Is George W Bush the most illiterate president in US history?
July 01, 2006
America has had several presidents who were not exactly bursting with intelligence. These luminaries include Republican Chester A. Arthur (president from 1881 to 1885), Republican Benjamin Harrison (1889 to 1893), Republican Gerald R. Ford (1974 to January 20, 1977 - Ford, who people said was solid cement between the ears and interested only in American football, was Nixon’s vice-president and became president when Nixon resigned in August 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal), and the avuncular fuddy-duddy Republican Ronald Reagan (1981 to January 20, 1989).
Is it a mere coincidence that all these presidents were members of the Republican Party, aka the “Grand Old Party”? Or could it be that there is something about the GOP that makes it pick dodos as its nominees for president?
Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that in George W. Bush, the world has been saddled with yet another Republican dodo as President of the United States.. Not for nothing is Bush known as Dubya.
Last week, his job approval rating in opinion polls sank to a new low of 32 per cent, the worst of his presidency. His numbers are likely to sink even further in the wake of Thursday’s US Supreme Court ruling saying that Bush had overstepped his authority by planning to try Guantanamo Bay detainees by “military commissions” - trials marked by their lack of legal protections for defendants. Considered a sharp rebuke for Bush, the ruling is unlikely to do his plummeting popularity any good.
Bush’s tortuous syntax and woeful lack of knowledge of world geography, history, current affairs and a host of other topics have long made him the butt of jokes. But it goes beyond that. In a book titled “The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder”, American author Mark Crispin Miller argues that Bush may be the most illiterate president in US history. Bush thinks Africa is a country and was surprised to discover when he visited South America back in 2000 that “there are a lot of countries down there.”
As the “Dyslexicon” makes clear, Bush’s is not the merely technical illiteracy of most Americans, who, irrespective of their class or education, routinely make grammatical mistakes so slight that only pedants mind them. No, according to Miller, George W. Bush is so illiterate as to turn completely incoherent when he speaks without a script or unless he thinks his every statement through so carefully beforehand that the effort empties out his face. His eyes go blank as he consults the TelePromTer in his head, and he chews uneasily at the corner of his mouth, as if to keep his lips in motion for the utterances to follow, much as a baseball batter swings before the pitch. Thus prepared, he then meticulously sounds out every...single...word, as if asking for assistance in a foreign language.
Miller writes: “Of all his flaws, the president’s illiteracy is - or was - the one most noted by the (US) media. Governor Bush’s way with words (and logic, and books) got prominently covered in the months before Election Day 2000, although journalists eased off as time went on.”
Bush’s bite-sized gaffes were perfect for TV, which duly reported some of them, while Frank Bruni of the New York Times tracked his most flagrant boners.
“More influentially,” says Miller, “the televised concentration on Son of Bushspeak - George H. W. Bush having had a similar problem - extended quickly to the realm of late-night comedy, which is the surest way to the nation’s consciousness.”
Of course, the shtick on Bush was more gleeful, and far more insulting, than the tittering journalistic bits. Such reportage-cum-stand-up did the trick to some extent. Soon everybody knew that Bush could not pronounce ‘subliminal’, for example, along with a host of other words.
Bush’s lexical incapacity does not reflect one problem in particular but several kinds of verbal defect. As Gail Sheehy argued in a long piece published in The New Yorker magazine just before the election of November 2000, Bush may actually suffer from dyslexia. Surely that condition may explain his tendency to transpose words and to blurt out the opposite of what he means. It may also explain his frequent malapropisms: “hostile” for “hostage,” “arbitrary” for “arbitration,” “preserve” for “persevere,” “cufflink” for “handcuff,” etc.
A dyslexic president with his finger on the nuclear button is an unsettling thought, to say the least. “Hmm. I wonder whether this button says war or peace?” one can imagine Bush saying as he debates the pros and cons of unleashing Armageddon on an unsuspecting world.
Even dyslexia, however, would not account for Bush’s incessant violation of the fundamental rules of grammar (“The question is, how many hands have I shaked?”), his syntactic accidents (“It’s not the way America is all about”) or his utter prepositional confusion.
Nor - far more important - would dyslexia explain Bush’s thorough unfamiliarity with the system that he now purports to lead or his unawareness of the world beyond the US’s borders. To believe, for example, that Social Security is somehow not a US federal government programme, or that Africa is a country, displays a degree of ignorance unequalled, perhaps, in the history of the American presidency.
