Eugene Robinson: America Likes an Idiot, but It Needs Al Gore

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/02/1615/

America Likes an Idiot, but It Needs Al Gore
by Eugene Robinson

snip//

When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don’t see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. Iraq, of course, is the obvious place he or she will have to start-engineering a U.S. withdrawal and dealing with the aftermath. I want a president smart enough to figure out how to minimize the damage.

I want a president who reads newspapers. I want a president who reads books other than those that confirm his worldview. I want a president who bones up on Persian history before deciding how to deal with Iran’s ambitious dreams of glory. I want a president who understands the relationship between energy policy at home and U.S. interests in the Middle East-a president smart enough to form his or her own opinions, not just rely on what old friends in the oil business say.

I want a president who looks forward to policy meetings on healthcare, and has ideas to throw into the mix.

I want a president who believes in empirical fact. I want a president whose understanding of spirituality is complete enough to know that faith is “the evidence of things not seen,” and who knows that for things that can be seen, the relevant evidence is fact, not belief. I want a president-and it’s amazing that I even have to put this on my wish list-smart enough to know that Darwin was right.

Actually, I want a president smart enough to know a good deal about science. He or she doesn’t have to be able to do the math, but I want a president who knows that the great theories underpinning our understanding of the universe-general relativity and quantum mechanics-have stood for nearly a century and proved stunningly accurate, even though they describe a world that is more shimmer than substance. And I want the next president to know that the two theories are incompatible-neither makes sense in terms of the other. I want him or her to know that there’s a lot we still don’t know.

I want the next president to be intellectually curious-and also intellectually honest. I want him or her to understand the details, not just the big picture. I won’t complain if the next president occasionally uses a word I have to look up.

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Afaik, most of America doesn't like an idiot.

However, corporate America loves one
particular eejit known as bushinc.

THOSE eejits...

than how come every time I catch a glimpse of cable TV there is an idiot on? :shrug:

Thanks for posting this. :hi:

If Jeffery Toobin's book about the 2000 presidential election is accurate, Gore was abandoned by his own party (or rather, the one owned by the DLC) just when he needed the strongest support.

I'm sure he knows he would have strong support from the electorate and might very well be chosen President by the public, but what then? How could you convince Gore that he won't have to fight the good fight alone, while being shot down at every turn by the corporatist Democratic majority, along with all Republicans?

If he was smart enough to foresee global warming 30 years ago as an collective survival issue, he's too smart to walk into a political meat grinder.

:thumbsup:

and they'd like another one in 2008. Usurpers seek to take power from everyday people by lying, cheating, fraud, slavery, poverty, etc. They must be stopped, and their crimes must be defined, identified, added to criminal law, and punished.