A Two-fer

In Slate, Timothy Noah asks the question almost everyone else has been too scared to ask: if some administration apologists want to argue that Bush can't be called a liar because he is unaware that what he is saying is false, then why is he unaware? The answer, it seems, isn't that hard.

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. Even Bush's allies concede that Bush is strikingly ignorant.

It is clear that Bush has made a lot of recklessly false statements, and for that reason has earned the "liar" label. But there is no need to choose between truthfulness and intelligence. Stupid people lie all the time, just like smart people do. Yet even if you do feel the need to make a choice for epistemological reasons, ignorance of the truth doesn't give Bush moral license to say whatever he wants. It really is shocking the degree to which some commentators will go to exonerate Bush for lying when just three years ago even Gore's exhalations were the subject of a media feeding frenzy. (That's the liberal media for you, I guess.)