Re: Effects of transit on congestion

In article <memo.20060624143325.2524F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jgd@xxxxxxxxx (John Dallman) wrote:

In article <ddfr-789055.16032023062006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Friedman) wrote:
jgd@xxxxxxxxx (John Dallman) wrote:
How do foreigners react to Teddy Kennedy?

We don't see or hear very much of him at all. He gives me much the
same impression as *** Cheney - someone who is reasonably smart
and articulate, and plays his cards close to his chest.

Whereas, so far as I can make out, he is the one major U.S.
politician who is, if not literally of subnormal intelligence,
clearly not smart.

This may well be the case; he certainly has the background to become a
successful politician without much in the way of talent.

When I say we don't hear much of him, I would be surprised if he
appeared on UK domestic TV or radio as often as once every three years.
I listen to the BBC World Service a fair amount, and he may get quoted
there as often as once a year. Most of what I know of him comes from
newspapers, where the same personal impression isn't available, or the
CNN website, where he's quoted reasonably often in text, but never seems
to be saying very much.

My "react to" was imprecise. I was thinking more of their image of him.

I think there is a considerable tendency, with public figures, to see
what you want and expect to see--after all, few of us get the
opportunity to actually talk with them and observe their abilities first
hand. In the U.S., at least, sizable parts of the population tend to
assume that liberals are smart and educated, conservatives dumb and
uneducated. An entirely bogus account of the relation between the
average IQ of a state and which way it went in the presidential election
got quite a lot of credence not long ago, I think in part because it
played into that prejudice. I would have guessed that sizable parts of
the European population share that attitude, at least as applied to the
U.S. and perhaps at home as well.

Thus Teddy Kennedy's image in the U.S. is, intellectually speaking,
better than that of Bush or Reagan, although I think it's clear he is
much less intelligent than Bush is or Reagan was. I suspected the same
would be true abroad.

Similarly, Gore is generally regarded as intelligent, educated,
academically able--in contrast to Bush. At some point figures on the
college records of both of them got out--I think real figures, although
I don't know for sure. According to them, Bush's grades were marginally
better than Gore's.

There are exceptions to the pattern, I should say. I don't think people
to the left of Nixon thought of him as dumb. And I'm not sure what the
conservative presumption about liberal politicians is--probably not that
they are uneducated.

Of course, other things are also going on in public perceptions. I think
Gore was perceived as more intellectual than Bill Clinton, although I
believe Clinton had a strikingly better academic record. My suspicion is
that Clinton, like Bush, regarded an intellectual image as a political
liability.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
.

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