YOU HAVE TO BE GENIUS TO BE THE VILLAGE IDIOT IN WASHINGTON | 2004-06-12
If you think it is easy to play the Naive Irishman or Southerner in a murderous environment like the world's greatest center of power in Washington, look at how easily professionals make fools of themselves in public. Look at how enormously costly television ads portray Youth, for instance.
In one huge national real estate ad, the Young People is a young white man of around eighteen. When he talks, he moves his hands like a rap singer. They portray Youth by having a white kid be black.
In the real world, everybody knows that any white kid who tries to be black is a laughable loser.
The guy on the computer ads is the only one who managed to be white youth. He acts very young but without a trace of black. He was a huge success.
If you try to be Dumb Irishman, in DC, you had better be very, very, VERY good at it. Getting caught in an act like that makes you, at best, a laughing stock, and at worst, you are exposed as shallow trickster and you are out, out, out. And that's just on Capitol Hill.
Try it in the Oval Office and you had better be damned good.
Reagan was damned good.
He started with the liberal idea that they are smart. There is nothing dumber than a dumb man who thinks he's smart. But there is also nothing nastier than a dumb man who sees that he is being made fun of.
So Reagan threw the sitting Democratic president out of office in 1980 and took the Senate away from them for the first time in a quarter century. And the liberals told each other how dumb Reagan was. He destroyed the Soviet Empire and lowered taxes, and liberal comedians made fun of him on liberal-run networks.
Reagan knew more about real history and practical international affairs than any five Harvard professors combined. But he just sat there and listened while people who wanted to be big-time advisors made complete asses of themselves saying things he knew weren't true or were hopelessly muddled.
He picked people who were not fools. So liberals said, "Reagan is dumb. He just has smart advisors."
So Washington's Village Idiot just sat there in the White House and laughed.