Appointments show Bush has necessary capabilities to lead

  Ben Shapiro Shapiro is a first-year
philosophy student bringing reason to the masses. E-mail him at
[email protected].
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According to many liberals of this country, we have a serious
problem, a problem so grave and terrifying that those of us who
enjoy our freedom should flee our homes in terror and throw
ourselves on the mercy of the Cuban government, a problem so
horrible that the U.S. government should be disbanded through a
violent uprising and the Republican Party declared a terrorist
entity.

The problem is President-elect Bush.

In four years, they say, every civil right you once held will
have been taken away, just as your right to vote was taken from you
in this last election. African Americans will be forced to return
to the plantations, women will be forced back into the kitchen, the
Ku Klux Klan will become a government-endorsed organization, the
poor of this country will be forced to work as indentured slaves on
the estates of the rich and the elderly will be forced to eat dog
food to cure their arthritis.

And this is not even the biggest problem with George W. Bush.
The biggest problem is that he’s stupid. A dumb-dumb, a moron
and an idiot. A man so stupid that he wouldn’t even have been
able to vote for himself on the Palm Beach Ballot. If he and Al
Gore had been engaged in a battle of wits, Gore would have been
fighting an unarmed man.

Of course, this is ridiculous. As much as the liberals would
have us believe that a cheating, lying, stupid man could ever make
it into the White House, it just isn’t true.

The truth is that Bush is not a genius ““ he didn’t
graduate number one in his class from Yale or win the Nobel Prize
in Physiology for breaking the genetic code, but he’s no
dumb-dumb either. The truth is that Bush is a pretty bright guy
““ his SAT score was a combined 1206 when they didn’t
grade with a curve, a score which would rank far higher today, and
his academic career was better than that of his “more
intelligent” opponent Al Gore. And while some may quote
Bush’s infrequent errors in diction as an indication of his
intelligence, doesn’t everyone at some point make similar
errors? Or do these errors in diction excuse Gore for his frequent
fibbing (a trait far more telling than mere jumbling of words)?

But, for the moment, let’s pretend the liberals are
correct, and Bush is unintelligent. Since when did genius become a
qualification for the presidency? A far more important quality
necessary in a president is his ability to delegate responsibility.
The president is not supposed to be a micromanager who oversees
every solitary facet of government. In the past, when he has been,
he has failed.

  Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin For example,
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) was hailed by many as a genius. He was
once clocked at reading 2,000 words per minute with 95 percent
comprehension. He was articulate, and when he entered office,
well-liked. Carter, however, attempted to manage every aspect of
the government. He was so involved in foreign policy that he more
or less became bored with domestic policy. He came up with systems
for solving difficult problems, but believed that whatever would
work on paper had to work in practice. As a result, when Reagan
took office, he inherited a crippled defense force, an economy with
inflation out of control and a public so disenchanted with Carter
that he was defeated by an electoral vote of 489 to 49, carrying
only six states.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), like George W. Bush, was described as
an “amiable idiot,” a man who had won the White House
only through charisma. Yet Reagan, who assembled a qualified
cabinet and was willing to delegate responsibility, was one of the
most effective presidents in the history of the nation.
Reagan’s administration catalyzed the largest peace-time
economic growth the United States has ever experienced, an increase
of 3.2 percent annually, with median family income growing by
$4,000. With tax cuts, leadership and conviction that democracy
meant power to the people, not to the government, Reagan’s
administration brought prosperity back to America, ended the Cold
War and caused the collapse of the USSR.

We can start to measure Bush’s administration now by whom
he has appointed to office, pending Senate approval. Colin Powell,
Secretary of State, is well-respected and vastly experienced,
having served under the Bush and Clinton administrations as the
12th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as serving
under Reagan as national security advisor. Donald Rumsfeld,
Secretary of Defense, has served under four Republican
administrations, dating from President Nixon.

Rod Paige, Secretary of Education, has transformed
Houston’s school system, the seventh-largest in the nation,
into one of the best urban school districts in the country. The
left’s insistence that Paige’s support of school
vouchers is reason to dismiss his nomination comes only from the
fact that they are beholden to the teachers unions. Look at the
state of the public school system. Shouldn’t parents at least
be given an option to give their child the best education possible?
What’s wrong with trying something new?

Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy, has served as a senator
for the state of Michigan, never missing a roll call vote in six
years. Environmentalists are against his support for drilling for
oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which contains a supply
of oil which could support America without Arab oil for 30 years.
What the liberals fail to inform the public is that the refuge
covers 19 million acres, but Congress specifically set aside 1.5
million for exploration into drilling for oil. This 1.5 million
acres is merely a coastal plain, not the beautiful, forested hills
and valleys most often photographed by environmentalists in Brooke
Range. This plain contains the village Kaktovic, home to over 250
Inupiat natives, as well as an airstrip, power lines and an oil
well. Recent polls suggest that more than 70 percent of Alaskans
think that the plain should be mined.

John Ashcroft, Attorney General, the man portrayed by the left
as a racist, closed-minded white supremacist, has won four
statewide elections in the state of Missouri, serving as attorney
general twice and as governor twice. The action the left constantly
cites, Ashcroft’s orchestration of the rejection of Ronnie
White as Federal Judge, was also backed by the Sheriff’s
Department of Missouri as well as other sheriffs’ departments
across the country.

Ashcroft in his career has signed a law designating Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a state holiday and a law in
Missouri establishing the state’s first historic site in
honor of an African American. He established an excellence award in
the name of George Washington Carver and, as a U.S. Senator, voted
for over 90 percent of all black judicial nominees. And as for the
complaint that Ashcroft is anti-abortion, it’s not his job to
design policy, just to carry out existing and newly formed
policies. It is interesting that the left will intimate that
Ashcroft’s personal beliefs would color his implementation of
policy, yet the media, which is over 80 percent Democrat, can be
completely impartial.

Bush is no dummy. It takes someone with brains to appoint so
many of the right people. Bush knows how to delegate
responsibility, and let the specialists give him the correct
answers. So what’s the problem?