Reply #23: There's clueless and then there's the deliberately clueless [View All]

[theHandpuppet]

I put George Bush in the latter category.

But let's hear what a former professor of the young Herr Bush has to say about him: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503181

Former HBS Prof Blasts Bush
Business scholar says president was 'shallow,' 'flippant' in 1970s class
Published On Friday, July 16, 2004 12:00 AM
By SIMON W. VOZICK-LEVINSON
Crimson Staff Writer

As the race for the White House heats up and the nation’s left-leaning heads come together to unearth potential skeletons in President Bush’s closet, one line in his resume has avoided major scrutiny: the time Bush spent just across the Charles River, earning an MBA at the Harvard Business School (HBS) in the 1970s. Now, as some fervently question the commander-in-chief’s performance in the Texas National Guard decades ago and more current-minded politicos take aim at the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, one former HBS professor is doing his best to publicize his recollections of what he calls a sarcastic, mediocre student who went on to lead the United States.

Yoshihiro Tsurumi, an avowed opponent of Bush’s current views and policies who was a visiting associate professor of international business at HBS between 1972 and 1976, said Bush was among 85 students he taught one year in a required first-year course. In the class on “Environment Analysis for Management,” incorporating elements of macroeconomics, industrial policy and international business, Tsurumi said students discussed and debated case studies for 90 minutes several times a week.

Tsurumi—now a professor of international business at Baruch College in the City University of New York—said he remembers the future president as scoring in the bottom 10 percent of students in the class.

Thirty years after teaching the class, Tsurumi said the twenty-something Bush’s statements and behavior—“always very shallow”—still stand out in his mind.

(snipping)

Tsurumi said he particularly recalls Bush’s right-wing extremism at the time, which he said was reflected in off-hand comments equating the New Deal of the 1930s with socialism and the corporation-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission with “an enemy of capitalism.”

“I vividly remember that he made a comment saying that people are poor because they’re lazy,” Tsurumi said.

MORE

Also see: "The Dunce" http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/16/tsurumi/index.html
"Bush: Poor People Are Lazy" http://editor-at-large.blogspot.com/2005/11/bush-poor-people-are-lazy.html