Mayberry Machiavelli
What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle speaking to the United Negro College Fund, 5/9/89

The American Prospect (quickly becoming one of my favorite subscriptions--it was cofounded by Robert Reich, who supplies a monthly column) has a great article by Matthew Yglesias about Bush's brain (no, not about Karl Rove, as this new documentary concerns itself with). Back in the 2000 campaign, there was some concern about the intellectual capacity of Mr. Bush (one word--strategery).

Liberals unanimously believed that Bush was not up to the intellectual challenges of the job. But fearful of re-enforcing a stereotype of left-wing elitism, they time and again shied away from pressing the argument.

It was taken up, however, by today's most important outlets of political discourse--comedy shows--where comedians continued into the early days of his presidency to paint Bush as a dopey hayseed. Of course, that stopped at 9/11. The NYTimes recently had an article about G.W. Bush humor (unfortunately the article has been archived on the NYT site and can only be accessed by purchasing it for $3), which noted that now Bush is characterized by comedians as a stubborn, but buffoonish idealogue.

But more than just calling our dear President a dope, Yglesias makes a very good case for why we need to have the leader of our nation be intellectually curious and not just rely upon advisors to make up his mind.

Bush’s most high-profile foreign-policy failure -- the disastrously bad planning for the occupation of Iraq -- provides a direct analogue to the domestic scene. The government did, in fact, do a lot of good work on the subject under the auspices of the State Department’s Future of Iraq Group. Rival analysis from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s office, however, suggested that the task would be much easier. A president prepared to read and understand complicated policy briefs would have seen that the Future of Iraq Group had it right. But the country didn’t have a president like that. So yet again the path of expediency was chosen, with well-known results.

Yglesias also goes on to cover how the indecision over which advisors to listen to contributed to the mess that is North Korea. (This really is a good piece and I've just covered a couple high points--check it out.) Here's the summary:

That the country should be secured against terrorist attacks, that deadly weapons should be kept out of the hands of our enemies, or that it would be good for a wide slice of the world to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy are hardly controversial propositions. But these things are easier said than done. Even a person of goodwill is by no means guaranteed to succeed. Yet succeed we must. And if we are to do so, the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” -- some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia -- but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.

The price to be paid for such errors is a high one -- it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again.

The Republicans will be talking about character and decisiveness and non-flippy-floppiness. But from what I see behind the curtain, I have serious questions about the character of a President who isn't curious enough to read the newspapers and keep himself up to date with what's going on in the world. And it seems to me that the decisions our President makes are more often based on either political expediency or forceful idealism, and not a mature, mannered look at the facts and the possible outcomes. And frankly, there's been a whole heck of a lot of back-and-forth of decisions, so let's take that whole flip-flop crap off the table.

It's time we had a leader who is truly engaged in managing the issues at hand, domestically and globally.