her ...

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GOP profiles in courage resist "danger to the Republic"

     The Houston Chronicle endorsed Richard Nixon. Three times. Not only for his successful runs at the presidency in 1968 and 1972 but his failed bid in 1960, calling him “the better way for Americans.” It supported Ronald Reagan twice, the Bushes four times. It backed Mitt Romney, as you would expect of a Republican newspaper in a Republican city in a Republican state.
     On Friday, the Chronicle endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, long before it would normally reveal a preference.

     “The Chronicle editorial page does not typically endorse early in an election cycle,” it noted, adding that it is already painfully clear that to support Donald Trump “is to repudiate the most basic notions of competence and capability.” The newspaper continued:

“Any one of Trump’s less-than-sterling qualities — his erratic temperament, his dodgy business practices, his racism, his Putin-like strongman inclinations and faux-populist demagoguery, his contempt for the rule of law, his ignorance — is enough to be disqualifying. His convention-speech comment, ‘I alone can fix it,’ should make every American shudder. He is, we believe, a danger to the Republic.”

     True, on rare occasions the Chronicle has supported Democrats — Johnson over Goldwater in 1964, Obama over McCain 44 years later. But their defection from the party is part of a significant Republican refusal to back its own candidate, one that deserves attention and applause. Because for patriotic Americans who care about their country, just the fact that Trump is running is profoundly sad, and says something dire about the judgment of our fellow citizens. We need a boost, and these GOP profiles in courage will be remembered long after the peril is past....

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Don't wait until Labor Day

    Typically, I am a great fan of photography as illustration. But sometimes pictures fail you. The Sistine Chapel comes to mind. No reproduction of Michelangelo's masterpiece prepared me for the thing itself, the sheer hugeness and grandeur of its scale. 
      Or the Chicago Botanic Garden. When  I saw the above study in green and yellow, it seemed so charming, I snapped a few pictures. But when I looked at the photos back home, they seemed flat, stilted. Something had been lost.
     You had to be there. Which is a good message for a beautiful Sunday. Photographs are not real, the on-line world less so. Sometimes you just have to be there and see a thing yourself. Edie and I spent a solid hour walking through the Botanic Garden this morning, not counting the time we studied the lovely exhibit on trees and woodworking. You don't necessarily have to go to the Botanic Garden, but try to go somewhere. July has flown. August is next. Don't wait until Labor Day to get out into it. 

Favorite blog adds new feature!

      Vanity is embarrassing. Or should be embarrassing. An exaggerated appreciation for oneself doesn't seem to give much pause to Donald Trump. But that itself is a cautionary tale to the rest of us. Don't be like him.

      So I hope this isn't a startling confession of ego and self-delusion.

      But I operate under the assumption that the columns and posts I write merit reading, or re-reading, even a year, or two, or three after they are written. I try, when I write them, to go for a tone that does not depend too extensively on the the particular issue of the moment, but instead clutch at a certain universality. You won't see a column on some fine point of the budget debate. I don't care, now, and assume few of you do as well, and none of us will care later.

      Toward that end, each morning I re-tweet what was posted on everygoddamnday.com one year, two years and, since July, three years ago. So many more people read the thing now—July will be another record month, averaging above 60,000 hits—that I thought I'd dangle past topics by readers, since they will be fresh discoveries for them. 

     These return visits have been exclusively something encouraged in the free-fire zone of Twitter. But recently Blogger began allowing us to highlight posts on our blogs, and I've added an element directly to the right of the main post  that will showcase what was here on this day in years past. I could do all three, but that's a lot so, after tweeting the stories having their birthdays, I'll select (or "curate" to use the dreaded buzzword) one post that I consider the most notable. Give it a glance and, if it seems intriguing, a read. And thank you for your patronage. 

A break from politics, sort of, with Japan's top bear

 

    This ran in the Sun-Times Friday. I didn't post it here, because I figured people had read enough about Kumamon Tuesday and wouldn't want more. But then I realized, some might have been put off by the 6,000-word treatise that ran in Mosaic, and might appreciate the 650-word, reader-friendly version. Plus it does have some elements not in the original. And how long can you puzzle over a photo? So, just in case, here it is:

     “Tell the world about our Kumamon,” urged Hoei Tokunaga, as we shook hands goodbye after a weekend together last March. That one sentence, so sincere, almost beseeching, somehow summarized my week in Japan.
     Tokunaga’s title is assistant deputy director of the Kumamoto prefectural government. In reality he is a coat holder for a teddy bear, one of 20 functionaries wrangling the massive business dealings, intense media interest and hectic publicity schedule of Kumamon, an imaginary black bear with red cheeks that is among the most popular mascots in Japan.
     Kumamon’s handlers claim he is on his way to becoming bigger than Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty. So I might as well introduce him to you, given that he is almost unknown in this country. In Asia, Kumamon sold $1 billion worth of merchandise last year.
     You may have noticed we are not talking about politics. That’s intentional. If President Obama’s passionate evocation of the power and glory that is America left you unmoved Wednesday, if Hillary Clinton’s address Thursday only intensified your doorjamb-biting hatred for her, what am I supposed to do? Politics is a 24-hour hobbyhorse and sometimes, to remain sane, a person should get off and let it rock by itself for awhile. Friday, the gateway to the weekend, is the perfect day to take a break. The bad dream that is Election 2016 will be waiting for us Monday, right where we left it.

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