Last week, I spent most of my time working at VCU-MCV with a 9.11 conspiracy theorist and a Bush-basher. As I was thinking about this over the weekend, I realized that people who buck the conventional wisdom and offer alternate theories most always sound more intelligent than those of us who accept the way things are presented to us. (Now, I'm not one to blindly accept what the media feeds me, but neither do I go looking for the most ridiculous possible explanation for something; neither will I swallow obvious, misinformed, and misguided supporting evidence for a theory--steel doesn't melt, Rosie O'Donnell?).
I do love being able to point out obvious fallacies in others' arguments, though (last week, though, it was very obvious that the best course of action was to keep my mouth shut--I just didn't want to waste my breath). When someone says that 9.11 was a conspiracy by the Bush administration to get us to invade Iraq and in the same breath claims that President Bush (a graduate of Harvard and Yale, by the way) is a mental midget...I'm not so sure that makes good sense. Yes, the man can't give a public speech to save his life; yes, he needs electro-shock therapy every time he says "nookyoolar;" and yes, his inability to master simple phrases (or his frequent malapropisms) make me wonder why Tony Snow doesn't sit him down and say, "Mr. President, you be the Decider; I'll be the Speechifyer." None of this means he's unintelligent--just that he shouldn't be allowed to speak in public. I mean, maybe I'm biased but I consider myself to be fairly intelligent, yet in four years of college, I was hard pressed to actually finish a sentence (right, Jeff?).
The president does have faults. He has horrible judgment in his advisers--I mean Gonzales, Miers, every treasury secretary except the current one, Rumsfeld, etc.--and his loyalty to them blinds him to their fatal flaws (I do respect his loyalty--I just feel like the good of the country must come first). The few good advisers he has (or had, rather--Scooter Libby, Colin Powell [of whom I'm not a huge fan, but he spoke his mind], and to some degree Secretary Chertoff) carry far too little weight in his administration and are not properly defended when victimized (seriously, already--pardon Scooter Libby).
The president's domestic policies are horrendous. No Child Left Behind? The now-dead amnesty bill? Increasing welfare and entitlement programs, but slowing their growth so as to be able to claim he's cut them? There's a litmus test for good ideas in public policy: if Ted Kennedy agrees with you, you're making the wrong choice. I'm so serious about this one that had Kennedy said during the Cold War that America was going to win, I'd bet everything on the USSR.
All of this is to say that while I am not the biggest fan of the president and his administration, he is still the president. He deserves the respect afforded him by his office. He WAS elected--twice. This isn't Great Britain, and we don't have a parliament. We aren't afforded the luxury to remove presidents we simply no longer like. Yes, I have my disagreements with his policies--I mean, the man governs like a liberal. He has, though, managed to keep this country safe for five and a half years. In my opinion, that's got to count for something.
I've written before about how amused I am that eHarmony rejects people. Since I was bored the other night in the hotel room, I thought I'd try my hand at being one of the rejects. I filled out Bob Rohm--er...Neil Clark Warren's personality profile and imagine my despair when they'd actually managed to find about twenty-five or so matches for me in the last two days or so (the first seven came within seconds of completing the profile). So that's kind of a bummer; I think it would have been hilarious to be rejected. (No, I will not be communicating with any of my matches, for several reasons--not the least of which is that they want something like $60 for one month--that's like twice my cell phone bill).
I'll be here in Virginia for another two weeks. On the plus side, my hotel is right beside a big Philip Morris plant. Anybody want me to bring them some cigarettes?
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