Bush the Egghead - Practicality Never Stops a Nice Theory - WaPo

[rndmprsn]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801568.html

...Many liberals have long worn the "egghead" epithet as a badge of honorable intellectualism. They would never want to share it with Bush. Older liberals still treasure the late Adlai Stevenson, the original egghead and the failed Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. Stevenson was probably less of an intellectual than people thought, but the image stuck...

The president's proposal for private accounts in Social Security is Exhibit A for eggheadism. There was little popular demand for these accounts. Most Americans like Social Security as it is. The private accounts idea was nurtured primarily in libertarian and conservative research organizations such as the Cato Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Heritage Foundation...

...In so many other areas, Bush has allowed theory to triumph over practice. The boring, old-fashioned view is that if you cut taxes and increase spending, you get deficits. No, no, the president and the supply-side true believers say; eventually those tax cuts will produce robust economic growth and wipe the deficits away. You just have to keep faith with the theory.

Adlai Stevenson once said: "Eggheads of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your yolks." Easy for him to say. He never got to the White House. But you wonder at what point our idealistic, idea-driven president will revisit that old-fashioned brand of conservatism that sees experience and practicality as preferable to theory.

[rodeodance]

1. Bush does have Big ideas (but that is about all)

....President Bush's critics have him all wrong. They think of him as an anti-intellectual, opposed to theory and disdainful of grand ideas.

To the contrary. George W. Bush's spring of discontent arises from a fact that no one dares to notice: George W. Bush is an egghead.

I doubt this is a thought that comes to most people at the end of a Bush news conference. Indeed, to praise or criticize Bush for eggheadism risks disdain from left and right......

[SpiralHawk]

2. Ahhh, Egghead ! That explains Bush's fetish for rubbing bald men

on the noggin. He is not a conehead, he's an egghead, undoubtedly hatched from a buzzard.

[rndmprsn]

3. LMAO!

EOM

[bread_and_roses]

4. Oh, my aching sides...

that is hilarious.

[0007]

5. LOL!! junior is such a wise & omnipotent person and

only attends highbrow events such as the ballet and the opera?

Professional wrestling and jocks are junior's cup of tea