Slow to learn In "University Days", James Thurber once described a character by saying that while he wasn't dumber than an ox, he wasn't any smarter. Well, despite the rare attempt by a not stupid leftie (Mark Kleiman comes to mind) to get his fellows to catch on, the left hung on to its suicidal determination to believe that George Bush just couldn't be as smart as them. So they sat, smug as Terry MacAuliffe, and let Bush destroy them, on the elections, on Iraq. So finally they catch on. Fergal Keane works for the Independent and the BBC (a double shot of dense), and he manages finally to catch on that Bush is a lot smarter than the intellectualoids who sneer at him.
Anybody who has ever made a political judgement based on appearances should have learnt a lesson this week. A man written off by the intelligentsia as a bumbling jackass when he came to office, and denigrated ever since, achieved a political feat that has eluded so many American presidents. George Bush is a man in charge of his own house, and the people who once wrote him off as the village idiot of the Beltway have been shocked into silence.
Of course, he sprinkles in the usual warnings that all this is only because Americans are frightened after September 11, and so they will ignore just how evil Bush and Cheney are in their pursuit of safety. Maybe he needs to keep his job at the Independent, so he says the required tripe. But take notice, folks. The slowest learners in the west are starting to catch on.
