An amusing
article in Monday’s NYT asks: “When did Jeb Bush become the smarter brother?”
It quotes “[e]xperts on the Bush family [as] say[ing that] it’s an old idea,
but [that] it may not be correct.”
To which, these
days, one is sarcastically inclined to add: “Yuh think?”
The explanation that these experts offer for the long-time family myth is as follows: George W. was far more socially skilled
than Jeb, as well as being more of a wild child when he was growing up:
“Thus, when the family considered the
brothers’ futures, ‘it wasn’t that Jeb was oozing an arching intellect or
compelling profundity as he grew up. It was just that, in juxtaposition with
his more careening brother George Walker Bush — the one who drank, who ran into
problems with the police, whose fraternity was accused of hazing and branding
pledges — Jeb appeared more stable.’”
Now, let’s not mythologize George W. too
much. I still believe that he was an absolutely terrible president, and that
one reason for what I regard as his many failures is that he was extremely
anti-intellectual and hostile to both knowledge and reasoning, not to mention averse to reading policy briefs of more than a page. But while these
are serious defects, they are ones that an intelligent person – and clearly he was, at the least, capable of being tactically and personally shrewd – can have. Not just for reasons of temperament, but
perhaps all the more so if, in his tight family as he grew up, people were
always letting him know that they thought his kid brother was smarter than him.
But it is amusing how, in Jeb’s case,
what apparently were merely defects (lack of social skill) or
intelligence-neutral temperamental differences (being less energetic and
volatile) led to the assumption that he must be smart.
Although my family and family history
are quite different from those of the Bush boys, I must say, I can feel George
W.’s pain (especially now that he has been out of office for so long). My family, perhaps like the Bushes’ despite
the radical differences between an early-twentieth century immigrant Jewish
family and one long ensconced within the New England Yankee elite, greatly
valued what it deemed to be evidence of intelligence and seriousness. It also highly valued the arts – perhaps
unlike the Bush family, despite George W.’s recent embrace of painting – to the
extent that I like to say: If Bill Gates and the third violinist in the
Philharmonic Orchestra had been brothers, people in my extended family grouping would have
thought: “It’s a shame that Bill didn’t turn out as well as his brother.” But I digress.
How do people judge if you’re “smart”
when you’re a kid, in a family that intensely values this attribute? Partly through direct evidence, such as
conversational acuity, or what you can tell people you are reading, or
grades. But also partly through negative
or indirect evidence that gets interpreted based on broader
stereotypes. I always was quite aware,
for example, that any level of proficiency, or at least interest, that I might have in sports potentially counted against me, especially among relatives outside my immediate
family.
Now that the NYT has actually reported,
based on insiders’ first-hand testimony, that Jeb’s reputation as the “smart”
one reflected his deficits, not his accomplishments, perhaps we can hope for an
end to idiotic and lazy reporting elsewhere in the paper about Jeb’s “cerebral”
debate style and “wonky” inclinations. This is, after all, a man who never heard of Chiang Kai Shek (a very famous person when he was growing up, even leaving aside who his father was), and who
is apparently unaware that the Social Security retirement age is no longer 65, due to legislation that passed in 1983 (!).
Nah, an end to lazy reporting based on stereotypes is probably too much too hope for.
But in the meantime, paint on, George W.
And if you still feel any rivalry with your brother, perhaps (whether you will admit it to yourself or not) you are not feeling entirely disappointed by his recent struggles.
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