Just How Stupid is Stupid?

There are two types of stupid people in the world. Type 1s are too stupid to know they're stupid. Type 2s are just intelligent enough to know they're stupid, but too stupid to do anything about it. By our reckoning, the Shrub is a Type 1 idiot.

At the height of the Plame affair, Old Type 1 testily explained that he would ferret out anyone involved in leaking information about Valerie Plame. At the time, he promised that anyone involved would be "taken care of". When it became clear there was an ample supply of those needing taken care of, he amended his terms to require the offender commit a crime before receiving his particular brand of cowboy justice.

Now that it looks like Type 1 is the ringleader of Team Not-Taken Care Of, he's flipping like a flapjack on an IHOP grill. Gone are the promises to "take care" of leakers. His new strategy, surely devised by the Amazing Kreskin, goes a little like this, "Just watch over here while I do something over there. If you watch too closely you'll spoil the illusion and ruin the magical fun and that's just dangerous to the country you traitorous slime!"

Now he's faced with the news that he leaked like a baby on a 24-hour fruit juice jag. Fittingly, his new punishment threshold only applies to illegal leaks specifically about Valerie Plame (and only leaked on Thursdays between February 28 and 29 on moonless nights). None of the auxiliary leaks about "nookuler" materials, aluminum tubes, or yellowcake counts. That seems only fair since the cost of Iraq doesn't count as part of the budget.

When his opening gambit failed - as it usually does - he claimed he didn't do anything illegal. Who knew that being the Czar of Crawford allows him to declassify anything he wants? Funny how that never seems to apply to things like the notes from the Energy Task Force.

When Gambit Two failed, he fell back on the, "I released the information in the public interest" defense. About as air-tight as the famed Twinkie Defense, this brand of obfuscation apparently depends on some political geometry suggesting that since George is a member of the public and it was in his interest to selectively release information, it was all above-board. As his budget-balancing acumen suggests, he didn't study math between frat parties and his grueling cheerleading duties at Yale.

So here's our question:

Clearly Mr. Bush has all the perception of your average tree stump. That he is a World-Class imbecile is only a surprise to Harriet Miers. But, he has some smart, albeight incredibly evil and egotistical people, pumping air into that bubble he lives in.

So are those people Type 1s or Type 2s?

Truth Told by Omnipotent Poobah, Saturday, April 08, 2006