Yeah. He sounded dumb on TV, but it’s like one of those “ordinary person vs Olympian” things. He sounded dumb on TV partly because you’re comparing him to excellent speakers. Most people would sound dumb next to Obama. Accounts from people meeting Bush in person generally agree he’s smarter than he seems.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with being at best ineffectual as a president and at worst a war criminal waging wars of aggression. Keeping people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld around certainly didn’t help.