Silly or Stupid for President?

The leading Democratic presidential candidates these days look silly. The Republican leaders look stupid.

In the United States it’s better to appear stupid than silly. Americans look upon being silly as repulsive self-indulgence springing from reading books and going to the ballet. They look upon being stupid as the common lot that hard work (not to mention money) can overcome. Witness the ascendency of G. W. Bush, a rich boy of small intellectual capacities. By assiduously kissing rumps of rich reactionaries Bush went from one soft job to another until he arose one day to find he was President of the United States–the “decider,” as he likes to say.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all ooze education and sophistication while they natter over which of them has devised a better health plan to seek for the unwashed. Their nattering gets the coverage from reporters bored with what has become an endless campaign. Their health plans get ignored because they sound like same complicated contraptions torturing the millions of Americans who endure them in the absence of something better–universal health care–yes, what fat-cat Republicans call socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is the health coverage enjoyed by the president, members of congress and high-ranking federal officials that all of us should have.

For the Republicans Mitt Romney, who has changed political positions more times than he has changed his shorts, can’t remember what he said about not having Muslims in his cabinet. As a Mormon he's up on religious tolerance. Rudolph Giuliani says he’d have no qualms about nuking Iranians who refuse to knuckle to Uncle Sam. As new slaughters douse Baghdad and environs in blood, John McCain creaks about telling New Hampshire hicks that a new day of peace and quiet and democracy dawns over Iraq.

The future leader of the Free World romps among these six? My goodness.