Which Bush is the Real Bush?

You know what I find incredibly funny about people who hate George W. Bush? I'm talking about people who really hate him, not about those who just deplore his policies. Usually, these sort of people, when they regularly accuse him of craftily attacking our civil rights and systematically restricting our civil liberties, are the same people who at other times openly, gleefully question his level of intelligence, based primarily on how many mistakes he makes when he's speaking. They make him out to be both an evil genius and a complete nincompoop. They imply he is a simple man, a simpleton, for holding to his deeply-held religious convictions, yet they feel no shame in just stopping short of equating him with the Devil.

So I'm really wondering...which is it? Is President Bush a crafty demon, hell-bent on picking apart our Constitution bit by bit in a phased plan to completely destroy it, or is he the complete opposite, "Dubya", the embarrassing President of the United States of America, whose English capabilities are indicative of an inherent intellectual inability to carry out the duties of the office he was elected to serve the American people in? Is he the devious behind-the-scenes planner of 9/11 that some conspiracy theorists make him out to be, or is he a dunce forever stuck in a stereotypical frat-boy/cowboy mentality? Is he a wily aspiring quasi-monarch, or a dimwitted Chief Executive?

You see, I'm confused. Senator Barack Obama can screw up big time and say 10,000 people died in a trailer park after a tornado swept through it, and George Clooney later equates him to a "rock star", but President George W. Bush calls himself "the decider" - "decider" being a real word, meaning Bush used it the correct way - and celebrities, pundits and political opponents alike latch onto it, pillory him for saying it, adding it to their ever-growing collection of "Bushisms" (some of which are pretty funny). Can someone please set the record straight?

Well, until they do, I'll have a go at it (I'm impatient). Here's my theory, or at least a theory, as to how this system works:

When Bush-hating (as opposed to open-minded) critics accuse President George W. Bush of creating and implementing policies that, in their design and execution, obviously require the sort of mental faculties the Bush-haters are unwilling to credit the President with having, they're really attacking Vice President Dick Cheney - after all, they've always perceived that the Veep is the real "power behind the throne"; at one time, this might've been about Rove too. Only when critics make fun of "Bush 43", even if it be only for a grammatical flub or a choking-on-pretzel episode, only then is the criticism actually meant for the sitting President himself, on his own...unless of course the political criticism is by people who actually haven't surrendered their reason to blinding hatred.

As it stands now, while hardly definitive, that's the theory I'll stand behind. Why?

Because it's the only way I'm able to reconcile, at the moment, those two seemingly paradoxical lines of thought held by the Opposition. They say President Bush is smart and dumb at the same time. They say he's too Christian, too religious, and yet vilify him as if he's the root of all evil. They disrespect the President, and then have the gall to demand his respect for them. It's okay for them to ignore the Constitution, but not okay for the White House to (in reality, it's not okay for either to do so). It's really kind of FUBAR.

So, until I have a good explanation given to me as to how exactly it is that President Bush is a dimwitted evil genius, a frat boy of questionable intelligence who, paradoxically, somehow managed to single-handedly fabricate convincing evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...well, I'm sticking by my theory as expounded above.

I'm not saying don't make fun of the Prez when he deserves it (he can be his own worst enemy), or to withhold justifiable criticism when it needs to be voiced (sometimes, it needs to be voiced - a lot). I'm just saying think before you speak, 'cause you're coming across as being even dumber than Dubya, or at least dumber than the version of Dubya you're propagating to the world. It's pretty funny, actually.