The Three Types of Human Failure and President Bush

As I write my book, "Surviving Retail", I'm thankful for what fate has given me to work with. The toy store has provided me with a great way to finish it off. It's the closing argument for my amateur sociological thesis. Seeing multiple generation of people and their interactions ties a lot of my theories together.
The other things are my roommates that I've had for the last year. The many opinions and observations that we've shared as given me a fresh perspective on human behavior that I've gained more from than anything I ever learned in community college.

My roommate Ed in particular has come up with something that really cleared my way of thinking, the three kinds of human failure. When we see someone (or ourselves) do something wrong or make a bad decision, we say "What a fuckin' idiot!", but it's not that simple. We've been all three more times than we'd like to admit, but for illustrative purposes, I'll take the hit.
1. Stupidity- Sometimes I simply do not have the mental ability to make the right decisions. I think this accounts for less human failure than people think.

2. Ignorance -I may have the cranial capacity but I've never been taught or had the life experience to know better.

3. Foolishness - I'm smart enough and should know better, but I still do the wrong thing. God Damn, have I been foolish!

When I write about my crazy customer experiences, I'm assuming they're much more intelligent than my interaction with them may have suggested. I do this hoping someone will extend me the same courtesy when I'm at my worst.

So how does this relate to President Bush? I'm glad you asked. I was watching Bill Maher this past weekend and Christopher Hitchens was pissing me off a bit. I will say, however, that he is definitely the most intelligent man that believes Bush is doing the right thing. He bristles when people call George W. Bush a "moron" but didn't have a problem calling Bill Clinton a "rapist", when there is a lot more direct evidence of the former rather than the latter.

But I agree with him, President Bush is certainly not an idiot, malapropisms aside. But he is foolish, and regardless of how you arrive at the wrong decision, it's still wrong.
Calling him an idiot is like calling him a nazi, it's false and it destroys a lot of the intellectual credibility the person saying it may have with the kind of people whose minds truly need changing. Let us on the left side of the fence come up with our own version of "cut and run". Let's call it what it most obviously is: our "foolish" foreign policy, our "foolish" domestic policies. It's created by people that should know better, but fail regardless. Hearts and minds are two different things, both need to be appealed to before anything can be accomplished in any lasting way.