President Bush: In His Own Words, Part Duh.

We have all long suspected that President Bush stepped out of line when God was handing out brains. This week, our suspicions, if any of us were still in doubt, were put to rest. In a move that could well prove that Bush’s handlers are quite possibly as dumb as he is, the President addressed students at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a division of Johns Hopkins University on Monday. One could hardly think of a worse audience for Bush to address: smart kids studying American foreign policy.

The worse mistake was for the Q & A session, in which Bush repeatedly made an imbecile out of himself. But this question’s answer, was unbelievable.

A student asked:

“Mister President, I agree with your assertion that Iraq is going to serve as a model for reformers - democratic reformers - in the Middle East, but at the same time I believe that whenever the seas are rough that despots of the Middle East keep their heads down until the winds blow, and then they continue to do the exact same thing that they’ve been doing for generations. So, I’m wondering sir, what pressures are we putting or planning to put on these despots, some of whom are our allies?”

Fairly reasonable question, right? It hardly seems like this would stump anyone. Hell, President Chucklenuts could just blither on for a minute or two about the importance of diplomacy, right? Here was Bush’s answer. Read very carefully, as it’s a bit hard to make sense of it:

“I believe that it’s very important for people to be, to listen. And, uh, therefore I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m a person who does a lot of my work in private. This is a defining moment in my judgment on these debates. I got a pretty good antennae. You know, I’m able to get a pretty good sense of how people are trending. And, uh, it’s a, uh, I would hope that out of this school comes people who are confident in American values, and confident in our ability to compete. Now we gotta do smart things, and uh, and so, we just hope, I hope, look I’m not telling you what your curriculum is, but uh, it’s something worth talking about. These are, these happen to be the big trends of our society. And, and it’s gonna take in my judgment a future generation of people standing up not losing our, look at the 1920’s in our country’s history. We shut down immigration. We had huge trade tariffs, and, uh, we were isolationists. They didn’t serve our country well in my judgment. Alright, I gotta go to work.”

If you can’t believe your eyes, then here, go ahead, and believe your ears, if you can.

The only thing this leaves me with is one unanswered question, that perhaps the students at SAIS might be somewhat more qualified to answer than anyone in the Bush administration. Is stupidity an impeachable offense?