Today it seems that everyone and his brother in the mass media, especially the print mass media, is willing to say the awful truth that the President of the United States, George Bush, is incompetent. Rarely, however, will the mass media mention an associated point in an unvarnished way: that Bush is fundamentally dumb. From every indication that he gives, his level of intelligence -- which The New York Times has referred to in the past by using the oblique code word “incurious” -- seems very low, except for mendacious craftiness as a politician.

While the mass media will now say that Bush is incompetent, only a few -- a very few -- in the mass media will now mention, even if only obliquely, that before getting into politics Bush was a serial failure at everything he tried, a failure who had to be (and was) bailed out by Daddy’s friends and wannabe friends. (Richard Cohen of The Washington Post exemplified the obliqueness and the bailing out by recently saying that his reading had convinced him that, before running for President, Bush “had no accomplishment to his name that did not stem from primogeniture.”) And to this day, one notes, the media mentions only infrequently that Bush was once a drunk.

What we have, then, is a President who is a formerly-drunken serial failure of mediocre intelligence who repeatedly had to be bailed out by Daddy’s friends and wannabe friends. This is not the best recipe for a President or for a successful presidency, as the nation has been learning for six years, and as more and more people began to accept after the incompetent response to Katrina. What we also have is a media which long ignored most of this (just as it ignored the Gennifer Flowers stuff when the deeply immoral Bill Clinton was first running for President), and which still usually ignores it except that most of the media are now willing to say that George the Pretexter-In-Chief is incompetent. And what we also have had, one should add, is a public that, until Katrina, was both generally unwilling to see the obvious fact of Bush’s grave mental deficiencies and was largely uncaring about them. For so much of the public are Red Staters in attitude regardless of where they live, and, as long as the president is implementing benighted Red State views, could care less whether he (and one day she) is a mental and moral midget. (It is ironically curious, is it not, that it used to be Communists who were called red, and now it is political reactionaries.)

I have often wondered how so inadequate an individual as Bush came to be the overwhelming favorite for and the winner of the Republican nomination in 2000. Bush was, so to speak, a drunk and a failure one week, the Governor of Texas the next week, and the Republican nominee the week after that. How the hell did this happen? One has no idea, and the media seems never to have pursued the matter. My guess is that reactionary elements of the Republican Party, desperate to win the presidency in 2000, and long tied to the political machine called the Bush family, decided early on to anoint this son of a former president as the nominee, and succeeded in what essentially was a plot. (These would likely be the same reactionary elements whose henchmen and henchwomen fraudulently stole the 2000 presidential election in Florida and, quite possibly, the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio.) Neither historians nor the media seem to have yet investigated the question of how Bush came to be the nominee. This is unfortunate, since the story may prove to be a most interesting one, not to say an instructive one (in a reverse way).

But at least the mass media, in particular the print media, is willing to widely say today that Bush is incompetent. Which brings me to the point made in three previous commentaries. This writer reads a fair amount, including reading three major newspapers, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe, as well as reading the National Weekly Edition of The Washington Post. In prior years -- 2003, 2004, 2005 -- and in part of the current year, one looked in vain -- with certain exceptions discussed below -- in those papers or in other mass media for comments that Bush is incompetent. It’s not as if the handwriting wasn’t on the wall to be read by anyone who wasn’t either willfully blind or blinded by political conservatism, by an ignorant civics book version of American government, by a desire to maintain access to Administration figures for journalistic purposes, or by a desire, so typical of most people, not to seem out of step or to get out of line but to instead go along with the crowd. Bush’s early damnfoolery regarding Iraq, his stupid early comments about Iraq (e.g., “Mission Accomplished”), his equally or even more stupid later actions in Iraq, the increasing knowledge that he and the new Tricky Dick had lied to get us into war, plus his stupid actions in other fields (e.g., Social Security), were all-sufficient to make clear, to anyone with eyes who wished to see, that we were in the hands of an incompetent. But prior to relatively recent months, one simply did not generally read in the mass media that Bush was incompetent.

There were, however, certain exceptions to this. There were five columnists who were willing to say relatively early-on that Bush is incompetent. My recollection is that two of them, Derrick Jackson of The Boston Globe and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, would say it occasionally; two others, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman of The New York Times, would say it a fair amount, and a fifth, Bob Herbert of The New York Times, would say it a good bit. Out of all the columnists who write for these and other papers, out of all the editorial writers for these and other papers, out of all the reporters who put what plainly are opinions into news columns and who write special pseudo news columns denominated as commentary -- out of what must be hundreds, probably thousands, of relevant journalists of one type and another -- only the foregoing five seemed willing to recognize and mention that we have an incompetent for President.

