Yes, the headline on this blog item is provocative. But it wasn’t one of President Bush’s liberal critics who asked the question; it was former GOP congressman and conservative cable TV talk-show host Joe Scarborough, who devoted a segment on his “Scarborough County” program on MSNBC last week to a discussion of whether Bush is playing dumb or just plain dumb. Scarborough told the Washington Post that he felt compelled to discuss the subject because he kept hearing fellow Republicans questioning Bush’s capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq.
John Fund, a conservative commentator who was a guest panelist for the Scarborough discussion, has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal exploring the issue. He points out that much of the public perception about Bush not being smart comes from Bush’s public speaking mishaps. But he argues that the fundamental issue driving the current debate over Bush’s brain is Iraq. “When the going is tough, a president needs to be able to make a clear, vigorous defense of his policies,” Fund wrote. “That clearly isn’t happening right now, and the doubts about the president are starting to grow and threaten to further limit his effectiveness.” Even among the conservative faithful.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
My column Friday reported that the Wichita school district had sent a directive to elementary schools telling them not to schedule regular morning or afternoon recess for kids — and that several schools had interpreted this as a message to cut recess for more class instruction time. That wasn’t the intention, superintendent Winston Brooks said in the column, and he pledged to revisit the policy and clarify matters.
To his credit, it didn’t take long: On Friday, Brooks forwarded to The Eagle a new directive from the district office reaffirming that “physical activity is an important part of the school day.” While the e-mail states that recess will remain unscheduled, it asks that “each student have a minimum of 15 minutes of physical activity per day above and beyond PE and lunch recess. It is up to each building to decide how and when to provide that time.”
This is a welcome clarification of policy that should ensure that every schoolchild is allowed at least one daily break for exercise and play.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
President Bush spent some of his 10-day vacation at the Crawford, Texas, ranch reading Albert Camus’ 1946 novel “The Stranger,” according to White House spokesman Tony Snow. Snow said, “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism.” Early last year, Bush quoted Camus as saying, “Freedom is a long-distance race.” Anybody feel like reading into Bush’s choice of reading?
John Dickerson at Slate did: “Does his experience in Iraq push him to read works replete with themes of angst, anxiety, and dread? Was the president trying to gain insight into the thinking of Europeans who are skeptical of his plan for democracy in the Middle East, founded as it is on the idea of a universal rational essence that existentialists reject? Did he just want to read something short for his truncated vacation? This may be the first time that national security demands an official version of literary criticism. We want a book report!”
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd couldn’t resist reading into it, either: “If you think about it long enough, though, it begins to make a sort of wacky sense. ‘The Stranger’ is about the emotionally detached Meursault, who makes a lot of bad decisions and pre-emptively kills an Arab in the sand. Get it? Camus’ protagonist moves through an opaque, obscure and violent world that is indifferent to his beliefs and desires. Get it?
“If there was ever a moment when this president could regard the unanticipated consequences of his actions, behold the world littered with the very opposite of what he intended for it and appreciate the gritty stoicism of the philosophy of absurdism, this is it.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
According to most damage assessments of the Israel-Hezbollah war, the terrorists won. The offensive may have impaired Hezbollah’s ability to terrorize Israelis with its rockets, the thinking goes, but not so much that it offset Hezbollah’s gain in stature and credibility.
Given that, Eagle editorial board members found it encouraging to hear the more optimistic view of Barukh Binah (in photo), consul general of Israel based in Chicago. While in Wichita Thursday, Binah acknowledged that the “Lebanese people paid a price,” but he emphasized that Hezbollah launches missiles from residential neighborhoods and that civilians were warned to leave. Most important, Binah said, people in the region are newly asking questions, especially about the involvement of Iran and Syria in Hezbollah’s activities, and the United Nations for the first time has passed a resolution allowing Israel to defend itself. Now, he said, if Western nations don’t step up and help rebuild southern Lebanon, the Iranians will.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Illuminating (and depressing) nugget about Kansas voters from state Republican Party chairman Tim Shallenburger in the Aug. 17 edition of The Johnson County Sun: “They may know who Phill Kline is and they may know who Kathleen Sebelius is . . . and I’m not sure more than 60 percent know them. You get beyond that, and they don’t even know there’s an election. I had a precinct person come in yesterday wanting to know when the primary was.” (It was Aug. 1.)
Posted by Rhonda Holman
