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It’s the Stupidity, Stupid!
By Nancy Greggs
Despite my keen interest in American politics, I have never seriously thought about running for office. I am astute enough to know that I’ve got too much going against me – like bluntness, a total inability to use a phrase like a “lack of straightforwardness” in place of “blatant lie”, or the ingrained habit of suggesting, in not-so-polite terms, that someone who is shooting me through the grease might consider engaging in a sexual act that is, for the most part, physically impossible.
But looking at the recent crop of the powers-that-be in the Republican party, I realize that I could never be elected to any office – including dog-catcher – as a GOP candidate. It’s not just the fact that I don’t agree with the party’s policies; it’s the fact that my IQ would disqualify me right off the bat.
Starting at the top (or the bottom, intelligence-wise), we’ve got one George W. Bush, taking instructions from the PNAC boys. See, if I’d been told that invading Iraq would be a cakewalk, resulting in sweets and flowers being laid at our troops’ feet, I would have been a tad skeptical right off the bat. But after everything they told me turned out to be the exact opposite of what actually took place, I would have had the sense to stop listening.
That alone would be enough to disqualify me from holding the highest office in the land as a Republican – not to mention the fact that I can correctly pronounce the word ‘nuclear’, which common sense would have told me might be a word that came up now again if I was going to go along with the PNAC crowd in the first place. Apparently, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
I wouldn’t fare any better as a GOP senator or congressman, what with my penchant for asking the duh-you’re-kiddin’-me obvious questions. If I’d been told to support the invasion of Iraq based on WMDs being found – and then they weren’t – and then because Saddam was involved in 9-11 – and then he wasn’t – and then because a guy named ‘Curveball’ was a reliable source for all of the above info and then some, I can guarantee you I would have posed a few non-rhetorical queries – like, for instance, “What the f%#k are you guys talking about here?”
Now, I don’t claim to be a qualified physician, but had I been the good Dr. Frist, I would have thought twice before putting my reputation on the line by publicly diagnosing Terry Schiavo based on a ten-minute videotape. (I also would have been a little more circumspect about exactly how blind my blind trust was, but that’s just me).
Then there’s Ted Stevens. My computer savvy is woefully wanting, but even I wouldn’t have described the internetz as a series of tubes, liable to be clogged at any moment by a hapless movie freak in Bumfuck, Montana, downloading “Porkies II” to his PC, thereby rendering all access to the world-wide web inoperable for days at a time.
In the realm of the incurably stupid, we’ve got Inhofe. Unfortunately, any aspirations I may have had as a Republican office-holding hopeful were forever dimmed by the dimwit genius of this man. Claiming that global warming is a hoax being perpetrated by the Weather Network in an obvious attempt to up their ratings via the use of scare tactics – no, sorry, I could never be dumb enough to go there. Last I checked, people were still tuning in to weather broadcasts to find out about, uh, the weather. I figure if there’s a vast conspiracy out there to garner TV viewers by promoting mass hysteria over non-existent threats, the Iran-is-a-grave-and-gathering-threat crowd has that market pretty well sewn up. Just sayin’.
In addition, my GOP ‘presidential hopeful’ days would inevitably be over before they’d begun. I would have been too damned astute to hurl racially-inflammatory insults while a video-camera was right up in my grill a la George Felix Allen, and I would definitely have thought twice about drawing little embryo smiley faces on a placard to explain the evils of stem cell research with the style and grace of a Brownback.
No, my days as a Republican office seeker would have been numbered right from the get-go. Just too damned smart for my own good, I suppose. In a party where even average intelligence and a modicum of common sense is a definite drawback, I would have faltered to the point where even a Katherine Harris moxie-‘n-spunky job wouldn’t have saved me.
But there’s always hope. Someday I may suffer a mental setback of monumental proportions. A severe blow to the head could suddenly render me unable to speak articulately, unable to add two and two together, unable to think coherently and reasonably – in which case, I could run on a Republican ticket and go right to the top!
I could wind up being President Dumbass Extraordinaire – and hey, it’s not like the precedent hasn’t already been set.
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