W. Doesn’t Care. He Doesn’t Have To.

Lyndon Johnson just wanted to be popular.

Despite all of his landmark legislation and accomplishments in office—at least before the Vietnam war and the events of 1968 left his legacy in tatters—LBJ couldn’t get anyone to like him. (When he asked one of his advisers why no one liked him, the adviser told him point black: “Because, Mr. President, you’re not a very likeable man.”)

Bill Clinton has succeeded where LBJ failed. His performance and reception at the DNC last night reminded us—and him—that his likeability is his greatest political and personal asset, and ultimately is his best tool in solidifying his legacy.

Regarding our current President, it’s hard to fathom what motivates him beyond his need to overtake his father and the rest of his family. Much has been made of his religious convictions and his recovery from alcoholism (and possibly worse), but a case could be made that he needed to adopt some salient system of discipline if he was ever going to amount to anything, and at age 40, these were the best options available.

I think W. is, and remains, the slacking underachiever who had other people always do his work for him, had his greatest success as a figurehead governor with no real power, and governed as President much the same way by serving as spokesperson and figurehead for people and forces larger than himself and not having to engage in effort beyond a certain level.

He also, aside from (and maybe even because of) his apparent thin skin regarding what his father thinks of him, is probably impervious to any kind of criticism from any other quarters, and doesn’t really give a damn about his poll numbers or if he truly bears any responsibility for the shape he’s leaving the country in, if indeed it even occurs to him that things are much messier now than they were in 2000.

None of that matters to him. He’s already been the Most Powerful Man In the (Free) World for two terms (take that, Dad), and all he had to do was play to the camera.

W. was never “dumb”. He might be the most intellectually lazy occupant of the Oval Office in American history, and I would venture that said indolence far outweighs his actual intellectual limits. He was, and is, generally oblivious to any notions of empathy, almost as if he had a political—if not clinical—form of Aspbereger’s syndrome. When he said he “didn’t do nuances”, it wasn’t that he weighed and rejected the notion; it was that it just wouldn’t register it anywhere in his mind.

Kanye West said that Bush didn’t care about Black people. He was half right. Bush doesn’t really care about any people. He doesn’t care if he’s liked or not. He doesn’t even care about his legacy.