Here's Incurious George on the victory of radical Islamic group Hamas in the Palestinian elections:
So the Palestinians had an election yesterday, and the results of which remind me about the power of democracy.[...]
And yesterday the turnout was significant, as I understand it. And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls, and that's positive. But what was also positive is, is that it's a wake-up call to the leadership. Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care.
And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. I like the competition of ideas. I like people who have to go out and say, vote for me, and here's what I'm going to do. There's something healthy about a system that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting.
[...]
If there is corruption, I'm not surprised that people say, let's get rid of corruption. If government hadn't been responsive, I'm not the least bit surprised that people said, I want government to be responsive.
So, let's return to the initial question, "does George W. Bush understand 'irony?'" Let's help him out by going to the dictionary definition. i?ro?ny (i'r?-ne, i'?r-): "The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning." Also, " Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs."
So, Bush lauds the power of Democracy in Palestine, but tramples it in the United States of America. Bush says he can understand Palestinians demanding honest government, decent education and health care, yet he guts all of those things here in our own country. Bush says he likes the strong competition of ideas, yet in his administration he surrounds himself with "yes men," cronies and sycophants who make sure he remains safely brain dead in his insular little bubble. Bush says he's not surprised that people would want to get rid of corruption, yet he leads a party that is tarnished by corruption from top to bottom - Jack Abramoff, Enron, Halliburton, the Cheney Energy Task Force, etc., etc. And finally, Bush says he understands people wanting their government to be responsive, yet he leads one of the least responsive and least competent governments - Hurricane Katrina, the rebuilding of New Orleans, the lack of action on global warming, the ballooning budget deficit, the botched Afghanistan and Iraq operations, etc. - in the history of the country.
In other words, Dubya appears to believe that the Palestinians are more deserving than Americans of honest, competent, responsive, effective, democratic government. Either that, or he simply has no understanding of the word "irony."