This also was an amusing exchange from the Wolfowitz press briefing:
Q Secretary Wolfowitz, could I just also ask you, what did you really mean when you said people in the Middle East will believe almost anything?
Mr. Wolfowitz: It’s a — here’s what I mean. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify. It’s a comment on how we are seen as a country that can do anything, that can restore power overnight. Sometimes it’s nice to have the reputation for being almost godlike, but frankly, I think it produces this phenomenon that if something isn’t happening, it must be because the Americans don’t want it to happen; and they begin to invent the most elaborate reasons to explain it. And the fact is — you know it — we often just make mistakes. We do stupid things. And then people spend years and years afterwards with elaborate explanations of not, “Gee the Americans are stupid,” but, “There must be some very ingenious plot here.”
Omnibus Bill
Same way in domestic politics here.
The left thinks Bush (and anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy, for that matter) is a subhuman drooling cretin, so stupid and evil that he can barely get out of bed in the morning, what with the primordial ooze, boogers and brimstone flood that practically surrounds him…
Except when Bush manages to best the left, or turn a lousy situation into an advantageous one, in which case he becomes the man behind the curtain, the fiendishly clever chap who knows all, sees all, pulls all the levers, the omnipotent evil god who controls all things that happen everywhere around the world.
It’s funny, the way people who dislike the U.S. perceive it – alternating between acting like incoherent monkeys throwing shit, and Dale Gribble. (“You gotcher black U.N. Helicopters, an’ tha See Eye Yay…”)
Chris
Sounds like Nasser. “The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them -which- we are missing.”
Art
This is a complex topic and the shallowness with which it has been covered by the media is astounding (I’ll admit that the consumer demand for meaty news analysis might be pretty soft). Lengthy post on it here:
http://www.hardgaze.blogspot.com