When you were a child and you disagreed with someone, you commented “they’re just stupid.” You probably still use the phrase though it will probably be internally now rather than verbally. For six years we have heard that George Bush is stupid. The children on the left have not aged sufficiently to drop the phrase. I’m not here to testify to Bush’s intelligence. Personally, I think he is above the intelligence of the average politician. (I guess that doesn’t say too much does it? A person with any intelligence wouldn’t choose politics as their profession!) My point is that leaders don’t require great intelligence to be a leader. Extreme intelligence is more often a detriment than a benefit. More important than intelligence is “common sense” and “street smarts.” If you review your history you will find very few good leaders that were overly intelligent. Rather they had the ability to pick subordinates and to lead those subordinates to accomplish the ends they envisioned. Leaders are the ones with the visions and the drive to motivate others to accomplish what is required to accomplish those visions.
Henry Ford was in court being questioned by a group of young attorneys that were trying to prove that Ford did not have the intelligence to operate his vast and successful company. To one particularly offensive question, Ford leaned forward and said, “Young man, I have a row of buttons on my desk and if I need the answer to a question like this, I push one of those buttons and a young man like you comes and gives me the answer.”
The test of any U.S. President is how well his group performs, not the individual performance of the President ― what is the net result of his presidency? In choosing subordinates, Bush has made some great choices and some mediocre choices. Cheney was a superb choice as a running partner. Rice was a great advisor, but not a good selection for a diplomat. The other Bush appointees remain in the background and I don’t have an opinion on most of them. Bush has, however, the vision of what needs to be done in this current world dilemma. He is well-grounded in morals, ethics, and Christian values. It remains to be seen whether he has the fortitude to withstand the internal pressure from the left, socialist, communist. atheistic, agnostic opposition and the external pressure from the misguided parties around the world.
