Two kinds of smarts

The president has failed to let truth and falsehood grapple | Marvin Olasky

I defended George W. Bush's intelligence to journalists in 1999 and 2000.

I still do, but with some nuances related to Joel Belz's observation in last week's WORLD that the president does a poor job of explaining why he does what he does.

I used to explain that Bush was business-management-smart rather than graduate-student-smart, a la Bill Clinton. When I knew Bush during the 1990s—and reports indicate that he hasn't changed—he did not like bull sessions. He wanted practical options laid out without wasted words. He did not want to talk about his decisions. His goal was to make them and let the results do the talking.

Well, it turns out that being grad-student-smart has two uses. I knew one and incorrectly discounted it. I did not comprehend the second.