High Praise for Dubya

John Ray lavishes the highest possible praise on President Bush:

The point the letter makes about GWB’s relative inarticulateness reminds me of a similar phenomenon here in my home State of Queensland. Queensland was run for nearly 20 years by the very conservative Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. I was one of his party members. “Sir Joh”, as he was known, was universally condemned by the intelligentsia for his inarticulateness. He spoke like the ill-educated farmer he was. The media regularly said he made no sense at all. But he made plenty of sense to the ordinary Queenslanders who voted for him and in one State election (1974) his government actually got 59% of the popular vote -- a majority so large as to be almost unheard of in a Westminster democracy.

...

So I think that is a pretty good augury for GWB next time he faces the voters. I suspect that his “inarticulateness” is an asset to him with his voters too ...

So the Australian politician most resembling George W Bush is a notoriously corrupt State Premier who retained office for the best part of twenty years with the help of a rigged electoral system? I'm not going to complain that it's an inapt comparison. And if George Bush's post-Presidential career resembles Joh's in any way, I won't lose any sleep over it.

Afterword: summary results for Queensland State Elections throughout the Bjelke-Petersen years (1968 - 1987) can be found here (PDF File).