More than four years into his presidency, Bush jokes continue to do the rounds. Here’s one. It’s called “Even the CIA won’t tell you” and goes something like this:
George W. Bush was dismayed by the errors being made by the CIA and FBI. He called in Tom Ridge, the then-head of the Department of Homeland Security, and asked, “how come Israel knows things we don’t know? How come the Jews here in the US know things we don’t know?” Ridge called in Moe Katz, a Jewish undercover agent, who told Bush, “We have a code. We ask, ‘Vos titzach?’ ...what’s happening?...and we share the information.”
Bush orders a disguise. He puts on a caftan and shtreimel, a beard with payees, and scuffed black shoes (traditional Jewish gear). They fly him in a stealth fighter to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and put him in an old, dented station wagon with an elderly Hassid Jewish driver. He is dropped off in Boro Park (in Brooklyn, New York) and approaches a man dressed as he is. “Vos titzach?” Bush asks. “Shhh,” the man replies, “George Bush is in Brooklyn.”
No Bush joke can match the real thing, however. Mangling the English language is one thing, mangling the map of the world quite another. Bush seems to be a master at both. Maybe that’s what he majored in at the Harvard Business School: Mangling 101.
Forget world geography, Bush is at sea even when it comes to the geography of his own country, as witnessed, for example, at a Republican Party rally in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 17, 2002, when he said: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.”
What are we to make of this gobbledygook? That Tennessee is not a state in its own right but is somehow a part of the State of Texas or what?. The mind boggles.
Then, of course, there is Bush on the subject of the Middle East. Talking to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on August 13, 2001, about former Senator George Mitchell’s report on peace in the Middle East, Bush said: “There’s a lot of people in the Middle East who are desirous to get into the Mitchell process. And - but first things first. The - these terrorist acts, and, you know, the responses have got to end in order for us to get to the framework - the groundwork - not framework, the groundwork to discuss a framework for peace, to lay the - all right.”
As if all this were not bad enough, Bush added: “My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the - in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen.”
So if you’ve been wondering why the Middle East peace process hasn’t exactly been going anywhere fast since Bush took office, now you know.
And while we’re on the subject, just how, exactly, does Bush propose to explain to the rest of the world his description of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as “a man of peace”? To call the Butcher of Sabra, Shatilla and Jenin a “man of peace” is like calling Attila the Hun a man of peace.
As for the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in flagrant violation of every canon of international law, is this Bush’s version of his administration doing everything it can to “stop the violence” in the Middle East?
Or could it be that he thinks Iraq isn’t in the Middle East? Maybe he thinks it’s somewhere out in the Far East - near North Korea perhaps. Maybe that’s why he lumped the two countries together in his infamous “Axis of Evil” speech.
Is it a mere coincidence that all these presidents were members of the Republican Party, aka the “Grand Old Party”? Or could it be that there is something about the GOP that makes it pick dodos as its nominees for president?
Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that in George W. Bush, the world has been saddled with yet another Republican dodo as President of the United States.. Not for nothing is Bush known as Dubya.
Last week, his job approval rating in opinion polls sank to a new low of 32 per cent, the worst of his presidency. His numbers are likely to sink even further in the wake of Thursday’s US Supreme Court ruling saying that Bush had overstepped his authority by planning to try Guantanamo Bay detainees by “military commissions” - trials marked by their lack of legal protections for defendants. Considered a sharp rebuke for Bush, the ruling is unlikely to do his plummeting popularity any good.
Bush’s tortuous syntax and woeful lack of knowledge of world geography, history, current affairs and a host of other topics have long made him the butt of jokes. But it goes beyond that. In a book titled “The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder”, American author Mark Crispin Miller argues that Bush may be the most illiterate president in US history. Bush thinks Africa is a country and was surprised to discover when he visited South America back in 2000 that “there are a lot of countries down there.”
As the “Dyslexicon” makes clear, Bush’s is not the merely technical illiteracy of most Americans, who, irrespective of their class or education, routinely make grammatical mistakes so slight that only pedants mind them. No, according to Miller, George W. Bush is so illiterate as to turn completely incoherent when he speaks without a script or unless he thinks his every statement through so carefully beforehand that the effort empties out his face. His eyes go blank as he consults the TelePromTer in his head, and he chews uneasily at the corner of his mouth, as if to keep his lips in motion for the utterances to follow, much as a baseball batter swings before the pitch. Thus prepared, he then meticulously sounds out every...single...word, as if asking for assistance in a foreign language.
Miller writes: “Of all his flaws, the president’s illiteracy is - or was - the one most noted by the (US) media. Governor Bush’s way with words (and logic, and books) got prominently covered in the months before Election Day 2000, although journalists eased off as time went on.”
