Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Scheer

Scheer’s line works like a tight little trap: it opens with a reasonable, almost charitable premise - “best of intentions,” “very smart and knowledgeable” - and then snaps shut with the bleak conclusion that competence doesn’t change outcomes. The parenthetical jab at George W. Bush isn’t just a punchline; it’s a calibration tool. By contrasting an idealized, capable leader with Bush (“who is neither”), Scheer preempts the easy rebuttal that the problem was simply an incurious, outmatched president. Even if you swap in the “best case” operator, he suggests, the machine still grinds forward.

The specific intent is to shift blame from personality to structure. Scheer, a long-time critic of American foreign policy and media complicity, is pointing at the continuity beneath partisan and biographical differences: institutions that reward escalation, narratives that launder intervention into “good intentions,” and a governing class that can be brilliant yet trapped inside the same incentives. The sneer at Bush is strategic: it gives readers the catharsis of naming a villain, then denies them the comfort of thinking removing that villain solves anything.

Contextually, it lands in the post-9/11, Iraq-war shadow, when “if only the adults were in charge” became a liberal fantasy. Scheer’s cynicism punctures that fantasy. Intelligence and expertise, he implies, often function as better justifications, not better brakes. The real target is the myth that smarter leadership automatically equals moral or effective policy.