A lot of people like to paint GWB as unintelligent, but I've never thought that was the case. He is perhaps not an intellectual titan, but you don't rise to the highest office in the land if you're literally an idiot.
Besides, I've seen a lot of interviews with him post-presidency and he comes across as not only an intelligent person, but also quite charming.
I felt that Stone's portrait, as I said in the OP, was largely that of a man who was a decent human being--sincerely spiritual, had genuine love for his family, genuinely cared about the country--but who was in over his head and who, perhaps, was being played and manipulated a bit by the people within his own administration.
If you want to see a recent clip of him, check out this clip from his interview with Ellen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKeFXs8a0Xk
There's a lot of other recent stuff out there as well. And it seems to me that public sentiment on GWB has evolved a lot. I think a lot of people are deciding that they didn't like him as a President, but they like him as a man.
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snepts (11123)
6 years ago
It's unfortunate that if we give him a pass for his term as President because of a certain personal, humble charm, we ignore all the negative circumstances that came about on his watch. I'm not the deepest and most thorough political observer, but I feel he and the Republican party are setting the US people up for ever-widening income disparity and 1%-ism. They drag the NRA types and evangelicals and white nationals into the mix, and life keeps getting worse.
And we pat W. on the head for seeming like a really nice guy. Dick Cheney should be publicly splattered with rotten fruit and vegetables. He sure won't get a send off like McCain, and neither will W.
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PrimeMinisterX (8291)
6 years ago
I'm not too familiar with GWB's economic policies, but one thing I noticed about W. (the film) is that Stone portrayed Bush as a man who really thought that the intelligence would prove to be correct and WMDs would be found in Iraq.
For me, intentions mean a lot. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold people accountable, but I'm a lot more willing to think positively about Bush if he really believed Iraq had WMDs than I would be if I knew that he didn't believe that and intentionally lied to the American public.
Of course you may say, "Well W. is just a movie!"
That's correct, but it seems Stone did a lot of research for this one and tried to stay pretty close to the facts as he understood them. There's a 108-page PDF file on the DVD that includes backstory on a lot of the scenes and that includes the sources that he used for those scenes. That's actually pretty impressive. I wish more studios/directors would do something like that for historical films, especially controversial ones.
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