Great article in Slate yesterday about how Bush can be considered both stupid and a liar :

Is President Bush a liar? The New York Times’ David Rosenbaum examined this question with a surfeit of post-Howell-Raines fair-mindedness in the June 22 “Week in Review” section. His bottom line: “[A] review of the president’s public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied” in two particular instances. The first was when Bush claimed he knew Saddam Hussein to possess large quantities of chemical and biological weapons. The second was when Bush claimed that his tax cut would provide tax relief for everyone who pays income taxes. In both instances, Chatterbox is baffled by Rosenbaum’s doubt.

Let’s address Bush’s tax claim first. Its falsity is not in dispute. Chatterbox has written elsewhere that Bush lied when he said, “My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax.” (The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center found 8.1 million people who pay taxes but will receive no tax cuts.) Rosenbaum recognized that Bush’s statement was untrue but expressed doubt that Bush knew it to be untrue. Can a false statement be a lie if the speaker is unaware it is a lie?

That leads us immediately to a second question, one that Rosenbaum dared not address: Why is the speaker unaware that his statement is a lie? In Bush’s case, the answer is painfully obvious. It’s because Bush is a functionally not-bright man. As Chatterbox has explained elsewhere, it’s impossible to tell?and, ultimately, of little interest?whether Bush lacks the necessary mental equipment, or whether he’s simply incurious. The end result is the same.

This “he’s too retarded to know he’s lying”, which I will now refer to as “The Corky Defense” (named after the second most famous mentally retarded guy), seems to be a pretty consistant theme among Bush supporters.

Bush said his tax cuts would help everybody, but it turns out he’s screwing the poor. Bush said he knows for a fact that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium from Africa, but it was known for almost a year that the evidence was forged. Bush’s buddy Ken Lay rips off investors for billions, but when asked about him, Bush suddenly turns into St. Peter and pretends he doesn’t even know him. Bush said that there are links between Iraq and al Qaeda, but the CIA concluded that there aren’t any. There were numerous prior warning about 9/11, but Bush didn’t get them and he didn’t remember the numerous warnings he’d beeen briefed on about terrorists hijacking planes into buildings.

In all these cases, all he had to do was invoke The Corky Defense and any allegations of wrongdoing and negligence went away. I guess this shouldn’t be a suprise to anyone though. Back in the 2000 election, one of the biggest defenses of Bush’s clear mental inferiority to Al Gore was “Well, he may not be that bright, but he’s surrounding himself with bright people. He’s got Colin Powell!” It was clear then that Bush wasn’t exactly the micromanager type.

What Bush doesn’t seem to realize is that being a leader isn’t just about delegating authority, but accepting responsibility for mistakes made within your oganization. Sorry George, but saying “I don’t know” doesn’t cut it. Knowing what the hell you’re talking about is one of the minimum requirements of the presidency and if you can’t even handle that, then maybe you shouldn’t be in charge anymore.