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Thursday, October 19, 2006
Republicans
The right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
The right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
PRINCIPLE. On the whole, we agree with Rush Limbaugh about the state of the Republican Party with respect to the upcoming elections. You just can't get any dumber than announcing your own defeat before people even have the opportunity to vote. We also agree that "premortems" such as the one penned by Glenn Reynolds earlier this week are counter-productive and off-point, because when Republicans lose, it's not the office holders who are the victims but the electorate. Maybe Frist and Hastert deserve a shellacking, but those of us who care about the United States don't deserve a naive and cowardly foreign policy, higher taxes, and the torture of a vengeful Congress seeking to impeach the President of the United States. Rush is right on about all that.
But now we'll say what Rush won't. Republican politicians are stupid. There's really no end to just how damn dumb they are. When they have the majority, they continue to act like losers, giving Dems the benefit of every doubt in hopes that when the tables are turned, the Dems will treat them the same way. Never gonna happen. Why? Because the Dems are smart. When you have the power, use it ruthlessly and never stop trying to annihilate the enemy. You'll never see Democrats conceding an election beforehand. Let's face it. The executive and legislative branches of the United States are presently being run by an Army of One who's a dead ringer for Mortimer Snerd. Republican politicians inevitably fall into every trap set for them by Democrats in the Congress and the mass media. They over-react to nonsense like the Foley scandal, and they under-react to opportunities like the Harry Reid scandal boring real estate deal.
BUT... and this is a big BUT... that's precisely the reason Republicans should be in control of the government. Yes, you heard me correctly. Republicans should be in charge because they're stupid. Smart Republicans know better than to work for the government. They start businesses, they do real work, they prosper in privacy, and they don't seek the empty acclaim of the mass media. It's just the opposite for the Democrats, who send their best and brightest to the political front, where rhetoric and wit are valued above honest achievement. Look at the Kennedys. Since Joseph Senior acquired his fortune through bootlegging, what Kennedy has ever put in a day's labor at anything real? It's no accident that the greatest Dem heroes are silver spoon boys -- FDR, JFK, and, uh, JFK (Kerry's the punchline here, for you dumb Republicans). Government by the dumbest is surely what the framers had in mind, because Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin were well aware that Britain had erred horribly by sending its best and brightest to Parliament. That's why they tried to make the Constituion idiot-proof., including a Bill of Rights that any well educated person would have regarded as superfluous in the emotional aftermath of a successful revolution.
Have you ever obsserved the sheer delight Dems take in Bush's constant verbal missteps? That's because they think the most essential component of leadership is intellect. Let me repeat that. They think the most essential component of leadership is intellect. It sounds plausible but it's dead wrong. Does anyone here think that Wellington was smarter than Napoleon? Well, if you do, you're wrong. Wellington was an idiot. The only thing he knew was that Napoleon had to be dealt with. He didn't know why exactly, he didn't know how for sure, but he knew that he couldn't yield until the matter was handled. That's the level of intelligence most political issues require. When you get leaders as intellectual as Neville Chamberlain and Clement Atlee, it's time to find the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class at Cambridge/West Point/Yale, some predictable clown named Churchill/Eisenhower/Bush.
Successful business executives are almost never intellectuals. Of course, the intellectuals who write about successful people aren't happy about this and they have a habit of downplaying the importance of stupidity in the realm of great accomplishment, but facts are facts. Great specifiic talents are almost always conferred upon people who are otherwise remarkably stupid. Picasso spoke to the public about his art once. Then his publicist ordered him to shut up forever.
As with so many subjects, the great British idiot P.G. Wodehouse provided the most insightful guidance about how we should appraise our governance. In a story whose name I no longer remember, a corporate CEO used a game of golf to determine who should be his company's chief accountant. The protagonist, a likeable but stupid young man we were all rooting for, seemed to scotch his chances by losing his temper and hurling his club into the woods after a particularly bad shot.. He got the job BECAUSE of this dumb move. The CEO explained that when he trusts his money to someone else, the most important thing is to be able to detect deception. The safest choice is the person who is too stupid to succeed at decepttion.
So -- despite Schiavo, Miers, Rumsfeld, and Foley -- I give you the Mortimer Snerd of political parties, the Republicans. Dumb enough to run the free world.
