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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (216372)	1/10/2002 8:05:32 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769670

Trust varies according to different criteria. However, if one has no special reason to question the competence or integrity of responsible parties, the normal thing is to defer to those with more intimate knowledge of the subject, those who have done the legwork. In deliberative bodies, for example, the normal thing is to parcel out work to committees and to adopt the committee recommendations. That is the rule, although there are exceptions. Similarly, when one is seeking information on a subject in which one has no expertise, the rule is to follow the scholarly consensus, although there are exceptions, precisely because the community of scholars has sponsored the research, set in place the peer review, and so forth to establish reasonably solid results. By the way, Bush never released his transcript. He got into the Harvard MBA program, so I presume he was at least a B- minus student, maybe better. I know that his SATs were perfectly respectable, and I know that other great leaders were often mediocre students, for example, Churchill, who excelled in subjects he liked, and did very poorly in the rest. I personally have seen no reason to question whether he was smart enough for his job. In addition, he has certainly surrounded himself with a smart team. I obviously would not trust someone who seemed to me not to understand the basics, like economic principles, which lets out most liberals. I also obviously wouldn't trust someone who was documented to be a knee- jerk liar, like Clinton. I make allowances for mistakes or reasonable disagreement, so I would not hold Reagan/Bush Iraq decisions against them: they seemed reasonable at the time. Between a high degree of trust, and practically none, there are various levels. For example, I used to think pretty well of Lieberman, until he sold out on principles to be Vice- president.......