It is common knowledge that the overwhelming preponderance of reporters and editors are white. But the fascinating, and one thinks telling, fact is that three of the five columnists who recognized and told the truth about Bush were black: Herbert, Jackson and Robinson. Think about that. There probably are thousands of relevant editors, columnists and reporters, most of whom are white, but three out of the only five who saw and spoke the truth are black.

What could possibly account for this fantastic disproportion in which a virtual mob of whites won’t see or say the truth, and a majority of those who do say the truth are African American even though African Americans are apparently only a tiny minority of the relevant journalistic population. One possibility, put to me by an African American whom I asked about the matter, is that when stating their own views the black columnists were also saying what their (African American) constituents think, and they knew that, if attacked for saying it, they could claim the attack was racist. I suspect that at least the first part of that surmise may be true -- the African American columnists were saying what their constituents think. This leads to a fundamental question. Taking both groups all in all (as Shakespeare said), why did the African American columnists and their constituents think so differently about the matter than the white columnists and their (white) constituents presumably thought? Merely to put the question, of course, strongly suggests the obvious answer.

That answer is, of course, the vastly different historical experience, as a general matter, of African Americans and whites in this country. African Americans went through 200 plus years of slavery, nearly 100 years of Jim Crow in the South as well as discrimination in the North, and have suffered another 40 years of extensive discrimination even if the situation is far better today than it was in 1964 and 1965 when the public accommodations and voting rights acts were passed. A people who have gone through the African American experience are not going to see white men, especially white reactionaries like Bush, through rose colored glasses. To the contrary. They are far more likely to see those people for what they are. Whites, on the other hand, however poor, however downtrodden, however uneducated, have not had the same history, and therefore, unless they are what used to be called progressives, are more likely to see other whites, and white politicians, in a more favorable light, to see them, at least initially, in a sort of civics book light and, in civics book fashion, to want to think them smart and decent and honest. Of course, this may not be true, this almost surely is not true, of certain whites, those who are what would once have been called progressive in the day when progressives was the real name for a movement instead of a name merely appropriated out of fear that people will otherwise be called by the dreaded word “liberals.” But one would venture that it is true of most whites.

What is being said here -- that one’s history, both as an individual and a member of a people, has much to do with one’s perceptions -- is so obvious as hardly to merit mention. Yet this obvious point nonetheless seems to me the reason why the majority of columnists who were willing to call Bush incompetent in prior years were black, not white, even though the relevant population of journalists is overwhelmingly white.

What, one might then ask, accounts for the fact that two of the five who were willing to say Bush is incompetent were white, Krugman and Dowd. Well, one has to say right off the bat that, as is true of whites and blacks alike, and as is true of all people, one is not solely a product of one’s ethnic background, but also of one’s individuated views. (Such individuating may account, on the African American side, for Republicans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, J.C. Watt, and Clarence Thomas.) So maybe Krugman and Dowd were simply individuated odd men (and women) out in terms of personal views held by white journalists. On the other hand, perhaps their ethnic backgrounds had a role, just as African Americans’ ethnic backgrounds may have had a role. Because his name is Krugman, one assumes that Krugman’s background is Jewish, and, when I said this in an article of August 24, 2006, nobody wrote to say it was wrong. The Jews have had a long history of oppression, and though they extensively are establishment types today in this country -- with a number of members of the Bush/Cheney gang of neocon thugs-in-suits being Jewish -- still there are Jews in this country who have not deserted their history, who instead remember it. That history, with its consequent liberalism, including liberalism in this country, did not assume that people in power were benevolent. To the contrary, as perhaps was classically summed up by the statement of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof: “God bless and keep the Czar -- far away from us.” Perhaps Krugman is one of those who have not deserted the history of the Jewish people and who therefore, like African Americans, was able to see and willing to say the truth early on about George Bush. Also Krugman is really a professor rather than a columnist, even though he does have a regular column in The Times, and professors are perhaps more prone to see what is wrong than is the ordinary guy in the street.

