Uncurious George

The monkey character Curious George was created by H. A. and Margret Rey. Curious George was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1941. This website is not authorized or approved by the Rey family or Houghton Mifflin.

About This Website

In 2002, we noted more and descriptions of George W. Bush as Uncurious George or just uncurious. We also noted the use of Incurious George and and incurious.

We prepared the website, planning that it would eventually consist largely of articles in the Issues section, that is, articles about how George W. Bush's uncuriosity about specific issues led to bad policy and bad decisions that cost the nation lives, money, and prestige, and harmed the environment.

Meanwhile, we tried to collect every relevant citation that we could.

Unfortunately, after mid-November 2007, we simply did not have the time and energy to continue to gather and update citations, so, except for this comment, the site has been nearly static since mid-November 2007.

While Uncurious George Bush and his administration have left office, as Mark Antony said, "the evil that men do lives after them." We will deal with the effects of George’s uncurious blunders for many years.

George W. Bush has earned the names Uncurious George and Incurious George.

The uncuriosity of the Cheney-Bush regime has plunged the nation and the world into trouble.

Even Bush supporters admit that George W. Bush is uncurious. Former White House speechwriter David Frum, in his book The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (Random House, 2003) wrote that George W. Bush is "impatient, quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious, and as a result ill-informed." And Frum is an ardent admirer of George W. Bush.

David Frum is right. George W. Bush is dogmatically uncurious and systematically ill-informed. The January 2004 Union of Concerned Scientists Report on Scientific Integrity (RSI) explores the systematic way the Bush administration suppresses science and subordinates research and evidence to narrow political objectives. For more on this, see "Science, climate change and global warming" on the Issues page.

On November 28, 1999, The Austin American-Statesman ran a front page story by Jena Heath and Ken Herman that said:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- He flunked a foreign leaders pop quiz, doesn't know a Greek from a ``Grecian,'' was a C-average college student, can't remember what, if anything, he liked to read as a boy and admits that, even today, he doesn't care to read weighty books on public policy, a subject that would seem natural for the governor of the second-most-populous state. . . . [several paragraphs omitted]

Critics call Bush's willingness to seek advice laudable, but limited. ``The problem with experts is that if the president himself is not smart and well-informed, even a president with the best intentions can be misled,'' said Paul Begala, a former aide to President Clinton who said he thinks Bush is smart but ``uncurious.'' ``You don't want to vest that much power in advisers,'' said Begala, a former Austinite. ``I know very well the influence briefers may have in what they do and do not tell the president. . . . If you want to have your finger on the thermonuclear button, if you want to write budgets of $1.5 trillion a year of our money, then you want to bone up a bit. It helps to be curious."

On a September 22, 2003, Fox News broadcast of an interview with Brit Hume, George W. Bush answered how he got his news this way: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. . . . I rarely read the stories and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves."

In contrast, President Dwight D. Eisenhower read nine newspapers a day.

For more information, please click on Issues, Citations, or Links in the top menu.

Note: uncurious and incurious characterize not only George W. Bush, but the entire Bush usurpistration.