Friday, August 13, 2010

Ignorance and Bliss

A TV retrospective on the Eisenhower years told of an exchange between Ike and his Press Secretary James Haggerty. When asked about his planned response at a scheduled presidential press conference to the threat of an invasion of Taiwan by Mainland China, Ike said not to worry, that he would “confuse them.” And confuse them he did.

His response to the expected question was sufficiently incoherent to compete with any Bush dissertations, George Senior that is. Junior’s classics were brief, often one word. He seemed unused to speaking, and maybe even thinking, in long sentences.

Many people listening to Ike’s response might have considered him uninformed. But since his career had been the military this simply wasn’t the case. Unlike Douglas MacArthur a few years earlier, he realized that China’s intentions were inscrutable. Knowing he had no proper answer he got by with feigned ignorance.

The Straits of Formosa have been peaceful since so his response evidently served its purpose. An unequivocal answer might have aggravated the situation. This shows that there are times when appearing dumb can be an asset. By now you may have figured where this is going. Yes, I am thinking of the Belle of the Yukon. (I know the Yukon is in Canada, not Alaska. But the phrase has a nice ring to it and what the hell, north is north)

If knowledge can be camouflaged by apparent ignorance we may be overlooking the bright side of a possible Sarah Palin presidency. If the expertise she’s hiding is proportional to the ignorance she uses to hide it, this has to a milestone in the history of political rope a dope. Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg has described her ramblings as “Fox News without punctuation.” I wish I’d a said that!

My guess is that we will continue “misunderestimating” this woman because I don’t expect her to run for president in 2012, at least not in a serious way. I don’t think she wants to be president. There’s too much work involved which would take too much time from what she likes best which is being herself, Aimee Semple McPalin.*


*Aimee Semple McPherson was a famous evangelist in the first half of the 20th Century. For those interested there’s plenty about her on the internet.

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