February 06, 2006
George W. Bush is Not a Dolt
This from Davids Medienkritik, a great blog from Germany that I recently added to my blogroll. The post is entitled The Secrets of the American Success Story.
Of course, President Bush isn't a dolt - but other than that, I have to agree with much of what Anatole Kaletsky writes in this Times article. He addresses a number of reasons for America's greatness - almost all of which are a mystery for the German media:
The President is a dolt - so how can America be such a success story?
(...) For the past five years, America has been led by a president who is clearly not up to the job — a man who is not just inarticulate, but lacking in judgment, intelligence, integrity, charisma or staying power. Yet America as a nation seems to be stronger, more prosperous and self-confident than ever. (...)
Why does America’s prosperity and self-confidence seem to bear so little relationship to the competence of its government? The obvious answer is that America, founded on a libertarian theory of minimal government, has always had low expectations of politicians. In America, it is not just business that thrives independently of government, perhaps even in spite of government. The same is also true of other areas of excellence which in Britain are considered quintessentially in the public domain — higher education, leading-edge science, culture and academic research. Because Americans expect so little of their government, they are rarely disappointed. They do not slump into German-style angst when their governments fail to find solutions to the nation’s problems.
Read the whole post, and the accompanying comments.
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