Stormbringer wrote:I'm just pointing out that public speeking is not the best nor only way of measuring a person's intelligence. I'd bet half the people on this board would stammer like idiots if forced to give speeches to audiences a fraction of the size of Bush's.
No, it isn't, but out of the hundreds of public appearances Bush has made, you'd expect him to not fuck up every single one the second he goes off-script. All the ones I've seen on TV (BBC World, when they show live or recorded ones, the Finnish TV thankfully just summarises him unless it's something very important) have had me gaping in absolute bewilderment at how the fuck he can expect to be taken even remotely seriously when the speech content has been what it has been.
The Dark's point about him being disrespectful of his audience is completely on target. The bullshit, especially whenever he mentions the the War on Terror, WMD or Iraq (though lately less than before in this last case), is so thick you could literally cut chunks out of it with a machete, and it'd take some serious hacking and hewing to get it done, too. If anybody spoke to me like that, like you'd speak to a five-year-old, on matters of national security and going to war, I'd tell them to fuck off and not bother coming back. It doesn't much help that when he is making his speeches, Bush generally looks like he's astonished at how nobody seems to figure out he's peddling bullshit but instead cheers him on. This is not an observation I've made just by myself, I've had others independently and spontaneously observe the exact same thing to me.
Even when Bush is scripted and not making mistakes, his way of public speech is insulting in the extreme because it assumes the audience is stupid. Anybody trying to use the same style when making a public speech here would be booed off the podium and become a laughingstock. We've got one member of parliament here who is an ex pro-wrestler (Tony "The Viking" Halme) and generally nowhere near the brightest bulb in the box, prone to making rash statements and embarrassing himself in public, and he is
still lightyears ahead of Bush in public speaking skills. From my point of view (admittedly limited as it is) it seems most of the time, based on the available evidence, that Bush is either stupid, inept, disrespectful, habitually dishonest or a combination of these qualities, and none of that is very flattering.
This is not to say that Bush can't make decent public speeches, I remember portions of his speeches that I've heard that have been pretty good, but whenever one of the magic subjects come up, it's time to disengage the critical thinking processes in order to avoid permanent brain damage from contagious stupidity. I wish it was John McCain or Colin Powell or RedImperator or
somebody who generally knows what the fuck they're doing in the office of POTUS.
Edi
