Incurious George W. can't grasp democracy

Article

President George W. Bush possesses some considerable liabilities. He's not particularly bright and, as he showed by his fumbling responses in his press conference last week, he doesn't think quickly. Bush's most substantial liability is that he's incurious. He isn't interested in, and appears fundamentally unaware of, the existence of, other cultures, other countries, other ideas, and of people unlike himself — no matter whether they happen to be "others" or Americans.

But throughout the Islamic world there is a deep sense of unfairness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example: Iraq ignores a United Nations resolution and gets invaded; Israel ignores every single U.N. resolution that applies to it and gets everything it wants. Bush is too incurious to notice. He doesn't know, that's to say, that no one who is totally incurious about other people, other ideas, other cultures, other values, can be a democrat.