Is Bush Becoming Rational?

One of the most important characteristics of rational inquirers is a willingness to recognized that we are all wrong much of the time. This recognition usually generates a willingness to listen to opposing opinions and, ideally, a willingness to admit when one is wrong.

Many have charged that President Bush is stupid when what they really seem to mean is that he is inarticulate. But Bush's intellectual weakness isn't really so much a lack of cognitive horsepower (it's hard to tell how much of that he's got), but, rather, a lack of curiosity coupled with an apparent unwillingness to admit he is or even might be wrong. Consequently he has not been willing to listen to or interact with those with whom he disagrees. This has set the intellectual tone of the administration, and generated the ideologically homogenous echo chamber of incestuous amplification and groupthink that drives the administration's disastrous foreign policy.

But, according to the Post, this may be changing. My two reactions to ths news are (a) well, it's about goddamn time and (b) thank God! (figuratively speaking). Bush's dogmatism and tendency to subordinate facts to ideology has been disastrous, and only someone strongly inclined toward intellectual insularity and what Peirce calls "the method of tenacity" in reasoning could have taken 5.5 years to recognize just how disastrous. Sooner would have been better, but later is better than never.

So go Dubya! Welcome to the reality-based community. Life's less comfortable here, but (as Peirce notes) everything of value costs us something. Seeing things a little more clearly is worth the discomfort.