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What was the question?

Bush is often lampooned as being either illiterate (unlikely) or a moron (equally doubtful). These are used as a shorthand for the obvious and many mistakes he makes with the spoken language and his inability to present a basic intelligent statement even in the most simple and well-reviewed areas. The canonical examples are from those press conferences where he is expected to be conversant in only limited subject matter but still ends up stumbling (e.g. he often defines an aspect in terms of itself, as with: Tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign. You're a ... you're a ... you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.). There are many examples, so I don't think that their existence is in dispute. ...

People have attempted to explain away the Bush problems with spoken language in various ways. Noam Chomsky suggests that they're all an act developed by Bush's handlers to make him appear home-spun and Everyman-ish. His verbal gaffes go hand-in-hand with clearing brush on the back 40. Mark Liberman et al. over at Language Log have suggested, with compelling examples, that his disfluencies are not uncommon for anyone speaking in public and having that speech recorded and parsed ad nauseum. Liberman's detailed apologies can suffer from their excessive exemptions: Bush was stressed at the time, Bush was jetlagged, etc. All presidents are subject to such stresses and such fumbles during those stressed moments; Bush seems to fumble excessively even in clear weather (that "seems" is the issue that Liberman is disputing).

I agree that the disfluencies are common to any speaker. Record one of your own conversations and then listen to all of the "um"s and "uh"s and false starts that break up the sentences. Listeners will repair these without noticing, and it probably takes less effort to perform those repairs than to unravel multiples of negatives or to connect long-distance references. However, Bush's big offense (and I don't think I'm stating anything new, just disputing the recent apologists) is general lack of knowledge on basic subjects that we'd expect a statesman to possess.

Buried within the Bushims are not only acceptable, if embarrassing, malapropisms but also outright ignorance on issues he should not be ignorant about. The silly quotes that are passed around (I think war is a dangerous place.) are merely a shorthand to represent the deplorably ignorant actions that Bush has made. His missteps during the Bush/Gore debates set the scene for our low expectations of all things international (where Gore's very basic knowledge of Yugoslavia was even more than Bush could muster). And read almost any article at Pharyngula to revisit the willful ignorance of Bush when dealing with science. What's baffling is that many "wired," tech-savvy people, those who I'd thought would be most offended by the abuse of science, would ignore this.

As unfair as the accusations of illiteracy are, I see their use more as placeholders or symbols of Bush's much deeper carelessness with knowledge.