ABSTRACT
As he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, the self-proclaimed “Education President” and leader of the “Free World” George W.Bush, addressing the Yale graduating class of the year 2001, announced proudly that education was pointless to success in America. Referring to Vice President Dick Cheney’s dropping out of Yale, the president went on: “now we know: If you graduate from Yale [with Cs], you become president. If you drop out, you get to be vice president.” He also made “jokes” about his insufficient grasp of the English language, boasted about his blackouts and memory loss from excessive partying, and bragged about his propensity to snore away during his study hours in the Yale library. Entering public awareness partly through the efforts of the president himself, Bush’s stupidity works propagandistically to consolidate his ideological power and his rhetorical platform around his insults to education and his antiintellectualism.
