The Brains Thing

Good article from the American Prospect...

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8343

"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."

Kerry or his surrogates should subtley and politely push the meme that "intelligence matters", as the article puts it. Bush will not be able to hide in the skirts of his advisers, as was done in the 2000 election, when any hint of discussion of his lack of intellectual ability was countered with the meme that a President always has a team of highly skilled advisers. Ha!

If Bush and the advisers were so smart, then why was the regime:

Unable to imagine terrorists crashing planes into buildings.

• An intelligence report of Sept. 1999 warned against just that.
  
• Seven years minus one day earlier, 2004-09-12, suicide pilot Frank Eugene Corder crashed a Cessna 150L airplane onto the South Lawn of the White House.
  
• NORAD conducted exercises with hijacked airliner scenarios against the WTC and proposed a similar exercise with the Pentagon as target.
  
• In 1994, Air France flight 8969 was hijacked, loaded with fuel and dynamite, and planned to be flown into the Eiffel Tower.

Unable to see through Chalabi.

Depending on intelligence it knew was flaky.

Unable to plan adequately for after Saddam Hussein toppled

Too dense to heed Sandy Berger's advice to the transition that Osama and terrorism would be their number one problem

Unable to see Global Climate Change for the reality it is.

The real reason is that they are smart, even Bush, but they let themselves be ruled by corruption and desire.

We need a polite but subtle slogan about Bush's lack of ability and performance. We can easily think of many fun slogans like "The US doesn't need a new director of intelligence, Bush* does", but we need to think of various phrases that can easily be inserted into speeches, articles, postings, and conversation to shape the debate.