Profiles in Ignorance

Andy Borowitz argues that American politicians have grown dramatically more ignorant over the past five decades and that mass media have accelerated this decline by rewarding candidates who entertain over those who think. To trace this deterioration, he introduces a three-stage framework: Ridicule, Acceptance, and Celebration. In the Ridicule stage, ignorance could destroy a political career, so uninformed politicians had to pretend to be smart. In the Acceptance stage, ignorance became a sign of authenticity, so uninformed politicians felt free to appear uninformed. In the Celebration stage, ignorance became preferable to knowledge, so educated politicians began pretending to be uninformed. The book profiles major political figures in each stage, building the case that Donald Trump's election in 2016 was not an aberration but the logical consequence of the decades preceding it.

Borowitz begins the Ridicule stage with Ronald Reagan, a Republican who served as governor of California before winning the presidency in 1980. He argues that Reagan's talent as a television performer, honed over years in Hollywood and as host of General Electric Theater, enabled him to hide a mind that contemporaries called "dumb as a stump" (16) and compared to an "arid desert" (17). When Reagan ran for governor in 1966, his campaign hired UCLA clinical psychologists to tutor him using index cards, filling the knowledge gaps his managers feared would sink the race. Reagan won by a million votes. Borowitz documents how Reagan's ignorance persisted through his presidency: He skipped a briefing book because The Sound of Music was on television, fabricated quotations he attributed to Winston Churchill and Oliver Wendell Holmes, toasted "the people of Bolivia" at a state dinner in Brazil, and asserted that the Russian language had no word for freedom. The author also examines Reagan's racism, including a 1971 phone call with Richard Nixon in which he called African UN delegates "monkeys" (52), his launch of the 1980 campaign near the site of the Mississippi Burning civil rights murders with a declaration of support for "states' rights," and his use of the "welfare queen" narrative to demonize Black Americans. Reagan's performing talent shielded him from the consequences of these failures, but the Ridicule stage remained in effect for less gifted politicians.

Dan Quayle, George H. W. Bush's vice presidential pick in 1988, represents the other side of the Ridicule coin. The grandson of newspaper magnate Eugene C. Pulliam, Quayle possessed Reagan's ignorance but none of his ability to conceal it. His professors at DePauw University remembered him as vapid and indifferent; his own father admitted he did not have "the greatest smarts in the world" (58). Borowitz recounts Quayle's catastrophic vice presidential debate with Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, during which Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy and Bentsen delivered his devastating retort: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" (73). Unlike Reagan, who could defuse factual challenges with a well-timed joke, Quayle panicked and floundered. His misspelling of "potato" as "potatoe" at a Trenton elementary school in 1992 became career-defining, illustrating that in the Ridicule stage, even a single spelling error could damage a politician. Quayle's failed 2000 presidential bid cleared the way for a candidate who shared his background but handled ignorance very differently: George W. Bush.

The Acceptance stage centers on George W. Bush, the son of the 41st president, who transformed ignorance from a liability into a brand. Borowitz demonstrates that Bush and Quayle had nearly identical backgrounds, from legacy college admissions and fraternity memberships to family connections that kept them out of Vietnam. The critical difference was temperament. Where Quayle flailed when he did not know something, Bush mocked knowledge as elitist and wore his C average as a badge of honor. A pivotal moment came in November 1999, when Boston reporter Andy Hiller quizzed Bush on foreign leaders and the candidate answered only one of four questions correctly. Instead of attacking Bush, the media attacked Hiller. Bush's advisers recognized they could now flaunt ignorance rather than hide it. As president, Bush dismissed a CIA analyst's warning about Osama bin Laden by telling the analyst, "OK, Michael. You've covered your ass" (120). He also failed to act on the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, a short intelligence summary titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." He invaded Iraq based on fabricated intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and expressed surprise upon learning that Iraqis included both Sunnis and Shiites. During the 2008 financial crisis, his own speechwriters informed him that his understanding of the bailout plan was wrong, prompting Bush to ask, "Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don't understand what it does?" (126).

Borowitz treats Sarah Palin as the bridge between Acceptance and Celebration. Selected as John McCain's running mate in 2008 after a vetting process completed in days rather than the customary months, Palin possessed virtually no knowledge of national or international affairs: She believed British armed forces were commanded by the Queen, could not distinguish between England and the United Kingdom, and had never heard of Margaret Thatcher. Her disastrous interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric exposed these gaps, yet a post-debate focus group of undecided voters declared she had won her matchup with Joe Biden, praising her as someone who "sounded smart and intelligent" (148). After the 2008 loss, Palin monetized her public profile through books, a Fox News contract, and a reality television show, and became a kingmaker in the Tea Party, a conservative anti-establishment movement within the Republican Party. With her blend of ignorance and grievance, Borowitz contends, Palin was the gateway figure who led directly to Donald Trump.

The Celebration stage belongs to Trump, whom Borowitz profiles as the culmination of everything that preceded him. He presents a systematic inventory of Trump's deficits: a fourth-grade speaking level according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, a measure of language complexity based on sentence length and syllable count; the smallest vocabulary of recent presidents; chronic misspellings including his own wife's name; the suggestion that Americans inject disinfectant to treat COVID-19; and historical claims such as Revolutionary War armies seizing "airports." Borowitz traces Trump's rise through his father Fred's real estate empire, built on racial discrimination, through ghostwriter Tony Schwartz's The Art of the Deal, which repackaged a failing businessman as a brilliant dealmaker, and producer Mark Burnett's The Apprentice, which amplified this myth. He also profiles educated Republican politicians who adopted performative ignorance to match Trump's appeal, including Ivy League graduates Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, and Harvard Law graduate Ron DeSantis. Borowitz argues that a dark principle runs through the Age of Ignorance: In the absence of knowledge, violence fills the void. He traces a line from the 1970 Hardhat Riot through the 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot that halted the Florida recount to the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. In a closing irony, Borowitz notes that Dan Quayle, the embodiment of political ignorance in the Ridicule stage, served as an unexpected voice of reason when he advised Vice President Mike Pence before January 6 that Pence had no constitutional authority to reject the electoral results.

In his conclusion, Borowitz concedes that his initial belief that better education would lead to smarter electoral choices proved wrong. He cites research showing that well-educated partisans on both sides are susceptible to conspiracy theories. Drawing on political scientist Eitan Hersh's Politics Is for Power, he urges readers to move beyond "political hobbyism," the passive consumption of news and social media, and instead engage in local organizing: registering voters, canvassing, attending town meetings, and changing minds one conversation at a time. He points to Stacey Abrams's Fair Fight Action, a voting-rights organization credited with driving unprecedented Democratic turnout in the January 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs, as a model.

An afterword covering the 2022 midterms finds reason for cautious optimism. Trump-endorsed candidates including television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, former football star Herschel Walker, and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano all lost. Of 37 election deniers who ran for secretary of state, only three won. Sarah Palin lost twice in bids for Alaska's congressional seat, defeated both times by Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native and first woman to represent the state in Congress. Borowitz suggests these results may signal the dawn of a possible fourth stage of ignorance: Correction.