As for Dowd, as an Irish American she too comes from a group that, while it extensively is part of the American establishment today, was historically downtrodden in the extreme, both in the British Empire and in the United States. The subject of vicious discrimination, Irish Americans were long a major part of the progressive and liberal movements in this country, as well as a very big part of the labor movement  (I think Dowd herself is more or less working class in origin -- her uncle was, I believe, a cop (ultimately a high ranking one) in Washington, D.C.) So maybe Dowd too was reflecting a historical background when her eyes had no scales and her tongue no lock when it came to seeing and saying that Bush is incompetent.

The African American experience, and/or what I think to be its effects, has recently manifested itself in additional ways of great, sometimes enormous importance. Let us start with the Republican control of this country, that is, with its control by reactionaries and religious fundamentalists. This control stems crucially from the one party Republican South.

Now, from at least about 1830 or 1840, the South has been a deeply conservative- to-reactionary part of this country. As well, for only a slightly shorter period, it has been a one-party area: it was purely Democratic from the end of the Civil War to about the mid to late 1960s, and purely Republican after that (because Lyndon Johnson got civil rights and voting rights bills enacted in 1964 and 1965). And from day one of the existence of the nation, the South has had vastly disproportionate control over the federal government. It has pretty much controlled the federal government from the beginning except for the sixteen year period of Civil War and reconstruction, 1860-1876.

There have been certain fundamental reasons for the South’s control. The earliest is a crucial one which caused this country to have been born in original sin: To obtain agreement on the Constitution of 1789, that Constitution provided that Southern representation in the House would be increased by counting every slave as three-fifths of a person. Slaves, of course, did not vote, could not be schooled, were compelled to do anything their masters wanted, were treated horribly, etc. -- but, via the three-fifths clause, were counted as part of the South’s population in determining how many Representatives and how many electoral votes each Southern state would have. It is no wonder, then, that before the Civil War, our Presidents all were either Southerners or doughfaces -- northern men with southern principles -- and the South controlled both the Supreme Court and Congress.

After the Civil War the three-fifths clause went by the boards, and, when reconstruction was over, the South was entitled to as many Representatives and electors as warranted by counting each black citizen as five-fifths of a voter (as a whole voter, not as a mere three-fifths of a voter). And while I cannot remember ever having seen any mention or discussion of this crucial fact, it necessarily must have increased the number of Representatives and electors that each southern state was entitled to even though, as we all know, blacks themselves were not permitted to vote in the South. So Southern states had an increased number of Representatives and electors, but the selection of all of them was exclusively in the hands of a white, reactionary, militaristic population. In terms of political power in the federal government, Southern whites were better off after the Civil war than before. And, indeed, the South controlled the Congress and the country for decades because of its immorally used advantage in representation, plus the seniority system in Congress, plus the crucial importance to the Democratic party of southern electoral votes in presidential elections.

Because of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 and 1965 legislation, certain rules changed, but overall outcomes did not. Ultimately Southern blacks were able to and did vote, but the South remained a one party (now Republican) region, it remained pretty much reactionary and militaristic, and it often had overriding influence in Congress. Also some of our Presidents began to come from the states of the old reactionary and militaristic Confederacy. After Johnson, there were also Carter, Clinton and Bush the Second -- and it began to be said (correctly?) that a presidential candidate could not win without placating and carrying a significant part of the South.

But, in this era of African American voting, in this era of southern African American voters who, one would think, do not share some of the more benighted views of large numbers of white Southerners, why does the white South, and why do the militaristic and reactionary views of the white South, continue to control the federal policies of this country, or to at least exercise vastly disproportionate influence on those policies? The answers, one would think, lie in our winner-take-all method of electing Representatives, electing Senators, and choosing Presidential electors, and in the gerrymandering of political districts to increase the number of seats of reactionary white Southerners in this winner-take-all election process.

Let me explain a bit further. America follows a winner-take-all method of elections for the House of Representatives. So, if a Congressional candidate gets 50.2% of the vote, he is elected and the ballots of the other 49.8% of the voters might as well not have been cast. Similarly with the Electoral College: the Presidential candidate who gets 50.1% of the votes in the state gets all of the state’s electoral votes. The other 49.9% of the voters might as well not have voted. With regard to the Senate, the basic point is the same even though people don’t normally think about it because each state has only two Senators. If one party has 50.5% of the voters in a state, it will elect both Senators, while the other party, with fully 49.5% of the voters, will have none.

