Dumb, Corrupt, and Ugly Is No Way to Go Through Life, Son

Dr. X posts this from the Reston / Safire Home for Retired Pundits:

"In the endless quest for the ultimate slam on our President, I thought we had reached the end of the road. Surely, I thought, every analytical approach and every rhetorical device has been employed to express contempt for this benighted puppet of the plutocracy.

"But I did not have enough faith in the ingenuity of man. This fine critique from Roger Parloff makes some points that are so obvious and powerful I am surprised I have not seen them in this form before. I initially resisted, but now am persuaded by his argument that the Miers nomination was the beginning of the end. To wit:

"1) 'The big question dogging Bush all along had always been whether he himself was up to his job. He just never seemed to be playing in the same league as other presidents. Even the greatest scoundrels of either party, like Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, had him skunked when it came to knowledge of history, government or international affairs.'

"2) 'There was also that stunted quality to his personality. The incessant macho posturing--"Bring 'em on!," "Dead or alive!"--that seemed not just reckless and dangerous, but eerily immature. He evoked one of those royals in the Europe of yore who, through the rigid workings of primogeniture, found himself King at age 11.'

"3) 'William Kristol wrote in The Weekly Standard that Bush had proposed "an unknown and undistinguished figure . . . for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction. There is a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it." (Emphasis mine.) Well, exactly. And the "gaping-disproportion" line would've been a great one to describe Bush's bid for the presidency in 2000, too. Kristol had unwittingly turned Harriet Miers into a George W. Bush surrogate. The concerns that couldn't be voiced about Bush now surfaced by proxy. The great discussion was finally on, and this time the conservative intelligentsia wasn't, well, playing dumb anymore. The whole electorate could see that the right-wing pundits had really known all along, but had kept mum on a calculated bet that they could adequately supervise the boy-president and keep him on the rails.'

"Isn't interesting that this man's mendacious and cynical handlers recognize his incapacity for leadership, yet actively seek to increase his authority?

"Oh yes, and see Standard Paragraph."