Bush’s bite-sized gaffes were perfect for TV, which duly reported some of them, while Frank Bruni of the New York Times tracked his most flagrant boners.
“More influentially,” says Miller, “the televised concentration on Son of Bushspeak - George H. W. Bush having had a similar problem - extended quickly to the realm of late-night comedy, which is the surest way to the nation’s consciousness.”
Of course, the shtick on Bush was more gleeful, and far more insulting, than the tittering journalistic bits. Such reportage-cum-stand-up did the trick to some extent. Soon everybody knew that Bush could not pronounce ‘subliminal’, for example, along with a host of other words.
Bush’s lexical incapacity does not reflect one problem in particular but several kinds of verbal defect. As Gail Sheehy argued in a long piece published in The New Yorker magazine just before the election of November 2000, Bush may actually suffer from dyslexia. Surely that condition may explain his tendency to transpose words and to blurt out the opposite of what he means. It may also explain his frequent malapropisms: “hostile” for “hostage,” “arbitrary” for “arbitration,” “preserve” for “persevere,” “cufflink” for “handcuff,” etc.
A dyslexic president with his finger on the nuclear button is an unsettling thought, to say the least. “Hmm. I wonder whether this button says war or peace?” one can imagine Bush saying as he debates the pros and cons of unleashing Armageddon on an unsuspecting world.
Even dyslexia, however, would not account for Bush’s incessant violation of the fundamental rules of grammar (“The question is, how many hands have I shaked?”), his syntactic accidents (“It’s not the way America is all about”) or his utter prepositional confusion.
Nor - far more important - would dyslexia explain Bush’s thorough unfamiliarity with the system that he now purports to lead or his unawareness of the world beyond the US’s borders. To believe, for example, that Social Security is somehow not a US federal government programme, or that Africa is a country, displays a degree of ignorance unequalled, perhaps, in the history of the American presidency.
More than four years into his presidency, Bush jokes continue to do the rounds. Here’s one. It’s called “Even the CIA won’t tell you” and goes something like this:
George W. Bush was dismayed by the errors being made by the CIA and FBI. He called in Tom Ridge, the then-head of the Department of Homeland Security, and asked, “how come Israel knows things we don’t know? How come the Jews here in the US know things we don’t know?” Ridge called in Moe Katz, a Jewish undercover agent, who told Bush, “We have a code. We ask, ‘Vos titzach?’ ...what’s happening?...and we share the information.”
Bush orders a disguise. He puts on a caftan and shtreimel, a beard with payees, and scuffed black shoes (traditional Jewish gear). They fly him in a stealth fighter to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and put him in an old, dented station wagon with an elderly Hassid Jewish driver. He is dropped off in Boro Park (in Brooklyn, New York) and approaches a man dressed as he is. “Vos titzach?” Bush asks. “Shhh,” the man replies, “George Bush is in Brooklyn.”
No Bush joke can match the real thing, however. Mangling the English language is one thing, mangling the map of the world quite another. Bush seems to be a master at both. Maybe that’s what he majored in at the Harvard Business School: Mangling 101.
Forget world geography, Bush is at sea even when it comes to the geography of his own country, as witnessed, for example, at a Republican Party rally in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 17, 2002, when he said: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.”
What are we to make of this gobbledygook? That Tennessee is not a state in its own right but is somehow a part of the State of Texas or what?. The mind boggles.
Then, of course, there is Bush on the subject of the Middle East. Talking to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on August 13, 2001, about former Senator George Mitchell’s report on peace in the Middle East, Bush said: “There’s a lot of people in the Middle East who are desirous to get into the Mitchell process. And - but first things first. The - these terrorist acts, and, you know, the responses have got to end in order for us to get to the framework - the groundwork - not framework, the groundwork to discuss a framework for peace, to lay the - all right.”
As if all this were not bad enough, Bush added: “My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the - in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen.”
So if you’ve been wondering why the Middle East peace process hasn’t exactly been going anywhere fast since Bush took office, now you know.
And while we’re on the subject, just how, exactly, does Bush propose to explain to the rest of the world his description of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as “a man of peace”? To call the Butcher of Sabra, Shatilla and Jenin a “man of peace” is like calling Attila the Hun a man of peace.
As for the US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in flagrant violation of every canon of international law, is this Bush’s version of his administration doing everything it can to “stop the violence” in the Middle East?
Or could it be that he thinks Iraq isn’t in the Middle East? Maybe he thinks it’s somewhere out in the Far East - near North Korea perhaps. Maybe that’s why he lumped the two countries together in his infamous “Axis of Evil” speech.