This winner-take-all system is combined, of course, with partisan gerrymandering designed to insure that the same persons are elected election after election after election. In the South, those people are mainly reactionary white Republicans (the people who become the Jeff Sessions of the world if and when they go to the Senate). African American voting strength is gerrymandered into a relatively few districts. The end result of all this is that the South (the thirteen states of the old Confederacy) was, is, and will remain a one party, reactionary, white stronghold even though African Americans are perhaps half or so of the citizens down there, and the country, accordingly, will continue to dance to the tune of, and our policies will continue to reflect, the reactionary and militaristic South.

The only way to change this, of course, is to change the winner-take-all system, at least for the House and in the Electoral College. Substituted for the winner-take-all system would be some form of proportional representation in House elections, perhaps with what is called instant run-off voting to insure that every winner gets at least 50 percent of the vote, and division of a state’s Electoral College votes in proportion to the division of actual votes in a state -- or maybe better yet, abolition of the Electoral College in favor of direct election of the President. Proportional representation for congressional seats and presidential electors would mean that, instead of the minority’s votes having no effect, the minority will elect legislators in proportion to its strength and its votes will also count in the presidential election. The one party South would be broken open, especially because of the African American vote. It would become at least a two party South, and white reactionary, militaristic views would not be the only ones that count in the South.

Incidentally, the use of some form of proportional representation would have many advantages in addition to breaking the one party South’s 200 year old stranglehold on the country by causing it to become a two party (or even multi-party) area like much of the rest of the country. It would also break up one party states elsewhere in the country and would cause there to be competition for electoral votes in states where there currently is little or none because currently it is so clear that one party rather than the other will get a majority vote in the state and will therefore take all of the state’s electoral votes.

Is it nonetheless impossible to get rid of the winner-take-all system because it is so deeply entrenched? Well, there are movements afoot to change or circumvent the Electoral College. But one really wonders about the possibility of changing the winner-take-all system in the House, short of decades of effort. For decades American political scientists have for various reasons defended the winner-take-all system in Congressional elections and have assailed the system of proportional representation used in other countries. Likewise, the hack politicians who benefit from the winner-take-all system do not want to hear about changing it. Without getting into the various pros and cons, let me say that the reasons given by the political scientists seem to me dubious and the selfishness of the hacks in Congress beneath contempt, but that is what one faces. On the other hand, it may not be overwrought to expect continued political dysfunction, so long as things do not change and the South, which minimizes the effect of African American voting in the winner-take-all system, continues to do this and to control the country. If you were to ask me, I would say that it is essential to try to obtain some form of proportional representation, regardless of how daunting the odds against success may be. In the long run, after all, one never knows. Success can come, though it is unexpected.

I close with two last points. The first is that one has read recently that lots of African Americans may stay away from the polls next week because they feel, on the basis of experience, that nothing changes. One understands and sympathizes with their view, but nonetheless hopes they vote because it is crucial for the county that control of Congress be taken away from George Bush. I am not a Democrat. I find both political parties to be reprehensible. But however bad the Democrats may be, it is crucial that control of at least one house of Congress, and preferably both houses, pass from the hands of the far worse Republicans. George Bush’s worst and richly deserved nightmare would be John Conyers, an African American, as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which he will become if the Democrats win the House. The investigations into the Republicans’ horrible misconduct would be incessant and devastating, and impeachment likely would follow. This couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than George, the Pretexter-in-Chief.

The second point does not relate to politics, but is itself deeply related to the African American experience in this country. As one would expect, that experience makes itself known in the federal judiciary as well as elsewhere. Thus, it is no surprise that it was an African American judge, Anna Diggs Taylor, a judge who was active in the civil rights movement and had suffered discrimination both as an African American and as a woman, who was the first and so far the only federal judge to rule Bush’s electronic eavesdropping illegal, and not to throw out the case because the Government’s eavesdropping, even though publicly admitted, is somehow a supposed state secret. Meanwhile other federal judges, white men all as far as I know, and at least in some cases highly privileged white men, have either said cases are barred because the electronic spying on Americans that has been publicly admitted to by the government is somehow or other still a state secret, or have said that cases can continue for now but may ultimately be thrown out because the publicly admitted eavesdropping will supposedly prove to be a state secret in some way.

So, the African American experience has recently made itself known in the federal judiciary too in recent days. It has made itself known, one might say, from Bob Herbert to Anna Diggs Taylor, and one hopes for John Conyers to become Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee so that it can make itself powerfully known in Congress too.